Liv Madeline, the face of house renovation account Renovating Chez Nous, shares an insight into her experience slowly renovating an ex-council flat in Edgware, London. After buying the 50s property, last renovated in the 1980s, she and her partner Rob set about demolishing the home themselves.
After spending £295k on the Zone 4, two-level, two-bedroom home, the couple were left without cash to pay upfront for a full renovation of the extremely dated and even dangerous home.
The couple were quoted between £50k and £60k to renovate the home, which they could not afford.
The pair decided to renovate without getting another loan for the words, committing to doing most of the work themselves.
For Liv, this included creating her dream living room, cosy and perfect for watching movies.
She had the idea to craft alcoves and a faux fireplace around an electric fire in the living room.
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Liv said: “I just came up with it myself. When the plasters came in, I basically drew out exactly how I wanted the walls to be done up.
“So he put timbers up, I came in the next day and the timbers looked perfect.
“Then he came in the next day with plasterboards and just plastered it up and that was it.”
One follower called the work the “best before and after I’ve ever seen”.
Another said: “What an incredible difference! Amazing.”
“In modern houses wherever you’ve got cables and pipes, everything’s under the floorboards or combined in walls, but with this property, everything was wall-mounted so you could see the pipes on the walls, electric wires on the walls, which weren’t covered up. It’s very dangerous,” Liv explained.
She said: “I can’t even tell you the number of times I cried, but it’s nice now and I’m happy.”
Another couple renovating a home shared a dramatic DIY bathroom renovation, which cost just £1200. /life-style/property/1476196/Bathroom-renovation-DIY-before-after-pictures
After moving into their new home last year, Charlotte Reynolds and Mitchell Shergold decided to renovate the whole house, posting pictures with updates of the revamp on the couple’s Instagram page.
