We bought our first home last year – we got it at a really good price because there was a lot of work that needed to be done. It was owned by an elderly couple who couldn’t maintain the house and as a result, it ended up in a state of disrepair.

We had to strip everything, the cupboards in the kitchen that were nowhere near water were mouldy, and the tiles had a crack running from the front door all the way to the kitchen.

The mould in the bathroom was caked up for months. The bedroom had windows and curtain rails missing. The courtyard was a sandpit, a literal sandpit.

We had to do a lot of the work ourselves because of a limited budget, leaving some things to the professionals out of pure fear of messing it up.

We DIY’d a lot of our furniture, salvaging what we could.

It was three weeks of peeing in the garden, sleeping and eating in the same room, crying a lot and working our bums off, but we are so proud to say that we did things ourselves!