6.14 /// My House Ate My Wallet (& Is Coming Back For Seconds)

A house can be a haven—and a hungry beast. I [Stephen, host of Infinite Prattle] pulls back the curtain on eight years of upgrades, mishaps and small victories, showing how a “good deal” becomes a long game of rewires, replumbs, landscaping, and now a full roof rethink. I start with the honest maths of hiring a skip to clear garden clutter and renovation leftovers, weighing convenience against cost and sharing the surprising rule that lets you keep it far longer than you’d think. From there, the story widens: how moving walls changes the way a home works, why tiling gets easier with practice, and where to draw the line between DIY pride and calling in a pro.

Along the way, I talk budgets that bite—electrics, plumbing, windows and a boiler that collectively race past the comfortable number—and the quieter bills that never stop: touch-ups, damp fixes, plaster repairs and decorating fatigue. The roof looms large as the next essential investment, a reminder that it’s the difference between peace of mind and recurring leaks. I get candid about the logistics most guides skip: painting with a room full of furniture, trying to store a sofa for a weekend, and finding the will to paint a loft hatch after a full work week.

If you’ve wrestled with a fixer-upper or weighed the promise of a new-build with its own snags, you’ll recognise the push and pull. There’s humour here—the house that eats your wallet and asks for seconds—but also a practical takeaway: plan in phases, protect the structure, accept “good enough” where it counts, and make peace with the cycle. By the end, you’ll have a clearer sense of what to prioritise, what to budget, and how to keep going when the to-do list won’t end. If this helped, follow the show, leave a review and share your biggest DIY win—or disaster—in the comments.

Transcript

Welcome And Setup Chat

Stephen 0:05

Hello, welcome to Infinite Prattal. On today's episode, um I'm gonna be talking about DIY and the constant drain of a house on your wallet. Um and just stuff that I've done to my house and what I've been up to yesterday. So yeah, stay with me for that. Thank you for joining us again. Uh if you're new to the show, um you know strap yourself in, brace yourself uh some absolute nonsense. Um hopefully some sort of intellectual nonsense, and you'll get something out of it. Uh, or at least enjoy my brain fading as I talk. Um yeah, uh I actually have set up the microphone today. It is actually recording, I think. Um so I'm using it as like a shotgun microphone today. So hopefully it increases the sound. Unless I turn away, and then the sound will go down because it's obviously omnidirectional. Um so it might not work, it might not work. I just thought it's an easier sound, but I don't have to worry about touching the microphone on me and creating ruffling sounds. Uh because I am a bit of a fidgeter. Um anyway, um welcome if you're new, welcome if you're not new, and you've been listening to my prattles for well, hopefully for the entire time. I've been doing this nearly four years now. So um uh and if you are listening on the audio only, remember there is a video podcast. Uh I tend to not stare at the camera at all. I tend to stare at my own face in the in the image, or just generally through the camera. So yeah, eye contact is not made. Um which it can't be really because it's a video. Anyway, you can go and check that out. Uh I also have vlogs on my uh YouTube channel as well, which are separate to the podcast and aren't uploaded to the podcast service. Um and they're like show and tells and just chatting about other things that I wouldn't really do on the podcast, I suppose. Things that you can see, really. Uh yeah. Well explained, well explained. Oh, the hat today as well is a Beavis unbuthead hat. I don't think I've worn this one before on the podcast, so if I have, I'm sorry. I'm not keeping track of that already, am I? Um anyway, let's get into the actual topic of today's conversation, and that is um houses and how they're basically a big money bet. You know, they are a big, huge drain on resources, a constant um hopefully a constant source of relaxation for anyone that's living in them, and it should be like your little safe space, but they do cost a lot of money and they do end up draining money from your bank faster than you can say I have no money. Um would you say that? I don't know. I don't know. I'm I'm I'm quite a hyper today uh because yesterday I was doing a load of exercise and I feel good for it, you know. I feel good. I've been doing my little walking challenge, uh, and if you haven't donated to that, you know, you can find the link on my uh Instagram page somewhere. Um and there's still time to donate up until the 10th of March uh 2026. So I think it's five over 500 pounds, 555 pounds, I think it is, which is a nice kind of odd odd figure, but yeah. Um anyway, yeah. So yesterday I was doing a lot of stuff. We hired a hide escape. Uh I I would say we, it's the royal we because Sarah doesn't get involved in stuff like that. That's the manly work in the house, and I take sole responsibility for that. And it's not a sexist thing, it's just that uh she has no interest in doing DIY, and I like to throw things around and destroy stuff, so it's kind of a good relationship. Um yeah, so hide a skip because I had loads of stuff left over from when we did the house up, and stuff we've done over the last few years, and things that are just broken and haven't had a chance to take to the recycle centre slash tip. Um so it accumulated that much, and there was rubble and stuff in at the tip, you have to pay for certain things, and it's a bit of a nightmare, really. I don't fly tipping is is increased. I can I can see why, because people just can't be asked to follow the rules, and if you have a certain mindset, then you're gonna go and dump your stuff in a country road somewhere, or in someone else's skip. Tends to be as mine's nicely covered over. Um although someone could just use a sally knife and just get into it, but you know, that's that's that's another thing. Um yeah, so hired a skip yesterday. 200 odd pound though for a skip. I mean it's kind of good that you know you can just shove stuff in it, but like that's a lot of money. Like, I I probably could have hired a van and gone and taken everything to the tip myself, but then you unload it again. So the other thing is you throw it in and they just come and collect it and get rid of it for you. So it has it has its good points and bad points, but I think for convenience that's why you're paying the money. Um and I never knew until the first time I ever hired a skip. Well, it was like I think it was like the third time when we were doing the house hide a couple of skips, and I never realized that uh they weren't kind of a timed thing. You pay for the skip, but then you just phone them when you don't want it anymore. And um I was kind of surprised that that was um a non-timed thing because I always thought like you had like a week to fill it up or a couple of days to fill it up, but no, you can literally if you need the skip, you can keep it for six months. They they don't really care, they'll phone you every so often to see if you're stealing that still need it, or you need it picking up if you've forgotten, but it literally you just keep it kind of indefinitely, really, which is really bizarre. And I never knew that. Unfortunately, to the third time I had a skip when doing the house up, uh, and I phoned them and said, Uh, like, I'm I'm trying to get it done for tomorrow, blah blah blah. Because I told them when they could pick it up, and I was running behind, and I phoned them panicking, thinking, Oh god, I'm one of the guys, one of the builders hadn't finished doing stuff, and I thought it was gonna be more rubble from what they're doing. I was doing some tiling, I was like, Oh my god, like I don't really want to take that down to the tips separately, that's annoying. And I phoned them and they were like, No, we don't have to pick it up tomorrow, you've got it for as long as you want. And I was like, What? What is this wizardry? Um, and I'd already had two skips to that point and had no idea that was a thing. I just because they just asked me when they wanted it picking up and I was like, uh, is Monday okay? I was like, and they were like, Yeah, that's fine. I was like, and it's still 200 pounds or whatever it was at the time, it was like 160 quid. And they were like, Yeah, it's fine, but they never said it's fine, you've got it for as long as you need him. Which they probably should have done. I think they just make the assumption that everyone knows how skips work. Anyway, uh I'd loads of garden stuff, bit of rubble, some grass, um, some like, you know, like I'd been digging some stuff up, um, some old cupboard doors, some wood, like some old uh bins that were, you know, the burning bin things that you can get uh with lids that are just completely corroded, uh some plastic storage things, shed things that were in my garden that I'd had from our previous house, and were technically broken there because someone broke into them. I mean they are made of plastic, um kind of defeats the object if you put a metal padlock on a plastic door that you could pretty much just punch through. Um it makes you feel secure, but someone broke into them. But I kept them because they were good storage things for when I moved here. Um because they still function, they the doors still were, you just couldn't lock them up anymore. Or one of them you couldn't anyway. Um so I I kept them, but I've not since I got my shed um three or four years ago, I've not really been using them that much. And I said to Sarah, I need to get rid of them, but they're so big and bulky, I'm gonna have to smash them up. So that all went in the skip. Um an old clothes dryer, like there was loads of stuff, loads of random stuff, an old table and chairs. Um yeah, so skip's full, so garden looks nice and clear, still needs a bit of TLC, but it looks a lot better than it did. Um yeah, that's cost 200 quid to do that, and it's it's it is crazy, it is crazy that that like and that's not even something a physical part of the house, that's just something that that has been created out of doing work to the house or things breaking, because we one of the things is is an old exercise bike that's in the skip. Um But yeah, it's it's crazy that these little things to just keep your house tidy and do and and do cost so much money. Um we've been living here eight years this year, I think it is. Well, we bought the house eight years ago and we we spent a long time doing it up. Um and my messy background on the video that you're watching, if you are in fact watching the video, if you're not then um well done because it's messy. Uh I've let it I've let it go to wreck and ruin again. It's it's not ideal. Um but you know it it it's my space and I kind of enjoy my space. I I it goes through iterations of being tidy and not. But this is what making this house give me. Um my wife is beautiful and generous, and she said that I could still keep the space that I had for my previous house. And the this house and the previous house are very similar layouts. The fact that this one's a three-bedroom and the other one was a two-bedroom is kind of like the only difference. It's slightly bigger at the back of the house. Um, but the downstairs and upstairs are pretty much exactly the same layout, which was kind of weird to me when I moved here because I was like, when I walked through the door, I was like, this is just my house, like this is so bizarre. Uh, and just say it's just slight measurements are different. Um, but my house was was um a Victorian house, and this one's more like a I think it's a is it a Edwardian? 1917 this was built. Is that Edwardian? I can't remember. Um Georgian. Georgian. Oh, I can't remember. Uh history is not my strong point. I know the other house was Victorian, it was uh 1880, uh, so that's a Victorian house. Um whereas this one was like 19 I think it was 1917, I think this one was built, or 1915, or something like that. So it's like World War I kind of time. Um which is insane because this house is like a hundred years old this year, uh, or last year, um, which is mad, or the year before, depending on when it was built. But it's over a hundred years old, uh, which is which is crazy. Um well we spent a lot of money on what we moved in, we ripped all the electrics out, ripped all the plumbing out. I did quite a lot of the physical stuff myself just to save money on labour for the builder because builders will do all their menial tasks for you, but you know, if if you want to do it yourself, they don't have to do it. So um and it was quite good. I I like kind of taking things apart, putting them back together. I'm not so bad at, but I get frustrated because I don't have the the actual skills to do it because I don't practice enough. Um things don't always turn out the way my head thinks they're gonna turn out, and I have a better imagination than my skills purvey in the actual end result. So I I always get a bit frustrated when I'm doing stuff. I mean I've got better over the years. I did my own tile in here, and I did my own tile at my old house, and I think the tiling's actually okay. Um, probably not professional standard, but I wouldn't say I've seen professionals do worse jobs, let's say. So maybe it's professional standard. Um, but yeah, we did a lot of work ourselves and just plowed a load of money into it. And we got it a little bit cheaper because it did need the work we're doing, but we moved walls, we added walls, we moved toilets, we moved the changed the layout of the bathroom. Um we we got rid of windows and put double doors in. Um, yeah, a lot, a lot of stuff. We we've we've since had the garden kind of landscaped. It was cheap, and the guy didn't do the best job in the world, so that's something we'll probably need redoing in a in a few years' time. But step by step we've got it done. The next big job though is the roof, which we probably should have had done first when we moved in, but it wasn't a super priority. We thought we'd solve some of the issues in the house, which we thought were the roof, but some issues are coming back. So we've we've spent a lot of money on this house, and the next big task is getting the roof done and and basically having it retiled and all the flashings done and and guttering and the gable and sealing off properly, and so Yeah, we we we've spent a lot. I mean, this house has gone up in value quite a lot of money. Quite a lot, quite it's gone up in value by quite a lot of money since we've bought it, but we've also spent a lot of money on it, so swings and roundabouts, I suppose. But we've made it our own. Um we're gonna have to give it a lick of paint soon. Um but things just go in cycles, and it's always that thing, isn't it? It's always like that sodlaw thing that when you think you've got a bit of money, something needs doing. So I happened in my old house, saved a bit of money, thought, oh right, I can maybe go away for a weekend or do this or buy that thing that I've wanted or or whatever, and then your washing machine breaks, and you think, oh right, it's fair enough, I'll get the washing machine fixed. Um, I can manage that, it's not not too bad. I can I just won't have as much spending money, and then your fridge breaks, and you're like, oh my god, like really. And then a third thing will break, like you cook a hob or something will will stop sparking, or uh a bulb goes in your oven, or so you're something like it things always come like that. And when you when you buy and own a house, it's great because you've got this thing that's yours, kind of, so your mortgage is paid off. Um, but it's a constant kind of worry in the back of your head, you know, about how secure it is, like you know, um all your stuff's there, isn't it? Like all your everything you own is in your house. So if anything happened to it, it's a bit of a worry. Um so when we when we moved in, we we kind of wanted to make it ours. Uh and we've got that we've got kind of that thing that we we know it's ours now. It's our stamp on it. Um but it's come round again that we're gonna have to actually spend some money on it again. We we knew this was gonna happen. Uh we've kind we've I wouldn't say we've been lazy, but we've kind of not been as proactive as we probably should have done, and maybe keeping some of the touching up ongoing. We probably should have had like a little bit of a regime to freshen up rooms individually, but it's eight years later, and I think this room's fine. It's my room. I don't really want to do too much with it. I've got my Eagle's wall painted green, I've got some some wallpaper that's hanging off a little bit because it's dried up. Um it was crap wallpaper when I bought it, to be fair. It peeled off pretty much instantly. It was left in the rain. The Amazon driver delivered it, threw it over the back fence, and it got rained on. So I dried it out and thought, oh, sod it, it'll be fine. It hasn't really been fine. Um so that's the probably the only thing I might do is change my guitar wall where there's like this wooden style wallpaper. Um but the rest of the paint job and stuff, it's fine in here, really, for what I need it for. Uh whether that rest of the house, however, the bits that get used quite a lot, you know, we need to touch up some of the plaster work. We've had a little bit of damping places, so we just need to touch some bits up. Not major stuff, we've solved most of it uh through doing other jobs in the house. Um yeah, but we've we've we've put a lot of money in this house. When we moved in, I would say we did the the electrics, the plumbing for the bathroom and kitchen, uh, move stuff around. We did all the central heating stuff again. So we moved walls, not stuff down, put doors in. Um we had the garage, uh we put electrics in the garage as well and a light, which is what it needed, didn't have any any electrical plant uh out outlets out there, so I definitely wanted that. And um, so we've had the garden done, um, and we've got a shed built, and we've got patio done. So there's a lot of stuff we've done to this place or a new kitchen, pretty much everything in the house was new, completely re-plasted pretty much throughout the house. Ceilings done as well, we ripped ceilings down. It's it's insane the amount of work we did. So that's the reason it's been so long, really, because we were so knacked after doing it, we were like, we're definitely not doing anything to this house for years. Um, and the only thing we never finished is the hallway or the roof. Um, so then now the jobs on the task disk is to get the roof done, which is a lot of money, but it will make the house look a lot better. Uh, and then the hallway needs finishing off. I need to find some tiles and towel the floor and give it a bit of a paint, and just freshen up around the house, really. Some fresh paint around the house is is what's needed currently. Um it's one of them things, isn't it? Because you just gotta get around to it, and then as we do all them things again, and then we might need a new bathroom or we might need a new kitchen, and in the coming years, so it just starts again, like nothing's ever 100% done when you buy a house. Um, because something will always need renewing, something always breaks, your tastes change, things look tired, and then there's a crunch point there you think, well, is a liquor coat is is a licker of paint is a coat of paint gonna do it and freshen it up gonna do it, or is it fundamentally I just need to replace everything? And things aren't cheap. Like I think the plumbing in this house cost like four or five grand. Uh the biggest cost was the was the was the boiler probably on that. The electrics was about the same. It was about four grand. Yeah. And then we had the windows done in the house as well, which was like five and a half grand. Yeah, I think I think when we moved in, we spent about 20 something grand on the house, 25,000 maybe. Uh and that was all in with all the paint and everything, kitchen, bathroom, and all the stuff I've just described. Um then we've separately then obviously done other jobs for the house, like had a shed done, had the garden done, so there's thousands and thousands of pounds more on top of that. Um it's insane, it's insane. But we're still we're still in credit technically with the house, because we got the house at such a reasonable price. Um, even having spent probably well, by the time we get the roof done, probably£40,000 on this place, which is insane. I can't even believe that myself. Um it'll be worth considerably more than that. It'll it'll have gone up in value double that. So we're still we're still well in credit, really, with that. Which is which is nice, really, which is nice. I just remembered I I made a brew and I brought it up and I I it's I haven't drank any yet. Oh good, it's still it's still warm, thank god. In my Tim Hortons cup. I feel like it's blasphemous actually to drink tea in a Tim Hortons cup. Do they do they even serve tea at Tim Hortons? Just spill that everywhere. I think they do actually, because my mum has had a cup of tea there, so they do. I know they do. Um yeah, so and just houses just are money pets, aren't they? Like as I described, that just everything goes in a cycle. And even when we get the roof done and we go, right, we've pretty much done everything in this house, it's there's always decorating to be done. I I I kind of now understand why my mum and dad were kind of almost I wouldn't say depressed, but kind of resigned to when they had to do decorating. It was almost like with all the expense of everything else in the world, we've got to paint a room. Um and it's it's the fact that you have all these stuff in like when we did this house, we had nothing in this house. We we hadn't fully properly moved in, so we would we were working with a kind of blank slate, blank canvas, no furniture. Um, because I'd put all my stuff in with all the stuff was in storage from my previous house, which we were going to use some of the stuff, not all of it, just kitchen stuff like that. So we we kind of bought a lot of the furniture brand new. Ikea was a godsend. Uh, people still like Ikea, but you know, you know what you're getting, reasonably cheap furniture, and it lasts to be fair. It might not be good at transitioning from house to house, or I mean you might be able to take it apart and put it back together very well, because you know, fundamentally things like that aren't meant to be taken apart once you put them together. But yeah, it's it means you can deck your house out reasonably cheap. Um yeah, when you when when you're doing it, but when we come to redecorate this time, I mean that's why I would dread doing this room. Um I would need a separate storage container just to like clear everything out, just to get to things. Um, but yeah, even even downstairs, we've obviously got a couple of IKEA units, a full settee, a bookshelf, Sarah's cupboard for all the medications, you know, lamps, wall, bloody shelves and stuff like that. And it's just like, oh my god, like that's that's a room in itself just to empty, just to paint the walls, so you can get to the walls easier. I mean, it makes painting quicker because if you didn't move all that stuff out of the way, it would be a nightmare, but it's it's the it's the logistics of doing these things, isn't it, at the end of the day? And I think that's kind of the blocker for people, and that's kind of been the blocker for us why we've taken so long to kind of go because we've probably been saying for a couple years, we probably really should paint this wall again. It's looking a bit tired. We need to repaint this door frame, and there is a few stuff things around the house, as I've said, that we haven't done, like the hallway, the door frame to the back rooms. We never painted them. Well, should I say I never painted them, sorry Sarah? And the loft hatches have never been painted. So, and I think sometimes it's trying to get your head round it that it's not that much of a big job, but when you work full time and you've got other things going on, it's like, do I really want to go up a ladder today and paint and paint a bloody loft ladder hatch? I don't I don't really want to. So yeah, so it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of an interesting an interesting one to me that you know um that's how your psyche works. And I but yesterday I've proved it, you know. I was I was throwing things in a skip for about five hours Um arranging things, tidying stuff, doing a bit of weeding, um and it was a nice day to be fair. Like I I I kind of enjoyed it. I kind of tried to put all the other things in my brain that I probably would have preferred to be doing, but I actually enjoyed the physical labour. Um and I must admit when we were doing the house up, I was kind of on a diet. I was trying to try to lose weight. I was not trying to save save weight for the wedding, but lose weight for the wedding. And uh coming to this house every day and doing work was like my gym membership. I would come down here, like kick a wall in, rip some plaster off the wall, move rubble, you know, lift it into box barrel uh you know the plastic containers, empty it into a skip, and I I was doing quite a lot of work like that on and off for for weeks, uh prep work, and it kind of like it was it was good exercise. I mean it they were long days. I was doing 12-hour shifts at work some days, and then coming here afterwards to to move rubble or tidy up after something, or you know, paint a wall uh just to get it ready because obviously when you've got deadlines and you've got things going on, especially when like we'd ordered the the settee at one point, uh, and we knew the flooring was coming, so I wanted to paint before the floor went down. Um yeah, it's absolutely mind-boggling, and we're gonna have to start doing that again soon. I don't want to, I don't want to, uh but I'm gonna have to. I didn't grow up and be an adult. I own a house, and that's the responsibility you get when you own a house. You have to go and do things you don't want to do, and it sucks, man. It absolutely sucks. Absolutely sucks. Ugh, I've depressed myself now. Anyway, I'm gonna leave it there. I think that's enough negativity. Um let me know what your views are on on DIY and stuff, and and how much money have you plowed into your own property? Is it did you get a house which is a new build and you're able to pick everything you wanted and just move in? Uh, and what are the problems with that? I mean, I know some people that have had new builds, and you know the snag list can be a pain in the arse. Um have you done what I did? Did you buy a house cheaper and do it up? Would you do it again? I would, Sarah wouldn't. Um I think when you go through that process, you learn loads of stuff you would do it a separate way in a different way, and I would completely approach it in a completely different way if um if I could. Would be definitely something that I would do if I if I had money. I would love to go into houses and redesign them and and um but I think my thoughts would be to sell them back at a reasonable price as well, um, so someone else could have a nice home, and I would like to take the hit on on the on the on the renovation of it because I'm a nice guy, you know, it would please me to do that. Anyway, I'm gonna shut up. Thank you very much for watching. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel. It doesn't take two seconds, and it really helps the algorithm for other people to discover the channel. And same with liking, and if you want to drop me a comment, that'd be ace. I'd love a bit of feedback. What you think of this video, what you think of the other videos, and interaction to anything that you've heard today that you want to comment on. Um excellent. Well, take care of yourselves as always, and I'll see you in the next episode. And remember, keep prattling.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Thanks for listening to Infinite Brattle with your host, Steven.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

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