The Great Council House Transformation

[MmeLindor]

We have bought an ex council house. It is about 40 years old and has not been renovated at all. Kitchen, bathroom, heating, windows - all needing replaced.

We have a renovation budget of max £25k and really want to transform the house.

I think the kitchen will be Ikea, with posh sink and appliances

Bathroom - don't know but no built in units to keep costs down

Gas Central heating (most likely) after a lengthy MN discussion, and several weeks of putting jumpers on and taking them off we have seen the light - electric storage has to go. Quite like the sound of wood pellet, but DH not keen.

Electrics - electrician thinks we will need to rewire

I need help deciding on where to buy the bathroom, tiles, appliances and any advice on colours, decorating etc

We will be going with neutral colours, but I can't decide between going pure white walls or a very light grey.

If we could have made the layout work in ours my preferred choice would have been an eye level oven. I like the ones where the door slides out the way as you open it.

Tiz
The door slides out of the way? How does that work?

Like this

Neff Slide Away door

Oh, that is clever. Depending on where we put the oven, that could be very handy.

MmeLindor, the best piece of advice I ever got was to make sure that if I was spending money on the house, it had to add value to the house.

Unfortunatley ex-council houses do have a ceiling price and we also got ours for a rock-bottom price, but two houses have since come up for sale in that time. One failed to sell and is now rented and one has been up for sale for 2 months now and will no doubt have to be reduced in price. However this is not the right time for selling so things may change.

Having had a look at my son's room I think I will knock through into his cupboard and ultilise the space there more wisely, although that is a pain as we've already carpeted upstairs.

We fitted a hard wearing carpet to the stairs and nicer one in the rooms, all the same colour. There's nothing better than new carpet to make a house feel more homely!

We have a coal storage space at the side of the house and many people have knocked this through to create an office, but as we've insufficient storage space, that is being used as log storage.

I highly recommend a real fireplace for the front room. We dragged out the chimney lining ourselves and just had the chimney swept and a pot put on top for £50. Then with the measurements we just kept trawling through eBay until we found what we were looking for. Dh managed to fit it himself without too many problems and we are happy to talk you through the process if this is what you want to do. It's much nicer and probably cheaper than getting a gas fire fitted.

Central heating is a must for a selling point. Most people want homes to have central heating now. A nice garden is another bonus point as is the kitchen. The more you disguise the fact that it's an ex-council house the more it will sell for, which is why I so much want some virginia creeper!

I still say go for good quality laminate flooring that you can fit on top of your existing floorboards. It will be so much warmer than draughty floorboards and so much cheaper. We had real floorboards in our first home, we sanded them and varnished them and filled in the cracks but they were still incredibly cold whereas this flooring we have now is warm and smooth and looks just as nice.

Rhub
We can spend £25k and still be around the price that the houses are currently on the market for - the area where we live there have been about 8 houses sold in the past 6 months since we started looking. They go quite quickly.

We don't intend selling in the next while though, and if we really couldn't sell we could easily cover the mortgage with rental income.

I am not keen on laminated flooring because I find it too noisy.

We don't have a chimney, so installation of a stove would require installation of one.

Ah, yes you would need a chimney

We've not spent anywhere near £25k on our house so you should be able to keep within your budget. Can you do most of the work yourselves? Even kitchen units can be bought from eBay you know, the manufacturers themselves often list ex-showroom stuff at a bargain price. It's worth looking just in case.

Oh and it's also worth spending money on decent paint otherwise it just blisters, cracks and comes off when you clean scuff marks.

I'm also a bit of a fan of wall stickers (shush) as they are much easier to put up than wallpaper and some of them are really quite lovely!

No, we can't do the work ourselves - DH is currently based in Munich so only home at weekends. And tbh, we are not really handy with stuff like this.

And the big stuff like heating and electrics needs to be done by an expert.

Ah, that sucks. I know getting the heating done is very expensive. Any grants available like Warm Front?

It's all so very subjective isn't it? Here ex council houses sell like hot cakes, always within a month of being on the market. But then there is a limited number and its a very expensive, affluent town where a comparable amount (£220k +) would only get you a two bedroomed place on a busy road with no parking and noor a tiny garden

I have to say laminate flooring would really put me off a house. If it were a toss up between one with and one without, the without one would win hands down. That said I can see why it's popular, it is practical

Ronette
comparable houses, just 5 mins walk away are about £60k more, with smaller bedrooms, less storage and tiny gardens. There was no point in lumbering ourselves with a larger mortgage just for the sake of not buying ex-council. Not to mention the extra £10k deposit that we simply didn't have.

Rhubarb
Warmfront no use for us, because we don't receive benefits. Will be researching the Green Deal linked to earlier.

oh, and those private houses - there has been one on the market for about a year now. They were queueing up to buy them when they were built - literally sleeping bags outside the sales office for days before the official sale date - just before the housing crash.

Laminate has come a long way. This is what we have and it does look great. We weren't sold on the idea of laminate either until we had a look in B&Q and realised what high quality they were. Don't strike if off completely until you've seen what's on offer.

Tizwozliz do you mind sharing what you did to the floors in your bedroom? I love the colour! Thank you

I hate the phrase 'add value'. A house should be first and foremost a home not an investment.

Floors were sanded but not perfectly then treated with danish oil (think it was coloured but don't recall shade)

Regarding the kitchen layout - I very much like your corner worktop idea, it's a perfect spot to have a coffee and you're not facing a blank wall. Wish I'd thought of that.

Good idea to keep the cooker away from the sink and general footfall and traffic. My theory is that the less often you use a cupboard/appliance the less accessible it needs to be. So sink and snacks are in the middle, cooker towards the end of the run of units.

Do consider putting your oven below your hob as you only need to look in your oven once or twice a day but you need access to your drawers much more frequently. My drawers are either side of my hob so I can reach utensils easily without having to leave the cooker area. This allows you extra worktop space and the kitchen will look bigger. I know it's not the modern thing to do, but it works for me. I also have no wall cupboards, but a run of tall 40cm deep cupboards for storage. They are plain white and you hardly notice they are there because they are shallow.

Regarding appliances, you sound just like my mother - it all has to be German like her - we still have my grandmother's calor gas cooker in the family (she was born in 1898 so you can guess how old that is!) The siemens washing machine lasted about 30 years. But you will be spending a huge chunk of your kitchen budget if you go for top appliances. I preferred to spend the extra on all the pull out drawers which add quite a lot to the cost of each unit, and other practical extras. We got hood, hob and oven for £200 off ebay but have all the fancy drawer units instead. Each to their own - I am just stingy and know we won't be in this house for ever.

Regarding drawers - all my pans fit in one 60cm deep drawer - they hold about 4 large pans side by side and the rest stack ontop.

All of this does depend on how much you want to spend on the rest of the house. Your windows look fine from inside!

Good food for thought with the kitchen planning, Achillea.

Thing with the appliances is that we only need fridge, cooker, hob and dishwasher - the difference between say hotpoint and bosch is at most £200 each appliance. I am fine spending an extra £1k on getting decent appliances. Particularly as I love to cook so having a great oven and hob is important to me.

Our friend designed the kitchen and came up with the bar area, which we absolutely love.

yy to no wall cupboards - they are in the original design but we won't be going with them. Will consider putting the oven below the hob - that is a good point. The final plan of the kitchen is still be be made.

It is very nice having walls free from cupboards and endless and flexible worktops. The ikea drawers fit so much in them you really don't need them although the tall cupboards contain my crockery, not sure I would put them in the drawers. We only have two 60cm 3 drawer units and they house everything I need to cook with, including basic baking stuff. Big stuff goes on an open shelf (do factor in big stuff - platters etc).

I have a corner cupboard and two drawers at the moment, and one upper cabinet. Oh, and a useless cupboard with hardly any shelves.

Any amount of space is going to be a huge improvement.

As Terence Conrad said back in the 1960s the 3 things that will add value to your home are:
Well Fitted kitchen and good appliances.
Well fitted bathroom suite
Central heating.
To that I think you can add double glazing.
I love ikea kitchens!

Oh,,and make sure your loft-attic space is well insulated.

Ahem..Terence Conran obv....

Tiz
Yes, agree with you on the 'added value' thing. I keep saying that we are doing the house for US not for those who might buy it when we sell.

I am planning one of these in the kitchen

If those after us don't have a dog, they can store their beer in it :)

I love 'nooks' Measured up under our stairs last night after seeing the reading nook on pinterest, alas the space is on the small side

A good bit of built in nookery does make a house more like a home / kennel.

Flatpack can't do that.