DIY couple make-over their dated 1930s house completely by themselves and add £145,000 to its value
Parents transformed their five-bedroom semi for £60,000 by doing most of the work themselves including tearing out the bathrooms and building into the loft – and added £145,000 to the value of their home
- Leanne and Ash Baud, both 35, from Leeds, transformed their five-bed semi detached house for £60,000
- They bought the 1930s property five years ago for £279,950 and renovated all its room and converted its loft
- The couple say they added £145,000 to their house’s value thanks to tweaks and say it’s now worth £425,000
- Leanne worked on renovations while pregnant with their fourth baby, Ada, had to stop due to pre-eclampsia
A couple transformed their 1930s semi-detached property in a stunning £60,000 DIY makeover that added £145,050 to the value of their home.
Leanne and Ash Baud, both 35, purchased the five-bedroom house in Leeds for £279,950 five years ago but wanted to create a space that better suited life for their four children, Oliver, 15, Mason, 13, Esme, two, and Ada, six months.
To save money the couple decided to carry out most of the work themselves, beginning in 2016 and including a loft conversion in 2019, while Leanne was pregnant with Esme, to add another bedroom and an extensive kitchen revamp.
Leanne, who works for Yorkshire Ambulance Service, was put in charge of decorating and learned what she needed from YouTube videos. Meanwhile Ash, who works as a plumber and engineer, was put in charge of plumbing and heating works. Electricity was left to professionals.
The couple also cut costs by purchasing furnishings on eBay and Facebook Marketplace.
The result is a cosy yet stylish home that Leanne and Ash estimate is now worth £425,000 – £145,050 more than the price they paid.
Leanne, 34 and Ash Baud, 35, bought their house five years ago for £295,950 and now claim it is worth £425,000 after their £60,000 DIY makeover. Pictured: the kitchen before, with brown cupboards and cream wallpaper with a stone back-splash
The kitchen now. Leanne and Ash spent £13,000 on redoing the room, replacing the cupboards with new blue ones fitted with copper handles, changing the back-splash with white tiles. They also redid the room’s ceiling and got rid of the see-through roof
The living-room photographed mid-renovations. The couple replaced the fireplace, left, and building shelves and cupboards unit on either side of it
Leanne and Ash covered the floorboards with grey tartan-style carpeted floors, and fitted a white fireplace at the centre of the room. They furnished with dark blue-grey velvet sofas and pink cushions
In order to overhaul their house’s main bathroom, the couple completely destroyed it, floor to ceiling, pictured. Ash was in charge of the plumbing for the new bathroom
The kitchen’s breakfast bar before the renovations, which was brown and only had two brown stools, with old floorboards. The breakfast bar was next to the fridge
The kitchen now, pictured, was replaced with blue cupboards with new worktop, and the couple utilised their space by prolonging the breakfast bar on another wall in the house’s hallway
The couple had to juggle raising their family with the extensive DIY work.
‘The muck and dust from the structural work was constantly everywhere, and keeping our daughter away from the noise, dirt and tools, while struggling with morning sickness was challenging,’ she said.
‘We were simultaneously putting a small extension on the hallway and renovating parts of downstairs. We hoped to finish this work before our baby arrived but things got halted due to Covid and lockdown.’
The delays meant the family were forced to use a piece of chipboard over the gap where the front door should have been, and had to make do with boards covering holes in the floor, no plaster on the walls and no handrail or spindles on the stairs.
Work restarted when Ada was three weeks old and the couple found themselves juggling DIY with sleepless nights with a newborn, as well as raising two teenagers and a toddler.
The brown kitchen before, with its glaze roof which the couple got rid off on the right, and its brown cupboards. The kitchen is now more spacious and welcomes from light
The hallways leading up to the new kitchen, with the breakfast bar on the right, now that the house has been renovated. The couple also tried to pick decorative elements that fitted the house’s 1930s style. The hallway cost £7,000 to redo
Before, the house’s orangery, pictured, was a separate rooms. TYhe window frames where made of brown wood, and it was used as an extra sitting room
Pictured: Leanna siting in the new orangery with her newborn daughter Ada, who was born during the renovations. The orangery was repainted in blue, and the window frame were painted white to make the room from luminous
The living-room now. The floorboards were replaced with grey carpeted floors, the walls were painted in grey, and the couple picked an Art deco pair of wings as a central piece of their decoration
The other side of the current living-room. Leanne and Ash created the shelves around the new fireplace themselves and invested in a mirror over the fireplace to add some style
Downstairs the couple knocked down walls to create an open-plan kitchen-living space.
In the kitchen they carried out £13,000 worth of work, including removing the glazed roof and appliances, adding 1930s-style doors, and replacing handles, tap, sinks. They also re-tiled the floor and added a breakfast bar and a home office at one end of the room.
They reworked the existing orangery, adding Crittal doors and blocking up the windows to make the room an extension of the living room.
In the main bathroom they stripped back to the original brick work before re-plastering and painting the walls and ceiling.
A large custom-made mirror was added, the taps were replaced and the couple installed a new shower, bath, sink and toilet with ex-display pieces from eBay, costing around £5,000.
The couple carried out further work in the hallway, replaced the oak staircase and added a porch at the front of the house.
They built into the loft in 2019, to add another bedroom, and decorated the other rooms with upcycled furniture from Facebook Marketplace and charity shops.
The en-suite bedroom required the most attention as it was the most dated room. It received a lick of paint and new tiles from Wickes, and a new sink from an ex-display bought on eBay, as well as a custom-made vanity unit.
The family-of-six spent around £60,000 on the entire renovation – and they couldn’t be more pleased with the results.
Pictured: the loft before, which was full of dirt. To utilise all their house’s space, the couple turned this loft into a bedroom for their teenage son Ollie
Ollie’s room, pictured now, was painted white and green, adding grey carpet as well and some industrial-looking pieces of furniture. The loft extension cost them £10,000
Before the renovations, the master bedroom’s en-suite bathroom was smaller, and comprised an old shower. Its walls were also framed in wood, pictured
The couple completely changed it the en-suite, put miss-matched mosaic tiles on the floor and white tiles on the wall and a modern Italian shower next to a sink unit and a towel rail
For their master bedroom, the couple repainted the walls, and bought a few upcycled decorative elements from places like Facebook Market place to complete the job (pictured before)
Leanne and Ash also added a shelf unit above their bed, as well as chrome nightstand and lamps. In total, the master-bedroom cost £7,000 to redo, including the en-suite bedroom
Leanne said: ‘We love the outcome. It’s still evolving and we hope to finish everything over the next couple of months.
‘Having previously finished the living room, kitchen and conservatory, we decided after our youngest arrived to re-do downstairs to accommodate our bigger family.
‘We have knocked through from the kitchen to the living room to create an open kitchen/dining room, and have created a new, bigger living room where the old conservatory was.
‘This layout is much more suitable for a family-of-six and we feel that it flows much better.
Even the kids got involved! Mason, Leanne and Ash’s 13-year-old son, painted this cupboard white during the renovations of his room. Before the transformation, his walls were white and his windows were brown
The family painted Mason’s new room’s wall dark blue, pictured, and created a brick-illusion wallpaper on his room’s main wall where they put his new bed
Esme’s room during the renovations. For their two-year-old daughter’s room, the couple got rid of the old white and pink paint, pictured, and changed the carpet as well
They picked a new carpet in a darker shade of grey and painted the walls light grey, then covered a third of the wall with floral and colurful wallpaper
‘Once we have costings that we feel are achievable, we save or we buy bits as and when we can, storing them in the garage until we have everything we need to make a start.
‘You will be much happier with the results if you’ve taken the time to create a room that is exactly what you want.’
In a few words of advice for those who wish to renovate their home, Leanne added: ‘Don’t be a slave to current trends – try to be a little bit sympathetic to the house that you live in.
‘Ours is a 1930’s semi so we have tried to include elements in each room that are a nod to that era. They might not be the latest craze but they work. In addition to that, I believe that homes should be comfortable, functional and reflect their occupants.
‘Don’t be scared of using your favourite colours, including pieces that you love, or interest you, even if they’re not “on trend”. At the end of the day, it’s your space, and it’s important that it makes you feel good.’
They now plan to lay oak herringbone flooring throughout the ground floor and finish the hallway.
On top of the grey carpeted floor and the light grey walls, the couple topped it with a colourful floral wallpaper and a gallery wall full of fun children’s art, as well as pink, grey and brown furniture, flower pots and lamps, pictured
The other side of Esme’s room, with a beautiful crib, an bedazzled mirror, some plants and a portrait of painter Frida Kahlo. They put white princess-style curtain above her crib as well
Ada taking a nap in her new room now, in her beautiful white crib, surrounded by her toys. Ada’s room cost £7,000. The couple didn’t know the gender of the baby, so opted for a gender neutral white wall colour, with a palm tree motif for one of the walls
Another side of Ada’s room, with an animal mobile, pictures of animals, a pillow with a palm-tree pattern to match the wallpaper and a dream catcher
