Interiors and Renovation

I’ve wanted to write about living in a money pit for a while and have written two versions of this post already today which swiftly got deleted. This week we’ve been in our home for three years and I always share a yearly update on the budget at this time but thought a more generic overview may be a little more helpful. It may be that I’ve been ill and feeling burnt out this week (more on that later,) so my words aren’t formulating in the way I want them to, or more likely, that talking about anything financial is very emotive and nuanced and sometimes even triggering. Add in talking about a financial burden which stems from a place of huge privilege and this blog post really could be a baptism of fire.

It feels scary to put pen to paper and admit how naïve we were starting this project. We’ve renovated two projects before this – a 2 bed Victorian mid-terrace and a 3 bed 1930’s semi – but whilst we learnt a lot transforming those, neither one compares to the scale of the 4 bed, 400 year old thatched cottage we live in now.

Have you ever wondered how much a full house renovation would cost? Or look at squares on Instagram and wonder how much money went into making it look that way? In this long overdue blog post, I am taking a deep dive into the finances of our renovation, how we afforded it, how much everything cost, where we saved money and where we were ripped off.