It's no secret that buying a house can be incredibly costly. From the deposit and your mortgage repayments right down to your legal fees, it is no wonder people look for ways to cut costs when it eventually comes round to renovating.
More and more homeowners are now taking on DIY in a bid to transform their homes on a budget. The notion of decorating, building and doing repairs yourself rather than paying a professional to do the job can reduce your spends by thousands, as one couple in Prestwich have proven.
Drew Wilby and Eddy Tan spoke to the Manchester Evening News as part of our Where I Live series. Each week we chat to different homeowners about their buying journey and the costs involved; whilst taking a look inside their home to see how they've renovated.
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Drew, 30, originally from Wakefield and Eddy, 35, from Southampton, both moved to Manchester around 10 years ago and met in the city in 2017.
Eddy initially moved into Drew's home which he owned in Higher Blackley before the couple decided to buy their first home together. They began house-hunting in 2020 during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was very difficult to get a viewing. People were jumping in with offers before we’d even get chance to view somewhere. It was very competitive," Drew told the Manchester Evening News.
"We found one house that we liked and we put an offer in for it, but we got outbid for a crazy amount. I think there were about six or seven other people wanting it so it was chaos.
“We then realised that the estate agents were putting lower prices on their adverts with no intention of selling anywhere near the asking price."
The third house the couple viewed was a three-bed semi-detached property in Prestwich which they immediately loved, both for the house itself and its location.
“I've always wanted a Victorian style house with high ceilings and nice original features, and this house had all of that," Drew said.
"I just saw a lot of potential in it. The owners had already done an extension and renovation on the kitchen in 2018, two years prior to us viewing it, so it was a good size."
Eddy added: "The house was pretty much bang in the centre of Prestwich. We really liked the area and location as it has good transport links into town and the motorway is really close.
"It is a nice little village with its own bars and restaurants. It’s also going through a period of regeneration so there are lots of small independent businesses popping up and they are also redeveloping the precinct in the next couple years."
The couple ended up putting an offer in for the 1900s home in the sought-after Bury town and went in over the asking price.
“The house was set at offers over £330,000 but we knew because of the state of the market we would have to go in near the top end of our budget which was £350,000," Drew explained.
"It turns out that the previous owners were walking out of the property as we were walking in to view it and they said that they quite liked the look of us, so they gave us the opportunity to match somebody else's offer of £350,000, so we ended up buying it for that."
Drew and Eddy got the keys to their new home in December 2020 and began renovating right away.
“When we bought it the condition was actually okay," Eddy said. "It was really good that they had just done the extension and they had a log burner recently put in the lounge.
"They had looked after it so there was nothing wrong with it but we just needed to bring it up to our style and add in the things that we liked."
Drew added: "Straight away as soon as we viewed the house I knew how it wanted to look, where I wanted things to go and what colours I wanted to use. I'm the more creative visual one whereas Eddy is the DIY guy."
The couple got to work on their new home which they renovated almost entirely by themselves.
"We’ve done the majority of house with DIY. The only things we didn't do ourselves were change the radiators and get the loft done. Every other thing we have done ourselves," Drew said.
"We pretty much started renovating straight away and we did it room by room. We started with the floors because the original floorboards had holes in. It was winter and they were leaking heat, you could literally feel the breeze coming through the floorboards." said Eddy.
"We put parquet flooring down ourselves in every single room, so we essentially refloored the entire house which took us about four weeks.
"We wouldn’t have been able to afford to change the floors throughout to the quality that we wanted if we hadn’t done it ourselves."
Drew and Eddy said they have cut costs through learning DIY hacks, with the renovation costing them around £10,000 in total.
"We learnt DIY along the way, YouTube is pretty good these days for tutorials. It has helped us to save a lot of money," Eddy said.
"The first room that we finished was the living room. In there we did the parquet flooring, built the cabinets, rewired lights and put in a new picture rail."
Drew added: “In the master bedroom the bed that we wanted was about £1,200. Instead we bought a cheap bed frame from Wayfair for about £250 and then bought our own fabric and a staple gun and glued it, so we saved about £1,000 on that.
“I also bought my own fabric and hemmed and sewed all our curtains. Doing that myself for about £20 per curtain saved us hundreds of pounds and it was really simple to do.
"The kitchen dining area was only done in 2018 so it pretty much just needed a fresh lick of paint. One quote we got just for painting was going to cost £2,500, so we decided to do that ourselves instead. I also designed and built our own bar in the dining room.
"We’ve kept a lot of the original features, whatever we could salvage. We found the original tiles around the fireplace under the carpet in the spare bedroom which I just loved as they were really good quality."
The couple's home is now almost complete apart from a few finishing touches, and the pair say they are extremely happy with the results from their budget makeover - despite it being difficult at times.
"The renovation was a stressful time. Eddy is a perfectionist and he loves a project. He loves having a task and researching what to do and how to do it, and then going to buy the tools to get it done. Whereas I just want it done," Drew admitted.
Eddy added: “Drew doesn’t like the process of going through a renovation, he just likes the end result. But we got there in the end."
Describing their interior style, Drew said: "Most of the houses we see online these days use neutral colours and have a Scandinavian style but we've used more dark, saturated colours in different tones which is called colour drenching.
“Our style is modern and moody. It's mainly all our own ideas but we do get some inspiration from Instagram."
Giving a walkthrough of their home, Drew said: "When you come in through the front door we’ve got a hallway with stairs leading up to the first floor.
"On the left hand side we have our living room. Then behind that we've got the large open plan kitchen dining room with a door which goes under the stairs for storage and also a downstairs toilet.
"Then upstairs we've got the bathroom and the master bedroom at the back of the house, and then the spare bedroom and the third bedroom which is now our office at the front of the house."
Discussing their plans for the future, Drew said: "We’re probably thinking of sticking around until the precinct is done because then Prestwich and this house will be even more sought-after and hopefully that is reflected in the property value.
“We haven't had it valued since we moved in but we get a yearly report from our estate agent and the last one came back at around £425,000.
“It’s quite difficult to buy in Prestwich now. We probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to move here now if we had waited but if you can afford it then go for it.”
Giving advice to other homeowners who want to renovate on a budget, Eddy advised: “For me it’s just about getting stuck in. Even if you don’t know what to do just make sure you do your research and just give it a go.
"It’s just about finding cheaper hacks to get the desired look that you want. DIY is an investment in your skillset.
"You might mess it up but ultimately once you learn it’s skills that you have and you can take forward into your next house."
You can see more of Drew and Eddy's home on their Instagram account @kings.of.kingswood.
Want to get involved in Where I Live? If you are interested in featuring your home in our weekly series, please email your details to phoebe.jobling@reachplc.com.
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