I renovated the worst house on a good street - it's not finished seven years later (2025)

It’s been seven years since we got the keys to our two-bedroom, Georgian terraced house. Ollie and I had been married for all of six months and had relocated from London to my home county of Somerset. We were ready to start a new chapter in a proper home rather than a stuffy Brixton flat, and at that time, house prices were lower in Somerset (although, since Covid, the prices have evened out).

The charm of the street where we eventually found our house was other-worldly compared to what we’d become used to in London. Having grown up in Somerset, I knew the area well and had always admired this street with its quiet row of gorgeous houses, wisteria-clad fences, and sweeping city views.

Our house had been on the market for longer than you might expect for such a beautiful street with a fiercely good school catchment area. That’s because it needed a complete renovation – one which no one else seemingly wanted to touch. That perhaps should have been our first red flag. As we walked from room to room during our first viewing, however, we imagined how it might look if we were able to do that renovation. We had no experience in such projects, but the house was only affordable to us because it needed the work. How hard could it be, we said.

Very hard, it turns out, especially when you have limited funds, a Grade II listed building which is in a conservation area (there is a lot of painstaking planning permission involved even for small changes). Throw in a global pandemic, a series of useless tradesmen, and two babies along the way, and seven years later, there are still elements of the project which are unfinished.

We didn’t have the budget to have the entire project done at once, so we have been living in a building site on and off since we moved in, with the work being done sporadically in different parts of the house as and when we can afford it, like a never-ending game of renovation whack-a-mole as a new problem arises just as we finish another job.

It’s easy to see why we thought it might be doable. Renovation is everywhere you look on social media. There are countless accounts dedicated to house glow-ups; every other video I see on Instagram and TikTok, posted by accounts called things like “Reno at Number 34”, shows stunning before and after shots of rundown homes which have been whizzed into maximalist wonderlands. “Buy the worst house on the best street,” they advise. “Location is key; you can make a killing!” They make it look so easy, often telling you they have knuckled down and done the work themselves to save money.

We have learned in the process of turning our run down, damp, worst house on the best street with its higgledy-piggledy layout into a family home that we share the unfortunate trait of being extremely un-handy. Any aspect of this project that we have chosen to embark upon ourselves be it painting or laying grass, has ended either in tears or unfinished. Unlike the amateur doer-uppers you see on Instagram (all called “Toby and Willow”), we don’t appear to have discovered the temperament nor the skills required to do our own plastering or tiling.

We have also learned the hard way that it would have been a fantastic idea to do a large proportion of the messy work before we moved in and had children. You haven’t truly known despair until the back of your house is removed during the depths of winter and the kitchen torn out days before you learn you are going into a months-long lockdown and work is going to slow to a snail’s pace. We had a bin bag for a back door for weeks, and a microwave was our only functioning cooker. It was like camping but with more Cook lasagnas.

Funds don’t always allow for a delayed move-in, however, and a builder friend told us that it’s not always a bad idea to live in a house for six months to get to know it before you renovate. The priorities in those first months were stripping it back, getting rid of smelly old carpets, and scrubbing at any mould.

Then, systematically over the years, we have had the floors sanded, the kitchen replaced, flat roofs re-laid, an old conservatory replaced with an extension and bi-folding doors, decking built, a garden studio erected, the front of the house repainted and repointed, a new roof, a new bathroom, new sash windows (one of the most eye-wateringly expensive endeavours, it turns out) and replastering and painting throughout.

We’ve had disputes with indescribably crap builders, one of whom told me I was being “too particular” when I asked if he could make the kitchen floor level (we fell out so badly that at one point, he even blocked me on Instagram – the final insult). We’ve had disputes with a neighbour when they suggested that our proposal for a two-metre-wide decking area was going to be “like Fort Knox”, and we’ve had disputes with one another when it has felt like work on the house has become our full-time job on top of our full-time jobs. Our relationship is held together by No More Nails and shared renovation trauma.

Undergoing a renovation requires grit and zen in equal measure. You have to advocate for yourself and the results you are paying through the nose for whilst also trying to keep a happy working relationship with your builder (because they may never return to do the snags you require if not). You need to go in with open eyes.

Older homes, like our Georgian house built in 1827, often conceal hidden problems such as outdated wiring and plumbing issues or foundational weaknesses. We had to spend £7000 on damp-proofing and replastering, for example, and our fuse board was 70 years old and the wiring needed to be replaced. The floor of our second bedroom may never be fully level despite two expensive attempts to fix it. Budgets become inflated, and schedules go out of the window.

Now, as we near the end of the major work to-do list (landscaping the garden is the final job, and I doubt we’ll ever be able to afford it), we should be able to sit back and enjoy our home. And it is beautiful. It was also, however, never intended to be our ‘forever home’. We had no children when we moved in, and now we have two, and only two bedrooms and one bathroom. There is not a lot of ceiling height for my 6’4 husband, who whacks his head on the stairs almost daily.

We have now ploughed so much money into this house, and the interest rates have gone up so much that we don’t really have the option to move – and we do truly love the location. So, we are learning to see the bonuses in living in a small house we have painstakingly renovated and tweaked. It will never be like the after pictures we are bombarded with on social media. But we do live on a cracking street – and we’re not the worst house on it anymore.