Thanks to Instagram, everyone thinks theyre DIY experts but these dream homes turned into reno nightmares

Their dream homes turned out to be renovation nightmares.In 2022, Sean Patrick Gallagher, 36, and his husband, Alp Cilingir, 41, bought an abandoned house from the 1900s in foreclosure in Germantown, New York — a bucolic Hudson Valley town with views of the Catskill Mountains, a population just under 2,000 and part-time celeb residents such as Daniel Day-Lewis.They paid $150,000 for the three bedroom-two bathroom home, which was once owned by the Rockefeller family, and budgeted another $250,000 for renovations — some of which they planned to do themselves.

They thought they’d get a chic upstate retreat for cheap; houses down the street are now selling for over $1 million.But, more than two years later, the couple, who live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hardly feel like they got a deal — or a relaxing country home.

They’ve spent over $1 million on the property and it still requires some fixes, like new siding.“I just wanted to be the gay Martha Stewart,” lamented Gallagher, who works as a private chef, of going more than $500,000 over budget.Priced out of newer construction and under the influence of aspirational home improvement content on social media and TV, city slickers like Gallagher and Cilingir are buying old homes with romantic plans for DIY renovations — often to disastrous and even dangerous results.

“I’ve had a client fly across the room after he was electrocuted trying to install his own electricity,” Alexander Sasha Josipovicz, interior designer and editor-in-chief of Objekt International, an interior design and art magazine told The Post, of the uptick in clients cosplaying as unqualified contractors.Gallagher, 36 and a private chef, and Cilingir, who works in tech, soon found themselves in over their heads with the new home.It was riddled with rats, toxic mold, burst pipes, no electricity and a crumbling foundation.

They felt like the roof was caving in — and it actually was. Off the bat, they shelled out $22,500 for a pro...