I think you are very smart to wait to do your remodeling. Its always best to live in a house 6 months to a yr, before starting to remodel. By then, you will know what priorities are, and what works and what doesnt. Changing things before living in it, often amount to being unhappy with some things, once you are living in it. Can you have the carpets professionally cleaned and get by with them? Have the entire house professionally cleaned. You may even want to paint a few walls. If there are any safety issues, electrical, or leaky plumbing, get them all repaired first. If closets need to be painted, do them, first. Everything else can wait for time, and money.

Hello 5112bird - I’ll be doing something similar (that is, once I find my next home). I almost bought a very well kept 45 year old home that would have needed only new appliances, paint and carpet. (I didn’t buy, only because it wasn’t large enough). I was happy knowing it’d be very comfortable for at least a year before I felt like renovating. I’ve been in a rental home since last Spring. It needs lots of work, has mostly hand me down furnishings but the layout and location are perfect. I learned what I want in this past year - and that’s to enjoy my now nearby family (the reason I moved to this home) and my pretty home can wait while I gather ideas. Good luck to you!

Having spent eight years restoring/renovating my 1793 house while living in it, can recommend doing children’s rooms first (if you have children) and your bedroom next. It gives each family member a place that is personal and away from the chaos. Basic bedrooms are usually easy to do.

The rest can be make-do until design decisions and money are right.

Carpeting that is truly filthy, consider ripping out. There is a good chance that original floors or, at least, clean subflooring is underneath. If bathroom gross, consider professional cleaning service to clean. The pro strength steamer and cleaners they use can do wonders.

ETA- we bought our house with special program aimed at historic neighborhoods and allowed us to add specific amount onto mortgage to be used for system upgrades. We used it to upgrade HVAC. Everything else was pay as we went.

Will a professional cleaning change "gross" bathroom, kitchen and carpet to "worn but very clean"? If not, what budget would it take to make it "good for the next five years"?

If the damage is minor, a new toilet, new budget grade carpeting, and a coat of DIY paint can go a long way.

But if the problems are serious- smashed kitchen cabinets, broken bathtub and missing shower tiles, and subfloors damaged by pet urine- the budget will have to be much, much higher.

I've made a lot of moves, and except for a new build, every home has needed upgrades or once as bad as the full gut. I would sell original house now. Once you rent you will pay a capital gains tax because it will not longer be your principal residence. You are still faced with mortgage payment, insurance, water bill, unexpected repairs, etc. Being a landlord is not easy.

You have told us the new house is in a great area. Concentrate on that and put your all into fixing it up.

It sounds like you are very close to getting in over your head financially if you buy this house. You said you need to do a few things right away to make it “livable,” so what is your budget for that? You need to sit down and have a great financial plan wrt paying both mortgages, renting the first house, and how you will save and/or finance what money is needed to renovate the second house.

We removed gross carpets before move in and lived on bare subflooring for some time. Not that bug of a deal. Also took down the pop corn ceilings prior to move in. Peel and stick floor tile and some cheapo wall paper can at least make a grim bathroom cheery. I can't do dirty, but I can happily live through temporary.

I tried to do what you are proposing, but it did not work well for us. That is just me, so what I experienced may be different from what you do. I know that is obvious, but wanted to point that out.

I currently have three houses but hate it. I guess because you just cannot devote that much attention to something that demands so much of a person, both in time and money. It really is a lesson in frustration because you most likely will want to devote all available monies to your new dream home remodel, but can't because money is tight for two mortgages, or your renter skipped a monthly rent payment, or worse yet, you lost your renters entirely. Then of course they might need something expensive fixed, and the money just is not there! And never forget those pesky property taxes that are always going up! As a point of reference, I have no mortgages, and it still does not work for me.

There was also a lot of guilt, knowing I should spend money on this house, but was living in this house, and so on. It just seemed I could not win no matter what I did. Now, two of my houses are up for sale, just so I can devote time to this remodel here. It will be sad to see the family farm go, but there just is not enough of me to go around.

There is a saying that, "a person cannot love two masters as they will hate one, and not the other". That is very true because in time and money, we are semi-slaves to houses, and I found this statement is true.

Just a follow up to this although it is not my intention to be gloom and doom on here at all, and it relates to renters.

Ask any lending institution and they will say, the most common misconception about people who rent homes and apartments out is the amount of vacancy they predict. Most assume none, and I think it is actually like 40 percent. Not being occupied is something they did not anticipate in their calculations. I am sure the housing crisis has changed that figure, but as we swing back around to a different economy, that is something to keep in mind.

It is fine if you are just using that rental money to upgrade the dream house as vacancies would just mean your upgrades would be delayed, but it could be a tight financial pickle if you are relying on that rental money to make a mortgage payment. Can you swing it still if 40% of the time there was no rental money coming in?

Something to think about.

Thanks to all for your advice! A few clarifications: we aren't maxing ourselves out financially to move into the new house. The primary reason I want to wait on doing upgrades is because I don't want to be hurried to make forever-house decisions in such a rush. I want to take time to live in the house and get a feel for how it flows. Also, to be financially prudent we should make sure we can rent the new houe before spending a ton of money. The house is livable as is, just ugly. The remodel we are considering would be disruptive, so wanting to hear from others who have been in that position too where they took their time in stages vs. all at once.I It just feels like too much pressure and I don't want to make the wrong choice!

we would plan to hire a property manager and our house is super low maintenance. Worst case scenario is we can't rent it AT ALL which is highly unlikely. Selling it now we would lose too much money because we haven't been in this house long.

Mr. Weedy and I have lived in remodeling houses for the 15 years that we have been married. 3 full-house remodels.

The first, Weedy Acres, was 3500 sf (4200 sf by the time we sold). It was livable but plain/ugly.. our work included moving/adding walls as well as building an addition. We started with the master suite so that we had a retreat away from the dust. We lived in another bed/bath while we were building our master suite. It took us 6 years to finish the whole thing, and we cash flowed and DIY-ed it.

The second, Little Beau, was 940 sf (+132 sf when we sold). It was a rundown old house, and we redid the bathroom and hardwood floors before we moved in. Then we worked on the kitchen, bedrooms (added a closet), basement, and room addition. 5 years start to finish, cash flowed and DIY-ed.

The third, Stable Flats, is our current home. It’s 2500 sf and our list was kitchen & bath remodels, plus new flooring. And general updating like paint and built-ins. Before we moved in, I ripped out the carpet and laminate, plus kitchen tile and put hardwood in the great room, hall, and one bedroom. The kitchen, baths, And the rest of the rooms followed once we moved in. Total time would have been 2 years, but Mr. Weedy found an old house for us to restore/flip, so our attentions turned there short of finishing our master suite.

We don’t have kids or pets, so that made the dust and clutter more bearable/manageable. The key for us has been finishing one room before starting the next. That contains the mess and keeps the scope limited and focused.

We wanted to be able to pay cash for projects so we did one thing at a time and saved up in between. We did sell our previous house bc we needed the money for the new one.

We did one thing before moving in: Had all the carpet on stairs and upstairs replaced bc it was so dirty, disgusting and ugly, and with toddlers crawling all around I couldn't bare it. We knew eventually we would want hardwoods upstairs and wood treads on the stairs, new railing, etc, but that had to wait, so we just did the carpet to have a clean environment to move into. House already had hardwood floors across the whole downstairs, and they didn't need refinishing, so nothing was needed there. Next was replacing several of the windows bc they leaked when it would rain sideways. The ones that didn't leak we waited on and eventually all the windows got replaced, in 3 stages across a good 20 years. Added pool/patio within the first 6 months. Within first year, my sister-in-law and I removed ugly wallpaper in kitchen/family and painted ourselves. For the next 14 years all we did was maintenance, repairs and raising a bunch of little humans and pets.

First interior remodel was the kitchen a good 14 years later and contractor handled the final step of painting kitchen/family again. Kitchen layout changed, and there had been a DW leak impacting the hardwood floors, so they got patched and the whole downstairs got refinished.

Next was master bed/bath, then kids'/guest bathrooms, formals didn't need anything except updated lighting, then all replacement LED can ceiling lights throughout the house including closets; that really helped with the lighting. The bedrooms didn't need much, just updated lighting/fans and paint. I did that myself, except 2 areas that had brown wood paneling I wanted to be white. The prep and dealing with oil paint was too hard for me, so I hired that out. Anytime we painted a space we removed those horrible speakers and patched up the holes and painted. Apparently an intercom system was a "the thing" to have in the 90s! So weird. Just got rid of the last one when I painted my son's room this year. He didn't want me paint his room, so when he left for the Navy it was only a few days til I had yanked that thing out of the wall and patched the hole! Anyway....

Finally, after the downstairs and upstairs were all done, we had to address the connection - the out of code, partially broken and ugly staircase. We always knew that when we tackled the staircase we would also continue the wood onto the landing, into the game room and one office area. So the staircase and upstairs flooring project became 1 large project. The bedrooms got new carpet.

Phew! That's our LAST remodeling project and there will be no more remodeling of this house, only maintenance and repairs going forward. I put things like painting, pool replaster, replacing broken appliances, etc in the maintenance and repairs column. So we'll for sure have things come up that have to be addressed, but no more remodeling.

I didn't want this house bc it was obvious every space had to be touched; didn't know if I could handle it. But my hubby loved the location being on a lake and near all our family, and good schools. So I made him promise to not give me push back on fixing everything over time. I stopped working half way through the remodeling journey which meant less money, but also meant I had time to teach myself some skills and at least not have to hire out every little thing like installing lights/fans or painting. I love my house now!

It's doable in stages, and we never moved out or borrowed money. Hubby traveled for work pretty much full time, so he wasn't as impacted by projects as me and the kids. For your mental health though, be sure to take long breaks between projects, taking the time to decompress and enjoy what you just accomplished before tackling the next one. We never moved any walls bc the flow/layout was already good. That meant it was easier for me to make decisions about one space knowing it didn't impact other spaces structurally. It sounds like you might be planning to move walls which makes it more complicated. I haven't ever done that, but it seems like you would need to know the whole picture form the beginning in terms of the flow and layout that you want, so you don't have to re-do things later or get into a situation where you have an expensive and unexpected consequence. Maybe someone who has dealt with changing the flow/walls could weigh in about who to consult early-on about that, maybe as architect?

Good luck! Only took us 23 years!

I just thought of one more thing. If you do things in stages, try not to choose the latest trendy style with each project. If you do, your house won't seem cohesive by the time you get done with everything. We knew this would take a long time, so I tried very hard to NOT choose trends. The hard stuff is all pretty neutral and classic (counters, cabinets, shower tiles, faucets, flooring, etc). The soft stuff has changed over the years (pillows, some area rugs, paint colors, upholstery, bed linens, a few furniture pieces, etc). I'm sure a designer could walk my house and find something that I made a mistake on, but I think my house flows and is cohesive even though the remodeling spanned such as long time. I did break my own rule in my master bath shower. I picked what I liked without trying to go too neutral. Always try to have spaces where your eye can "rest" meaning not everything should be a focal point.

I have a friend who has a bathroom with the Tuscan style lighting, vessel sink, trough type of faucet, everything dark brown, green, gold and black; all trends from when she started remolding. And everything in that bathroom is trying to be a focal point which means nothing is, even the shower curtain is trying to be a focal point, and there's nowhere for the eye to rest. It's chaotic. And they just put in a very modern kitchen with flat cabinets, quartz counters and gray paint. Meanwhile somewhere along the line they put in a shabby chic/farmhouse looking living room and master bath. I love my friend, but her house seems to have multiple personalities.