Mum, 27, transforms 'rotting' home into modern family space – adding £300,000 to property value.

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A savvy woman has shared her top tips and tricks for transforming a home while on a budget – adding "£300,000 to the property value".

Laura, 27, an engineering draughtsman from North Yorkshire, purchased a five-bedroom, semi-detached property with her husband, Eddy, 30, for £500,000 in March 2021.

While they loved the house, the couple wanted to add their own touch, as well as ensure the property was more sustainable and energy efficient.

After brainstorming ideas – as well as roping in Laura's dad to help – they got to work on a tight budget.

After carrying out a full revamp, including a brand new kitchen, bathroom and structural repairs, the couple believe they've added £300,000 in value to their humble abode.

They have also gone viral on TikTok, with Laura sharing their journey with
123,600 followers on TikTok, with the final home reveal racking up 14.9 million views and over 3 million likes.

"I really wanted to breathe new life into this beautiful old house," Laura told NeedToKnow.Online.

"It's going to be our forever home and it needed some TLC.

"We gutted the whole property.

"I wanted it to be safe for years to come, as well as being more sustainable and energy efficient.

"Initially, I had a lot of grand ideas for renovation and I did all the architectural design myself using AutoCAD software.

"After many revisions and back and forth talking to family and friends, I scaled the plans back a lot.

"This was mainly due to having a strict budget to work with, so I had to be realistic and make compromises on where to allocate funds."

The couple, who had planned to marry in 2020 but were unable to go ahead with plans due to the pandemic, decided to put the cash towards their house makeover instead.

However there were many challenges along the way, especially as Laura was heavily pregnant with her daughter, Honey, throughout the process.

The project has taken the couple 11 months and they spent £90,000 on the renovation in total.

She said: "In between the sale of our first home and purchase of the farm house, I fell pregnant.

"We considered pulling out of the house purchase because we had no idea how we were going to do it all, but in the end, we decided to go for it.

"We had a big wedding planned that we had saved for a long time, but because of the cancellation, we decided to invest in our future and put towards buying our forever home instead."

The couple did as much as possible themselves, although they did also get help from Laura's dad, who runs a construction company, and various contractors for the fiddlier bits.

She said: "We treated all the timbers as wood worm had gotten to a lot of it, and rebuilt walls where structurally necessary.

"We removed all the downstairs floor and rebuilt a whole new finish floor including hardcore, concrete, insulation and an underfloor heating system.

"Then we stripped the old stud walls from the internal and external walls, before insulating them and boarding them, as well as plastering.

"A full re-wire and complete new plumbing system has also been done and we wanted to convert to a more sustainable energy source, so we removed the old oil heating system and had a renewable energy source installed.

"This was very expensive, but government green grants helped alleviate costs."

The couple also "demolished" internal walls downstairs to create a new layout, adding steel beams to support the floor above.

Additionally, they installed a sky lantern.

Keeping the home's key original features, Laura and Denny also sanded down the existing wood beams and kept the original stone walls in the kitchen.

In a bid to create a modern family feel, they refitted the bathroom and kitchen and finished off with relocating the bespoke staircase to the centre of the house.

Laura said: “Like with all renovations we did encounter a number of issues – but luckily nothing that caused any major setbacks.

"We unearthed many horrors when stripping back the internal walls, discovering that many of them had been filled in with wood that was now rotting, as well as bits of rubble where they had obviously run out of bricks.

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