How far a 10-20K will get you? House in need of complete cosmetic overhaul

[hyperspacebug]

We've just exchanged and are due for completion soon. I'm already on phone to builder companies to arrange quotes.

The 3 bed Edwardian (97sq m) house needs complete cosmetic overhaul (but no need for rewiring (relatively new) or anything structural like that). The only rooms untouched will be kitchen diner which are fairly recently done.

To move on from 80's style:
-Lounge needs carpets stripped and wooden flooring. All wallpaper stripped off and repainted. Alcove shelving fitted.

• same for hallway
  
• needs new bathroom, not just units, but also walls, flooring and extractor fan fitted. possibly lighting as well.
  
• all 3 bedrooms need new flooring and walls and ugly 70s grainy ceilings smoothed over
  

Can 10-20K budget stretch that far?! Or it would take at least 50K with non-cheapest-ever materials?

I have no experience, clue or mates who are tradesmen. We have 3 months before we can move in. Anything to minimise 'living on building site' would be great.

Any sense-talking welcome :) Thanks in advance!)

[Sidge]

Your biggest expense will probably be replastering or skimming.

Then reflooring - carpets can be as much or as little as you want to spend and of course laminate will be cheaper than quality wood flooring.

Bathrooms can be relatively inexpensive - I did a large bathroom refit with new huge glass-enclosure rain shower, separate bath, new sink, fitted units and tops, lighting, fully tiled (walls and floors) and all plumbing and labour for £4.5K.

I would guess £20k would be plenty but of course it depends on the quality of fittings you want and whether removing the wallpaper uncovers any horrors.

[JumpRope]

If you manage all the small tradesmen yourself it will be cheaper, but more hassle and will take longer. One main builder will do it all for more £.

Bathroom will be the most expensive ime, it does depend very much on size, specification and also if you want much tiling done.

Do you also need curtains or blinds? For big windows, these can be thousands.

I would think £30-40 k plus, always having a contingency, this would be using quality materials, but not 'designer'.

[hyperspacebug]

Thanks Sidge. Yes, I do highly suspect the walls are going to need replastering. How bad are the typical replastering costs per medium room - 96sq m houses aren't exactly going to have large rooms.

I know I'll strongly prefer quality wooden flooring on ground floor, but I'll be ok with carpet flooring in bedrooms. 2K engineered oak flooring plus labour costs - laughable?

Bathroom - not too fussed with expensive exotic look, so hopefully can be done under 5K.

[JumpRope]

Siege, great work on bathroom.

I would question whether plastering/skimming is needed except for the textured ceiling you don't like. We've redecorated most of our victorian rooms - the decorators were amazing. They put lining paper over the bumpy walls where we'd stripped off bad paper, and honestly you cannot tell it's papered, it's just a bit softer than new plaster. In the bedrooms, they painted over the existing wallpaper, which was several layers thick, and used a filling type thing for any gaps between sheets etc....looks great, and it fits in much better with the picture rails, decorative woodwork etc than new plaster.

Get a good decorator and they may not need to strip everything back. Although it may look horrible now, you may be focussing I the wrong thing if you just desire 100% smooth walls.

[Artichokes]

Where is the house? IME tradesmen in the SE cost about twice those in other parts of the country. In London it cost us £3k just to repaint three rooms and strip out some shelves.

[hyperspacebug]

Yes, I don't think I'll have time and energy to manage small tradesmen as we both work :( But as house is round the corner, we hope to take on the labour ourselves if we can.

The vendor is going to leave behind window curtains and shutters so we'll live with that until we'll have money spare again in the next few years to change.

[hyperspacebug]

Yup, SE London here. Doh, forgot to mention London.

Wow, 3K to repaint three rooms???

[hyperspacebug]

JumpRope, good point about lining papers on bumpy walls. I am not sure I've seen the difference before. If it looks smooth enough it'd be probably good enough for me.

[LondonGirl83]

 Assuming your kitchen diner is 20sqm new flooring for the rest of the house (77sqm) in wood would be circa 5k including underlay, installation etc. Carpet for the upstairs would be cheaper though so you have some flexibiity
 Removing all that wallpaper can be a DIY job but if you pay someone to do it, expect circa 500GBP plus disposal costs
 Re-plastering the walls and ceilings will be 3k-5k depending on how much damage is done removing the wallpaper
 MDF built in shelves is circa 1 to 1.5k
 Repainting the entire house after replatering- 3-5k (depends on if you end up painting everythingfreshly painted walls have a way of making you want to paint everything else as the contrast of new paint makes old skirting and painted doors look shabby).
 New bathroom (tiles, flooring, suite, lighting, towel rail and lighting) could easily cost 5k unless you are planning to do some work yourself. There are people on Mumsnet who have done their own bathrooms for 1K but that requires very little tiling and a lot of DIY and bargain hunting


That is circa 22k so I think your budget is pretty realistic assuming you don't discover anything along the way.

How are your windows and boiler? Do you need any new internal doors or front doors? Are the radiators all in good working condition?

Old houses have a way of surprising you so I'd make sure to have a 5k contingency. Wait to do the alcoves and the painting until you are sure of the rest. That way, worst case scenario you can wait on the alcoves and do some of the painting yourselves if you run out of money.

Only other tip is get the plastering done before the new flooring goes down.

[LondonGirl83]

Should say, that is all assuming mid-range quality not high spec.

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

LondonGirls numbers are pretty accurate for SE London I would say

We got all our carpet through www.stsflooring.co.uk in Orpington at wholesale prices through our flooring contractor. Far less choice than you would get via John Lewis or similar but that just made choosing it simpler in my view.

Definitely plan in contingency and learn to prep well and paint - that will give you a lot of flexibility with price. It's worth paying a professional to do a room, just to learn from them if you don't have a clue. Lots of neat tricks like vaseline on the edges of a front door to stop it sticking overnight (takes days to dry properly and leaving the door open overnight isn't really an option in London)

Sanding your own floors is a false economy in my view having done a whole house. It's noisy and cold underfoot upstairs, and freezing downstairs. Victorian terrace. It does look good and will get you through a few years but I'd def buy carpet for upstairs and not bother trying to salvage floorboards. With our second house, we didn't consider doing it for a second.

If it looks good - I'd consider porcelain tiles in the hallway, with decent insulation underneath or it will be perishing. Hardwood looks lovely but it does need a lot of maintenance in a high traffic area with wet feet etc coming in. DH wouldn't consider it but acknowledges it was a mistake a year later when he has to dry off a dripping commute bike in the evenings

We relined our hallway in the first house 3-5k to replaster the whole thing and it was being held up by about 5 layers of wall paper. Again - it can give a really good finish - don't make the lighting too bright and it will look great. We saved the replastering budget for the bathroom and other spots that were in dire need.

[LondonGirl83]

I live in SE London! I should mention the prices I quoted above assume managing the trades rather than getting a firm in to do the entire thing. If you need to hire a general contractor, add 20% to all of those numbers.

[hyperspacebug]

Thanks LondonGirl for the numbers - very useful!

Another seriously n00b question - who gets the materials generally? Can the tradesmen source them at wholesale rates?

[JumpRope]

TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams - do you mind if I ask who you got to lay your carpets? Think we don't live too far from you, and I've got to recarpet stairs, hall, landing..... You can message me if you like....

IME materials are usually supplied by the person doing the work. I think decorators normally get better prices on paint etc. Builders are normally quite transparent about the cost of things I think, although they may get even MORE discount and take a cut, I'm not sure.

[LondonGirl83]

Depends. The trades people usually supply basic materials and can supply your bathroom if you want but its quite common for people to want to supply their own bathroom fixtures, tiles, light fixtures etc so they aren't limitted to only the firms with whom the tradesperson has a trade account. However, it would be very strange, for instance, for a customer to supply plaster!

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

I'm hazy on the actual numbers but essentially as far as I can work out if a tradesman can keep the turnover of money through his/her books below a certain level they qualify as a small company and have less onerous HMRC submissions to do. Therefore, they may not be game for buying lots of bathroom fittings etc through their accounts. They would usually buy all the plaster, wood, copper piping and technical stuff though.

We used Victoria Plumb on line for a lot of our taps and other fittings, plus a bathroom shop Bathroom Heaven in Charlton for shower cubicles, Waterloo Plumbing has a big very crowded showroom in Catford just off the south circular, they were very nice and very helpful.
If you want to see the level of spend you could aspire to then take a look at the CPHart website

Tiles were a massive hassle. All the nice tile shops seem to have closed during the recession. We found one in Forest Hill direction which has since closed too so I can't recommend any firm.

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

I'm hazy on the actual numbers but essentially as far as I can work out if a tradesman can keep the turnover of money through his/her books below a certain level they qualify as a small company and have less onerous HMRC submissions to do. Therefore, they may not be game for buying lots of bathroom fittings etc through their accounts. They would usually buy all the plaster, wood, copper piping and technical stuff though.

We used Victoria Plumb on line for a lot of our taps and other fittings, plus a bathroom shop Bathroom Heaven in Charlton for shower cubicles, Waterloo Plumbing has a big very crowded showroom in Catford just off the south circular, they were very nice and very helpful.
If you want to see the level of spend you could aspire to then take a look at the CPHart website

Tiles were a massive hassle. All the nice tile shops seem to have closed during the recession. We found one in Forest Hill direction which has since closed too so I can't recommend any firm.

[exexpat]

About who supplies what - I just had main bathroom and downstairs loo redone, and I bought the main fittings (bath, basins, loos plus associated taps and shower fittings), mostly from bathstore.com, and the tiles (from tonsoftiles.co.uk), but the building firm supplied the less obvious bits of plumbing (waste traps etc) and all the ply, plasterboard etc.

[JumpRope]

Hijacking, but can anyone tell me about carpet fitters? Treadsoftly?

[BuggersMuddle]

Be prepared to have a contingency to find shit your didn't expect.

Our 'cosmetic' job (as supported by a category 2 survey) ended up being anything but. Our £20k became nearer £60k. Now some of that was choices (we put in a £15k kitchen and £5k bathroom), but some of it was assuredly not (once we got the carpets up the floorboards were rotten, we discovered problems with work the previous owners had done as DIY that needed to be redone and that's just for starters). Not trying to scare you - my house was previously owned by the DIY enthusiasts from hell and our lawyers were frankly shit, so I doubt you'd experience what we did, but it is wise to allow a fair bit of contingency for jobs you've not thought of, over-complication and (unless you are able to be very strict) items you want to push the boat out on.

[RaisingSteam]

A plumbers merchant (Plumb Center) or somewhere like that will supply bathroom fittings from almost any range, ask your plumber which one he uses. They will tell you which ranges they can get a good discount on, they will have brochures if not a showroom. When I did my bathroom I wrote out a list of the fixtures I wanted, (mix of different ranges) and they quoted me for the lot. I bought it, they delivered it and the plumber fitted it. Things like towel radiators I bought straight off the internet.

It's also worth getting hold of a Screwfix catalogue just for door handles and hardware and stuff.

Depending on how thorough a job you want, in our London house we didn't replaster most rooms, we stripped back to the grey stuff, hung the thickest possible (1200 grade) lining paper and painted over with very matt Farrow and Ball. Bought a steam stripper and pasting table from Wickes. We hadn't done much decorating before but were good at it by the end IYSWIM! OK it wasn't perfect like a new build but quite liveable with and better than what was there before.

If it's a terraced house, I agree about having a really durable flooring in the hallway. Even Amtico-alike that tones in with your wood flooring or match the kitchen flooring, something that you can just mop and forget.

[hyperspacebug]

Thank you so much for all the advices!

I have had builders around and we are starting to having quotes coming through. They are huge. Like, 3900 for a bathroom (incl. extractor and 4 LED lights) excluding units and tiles which we have to supply ourselves.

Painting quotes came through - around 6K for stripping wallpapers, skimming ceilings, painting of all rooms except kitchen-diner.

No flooring quotes yet.

How do we proceed negotiating quotes? Can we save a lot by doing all the wallpaper stripping ourselves? Can we cherry pick bits items from the quotes they put together for us?

[hyperspacebug]

We have already stripped wallpapers of largest and second largest bedrooms. 4 layers of old wallpapers and very old paint underneath.

[minipie]

Sorry to say this but building prices in London are insane at the moment. We've just shelved most of a project because we couldn't believe the quotes we were getting. Builders have more work than they can shake a stick at and so they seem to have taken the property price increases and applied them to their own prices too

You can do stuff yourself but be careful or it may cost more in the long run (for example if you strip wallpaper badly then it means more work for the plasterer...).

3900 for installing bathroom, and 6k for decorating entire house, sounds about right to me for London. You can negotiate if you can find someone else who will do it cheaper but tbh as I say, most good tradesmen have more work than they can handle at the moment so your bargaining power may be limited.

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

Just a suggestion but a friend had her kitchen extension done by a builder from the west country. It was cheaper to pay for them to stay in a local B&B Mon-Thurs (they all drove home on a Friday night) than to pay local prices.
If you've got a spare room and your parents know a good tiler etc, it can be worth getting quotes from outside of London

Had someone in this week to remove a chimney breast in the kitchen and make good so I could install some units. Rest of the chimney and stack above is long gone. Turns out that all the joists near to it supporting the ceiling and the bathroom floor above are resting on the chimney breast.... Had to can that idea or risk the whole freshly tiled bathroom floor above plus 3k unbudgeted spend. It seemed a bit high risk for a few extra cupboards. Victorian terraces were all shoddily built in my view.