House Renovation Highlights featuring The Thomas’s At No 50

This week on my House Renovation Highlights I’m introducing you to Steph and Scott at The Thomas’s at No 50 featuring their home in South London that they purchased during the pandemic last year. Since they moved in they have extensively renovated it, before this it hadn’t been touched for decades and had no heating!

Here, they share their story about managing their renovation on budget, during a time when things were difficult to get hold off and going up in price, whilst achieving the end finish that they were after. They used Pinterest and Instagram extensively to help inspire their thinking, something that I believe is a great start point and allows you to see what you like and love.

I would love for you to have a read of their renovation story and how they shopped around to get the best value for money without losing quality, and to hear about their experience of using DIY Kitchens which one of their best renovation purchases.

Tell us about your home and your renovation project. What did you do?

We completed the purchase of our home during the pandemic in August 2020. The house had actually had an offer accepted on it before we viewed it but the buyers had to pull out due to financial problems because of the Coronavirus. We were also able to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday. 

The house is in South London and is a 1950’s semi-detached house with a drive and a Garden. When we first viewed the house it was in need of renovation and we were informed that the previous owner had lived in the home for many years and had not renovated for many decades. There was no central heating, the electrics needed to be replaced, the décor was in desperate need of adaptation and the garden was a jungle! However, the house was sound structurally.

The renovation consisted of installing new central heating, electrics, a new kitchen, knocking down the wall between the toilet and the bathroom and completely renovating the bathroom, new floors throughout the house, painting of the entire interior of the house and cultivating and landscaping the garden.

What did you enjoy the most about your house renovation?

As the house required a full renovation, the project presented a blank canvas. We were so excited to be able to plan our home and then to see the progress on a daily basis once work had started.

What was your biggest challenge?

We had big plans and expansive ideas inspired by Pinterest and Instagram. However, we were working to a budget which was not as flexible as it could have been due to the pandemic. However, we were determined to achieve the quality finish that we had planned despite out budget. This meant lots of comparisons between products and conversations with our tradesmen about how we could make sure our ideas came to fruition.

Is there anything that you would have done differently?

We decided to paint the house a very neutral matt pure brilliant white paint at first during the renovation in order to get a feel of the house and decide on which colours we thought would fit the house. However, in hindsight it would have been easier to paint to be bold and choose colours for the room at the time of the renovation as painting furnished rooms will be more difficult than painting the empty rooms at the time of the renovation.

Tell us your top tips?

1. Draw inspiration from other people’s journeys and other peoples ideas. There’s so much inspiration on Pinterest and Instagram and people are really willing to share their journeys and resources. 
2. Once you find the look, design or product that you want to implement in the renovation search around and compare quality and prices with other shops and providers. We were able to save lots of money by shopping around without losing out on quality. 
3. Use tradespeople that are recommended or have multiple good reviews. We were blessed that we didn’t have any problems with our tradespeople as they were recommended and people that we trusted.

What was your best renovation purchase?

I’d say the kitchen was our best renovation purchase. We purchased the kitchen units from DIY-Kitchens. We had to measure and order the correct size kitchen units ourselves by doing this we were able to buy our kitchen units at 50% of the price of other well known kitchen providers that we got quotes from without compromising on quality. We were also very happy with the kitchen Quartz Kitchen countertop which were able to purchase at a reasonable price. This completed the look that we desired for our kitchen.

Would you do it again?

Hopefully, we wont have to fully renovate another home to live in as we’d like to stay in this home and continue to extend it. However, we’d love to purchase similar properties that need to be updated and renovated to add to part of a rental portfolio or to sell on.

What’s next? Any future renovation plans?

We are still finishing the decorating in the house at the moment. Most rooms in the house are probably only 95% percent finished at the moment. After we finish decorating we’d like to do an extension the side and the back of the house and into the loft in a few years time.

Thank you so much Steph and Scott for sharing your story, it has been great to hear about your renovations and well done for doing it throughout the pandemic.

You can see more of Steph and Scott’s home on Instagram, do pop over to see more and give them a follow as well.

If you would love to have your your home featured as part of my series, do drop me an email thepramshedblog@gmail.com and take a nose at my last renovations highlight post featuring Architect V Engineer.

Claire x