Have you renovated your house? What worked well, and what didn't..

[MmeLindor]

We are renovating the whole house, including

gas CH
fitted kitchen
bathroom (incl moving a wall)
guest WC
oak flooring
tiled flooring
paper and decorating
rewire
windows

Any top tips on getting exactly what we want? Any thing you have done and regretted, or not done and regretted?

Do we go for a company that offers several of these services, or individual tradesmen?

We had a joiner and plumber lined up but they have been SO unreliable, I am now looking into getting a company that does all.

You probably wouldn't anyway! But, do not put laminate in a kitchen. 1 flood and its toast!

Eh?

Sorry, my post disappeared! And then reappeared!

No laminate, tiles in the kitchen. My parents have laminate, and I don't like the clacky sound of it.

Friedsprout
Yes, will check references - agree with the Jack of all trades thing.

MmeLindor where are you sourcing your windows? I'm very picky about windows, as well. DH is German and it goes without saying that he is, as well. :) We're in the process of planning what needs doing in our new place.

GreenEggs
We are looking at Wero and Internorm, both available in UK. Wero was a bit more expensive, and we were recommended Internorm by a friend back in Germany.

We wanted the bedroom windows with shutters and I think it will be cheaper and tidier to buy the windows with integrated shutters than put them onto normal windows.

We are finding that the Germans understand our vision (if that isn't too poncy a way of putting it) while the UK builders keep telling us how to do it cheaper and easier.

I keep saying that I am only doing this once, and so we want good quality fittings and not to cut corners.

eg the ceiling in the kitchen and living room looks terrible. There were cupboards in place, and the previous owners took the cupboards out and patched up the ceiling. We want the ceiling replaced, everyone keeps telling us to have it skimmed and it will be fine. It will cost an extra £600 but I feel it is worth it, because if we patch it again then it might start cracking in two years and then we have saved nothing.

We've recently renovated a 70's house. We had an architect who introduced us to our fab builder who had a site foreman for (a) the groundworks and (b) everything else. So in my case, the builder's site foreman project managed it and I got a daily breakdown of what was happening/supposed to happen as well as scheduling my deliveries of 2nd fix items to fit in with the programme of works.

We lived on site - O.K - there's alot of dust BUT you have more control and can resolve issues as they arise so less delays plus you save quite a lot of money!

Our builders finished 2 days early and did a grand job - we are still within our snagging period (agreed percentage sum retained for 6mths).

When we had the ceilings down as part of the rewiring, we added insulation between the floor joists. We never thought about this beforehand but it's fairly cheap especially since you will be probably topping up the existing roof insulation if not replacing it altogether.

Get the glazing including the type of say bifold doors via your builder - you will not get a better discount than him. You can give them one job, the builder can give them multiple jobs. (I did my research via several direct quotes beforehand). Think about/research the type of glazing that you want in order to spec it including bifold doors. I never considered triple glazing at all since it simply never crossed my mind.

Think about fitted wardrobes now and get the architect to include it in his drawings - the builder uses the drawings like the bible. Inform the architect of all the gadgets you want e.g - boiling water tap, plumbed in fridge freezer, water softener, etc. It is also worth having a plan drawn up for all the lights and switches - you can hand that to the electrician. This should include underfloor heating, loft lighting, outdoor lighting, demisted bathroom mirrors, dimmer switches, LED strip cabinet lighting, etc. If it's on the drawings, it's in the original specification should you need to argue the toss later so pre planning is essential!

Do not be afraid to knock down multiple walls, have multiple RSJ's, move doorways since you are gutting the house anyway with a rewire/replumb.

Forget looking at posh radiators, if you are replacing every single radiator anyway, it'll just be too expensive.

Changing all the internal doors to anything other than white MDF can be more reasonable.

Make sure you specify LED downlights and not halogen ones on your drawings. If you want brushed chrome instead of white plastic, specify it from the start otherwise they will be an extra (which incurs the builder's 20%). If you get as much detail down on the drawings, the quotation will be far more realistic.

Include the patio/driveway works (which I did, thankfully) - it's more expensive to do this afterwards. Any groundworks you need for new drainage will require a digger on site anyway so you might was well prepare the ground for the altered patio/driveway.

My one regret - not replacing the guttering/fascias but merely sprucing them up with a paint job. For another few hundred, I could have replaced the lot whilst the scaffolding was still up. (Hiring scaffolding is expensive!)

Can you tell that I am imparting my pearls of wisdom from recent experience?

If you are putting in LED downlighters (which are fab), make sure you specify if you want dimmable ones - you can't change your mind later.

That is great advice, Myron.

No more walls to be moved - we've already taken a wall out between living room and dining room, and installed a double door. What an AMAZING difference that made. There isn't really a lot of scope to change the rooms, it is a standard 70s council house, and the rooms are good sized already.

I think I will be ordering the downlights myself, and the sockets etc cause we want fancy ones.

What would I need groundworks for drainage for?

Fully renovated a 200 yr old house while living in it so...

Fitted kitchen - good fitters are key. We had an absolute nightmare with a well known DIY store. Good kitchen, shit fitters.

Oak flooring - we had 15mm tongue and groove. It was really easy to fit ourselves and gives a fantastic finish. If you have the time / skills, it's a big saving. We hired a professional nailer to make the job easier. Lining with plywood made a big difference in getting a tight non-squeaky finish as our floorboards were rubbish.

In general I'd echo getting as many recommendations as possible. We had several and even some of those were substandard.

Got to run, but might come back with more later.

Sorry, we needed it for a 2 storey extension that formed part of our house renovation.

Our 70's house originally had 2 hallways which effectively wasted 1/3 of the original downstairs floorspace. We got rid of that by restructuring our downstairs layout.

We have also relocated our downstairs loo and installed a kitchen island with a sink, dishwasher, boiling water tap & wine chiller.

Almost forgot, when you're rewiring, you may or may not want to consider CAT5 cabling which DH insisted on.

Drainage: You might find your sewage outflow was built for a kitchen sink, occasional twin tub use, plus a weekly bath. You will have greater requirements than in the 70s (dishwasher, washing machine, bath/shower?) and may want to increase the capacity.

We have been doing a 50s council mid terrace for the last 3 years. Already had cavity insulation, but loft floor insulation and boards have made a difference. Had been made open plan in 70s/80s which we have reversed. We have wood floor throughout ground floor. Put in a loo/washing machine room off the kitchen. Arranged kitchen to fit 100/90cm wide fridge (and plumbed a cold water source for ice maker) but went with conventional f/f and put deep shelves beside it. Happy to have future proofed for big fridge though.

Drawers not cupboards in kitchen everywhere. Massive pan drawers under hob, oven in tall unit elsewhere. Drawers drawers drawers!

I would say to put in quality wherever you can but not necessarily bling. We thought about bifold doors for the extension but went for French doors with glass panels to the sides because bifolds would be a little de trop here. Sounds like this is your forever home so if you will enjoy the use of the fancy option such as bifolds, my 'don't overdo it' principle won't apply.

If I was really really going for it, I would fit a grey water system. Take up the ground in front/behind the house and put massive tanks in. Collect massive amounts of rainwater off your roof through filtered drainpipes. Use for flushing loos, watering garden, washing car, and (if really abundant) as a switchable option for your washing machine cold water source.

Ahhh, cat5... Yes, we now have Ethernet in bedrooms. not sure why yet. apparently we can connect phones to it as well as computers. We also have an HDMI and VGA socket face in the IT cave (corner of living room) which pop out in the middle of the room where a fuckoffenormous HD projector hangs. Our living room window covering (over top of wood slatted blind) is a 2m wide roller screen (equiv to a 90 inch TV). However in daylight when not in use, living room appears to have no TV.

Mme Lindor, we live 3 towns up the coast from you (think golf). We've completely renovated a massive victorian house, but can at least recommend a joiner (builder) and plumber. The joiner is also a dab hand at kitchens, though his supplier of choice is Howdens. Actually the plumber is from the Ferry, so even closer. PM me if you want. Plasterers is the one area we have really struggled. 8 at the last count. The best one, was the last, and we discovered that DH and I had been at school with him.

Greeneggs, you may want to look at the German window company. They produce the windows in Germany but are quite sympathetic to the British style. In fact they would go whatever you want.

Queen
we are Not Handy so it will have to be a joiner to do the floor.

Myron
No extension. The layout is pretty good, particularly now we have taken the wall out. Most of the other houses here have done that, but they generally just block off one door and leave the other. We put in a set of double doors, and it looks fab. What is CAT5 cables then?

Lexy
Drainage should be ok - my parents live in an almost identical house very close to us, and have no issues with drainage. We will be putting in a lot of new pipes anyway.

It is not going to be our forever home, I don't think, but then it might be that we love it so much when it is done that we will stay longer. I'd like to stay at least till the DC are finished school, so that would be 10years.

That is a good way of putting it - quality not bling. Going for french doors because it is the main entrance into the house from the car park.

We aren't putting a new front door in, cause hopeful that we can afford a porch next year.

Lexy
sounds like you guys are a lot more into tech stuff than we are. We wanted to have the TV on the wall - were wondering if it was a good idea to put the connections to two different points, in case we later want to move TV. We could cover the extra box with a painting or something.

I'd also like speakers in the kitchen, that I can connect iPod to. Should I bother having cables laid, or get wireless ones? I'd like Bose speakers - might have to be next year for them too though.

Make sure you shadow the plasterers/builders screeding floors with a spirit level, if floors/walls are not perfectly finished then you will have a nightmare with tiling, hard flooring, splashbacks when you are at a stage three months behind schedule and 30% over budget when you will be desperate to get everything finished and redoing work will be a horrific prospect.

IMO a single contractor running everything is best, not only for scheduling/planning but also when there are snagging issues it is all to easy for contractors to blame each other and then no one comes back to sort it out. If one person/co takes responsibility for the whole job, using subcontractors if necessary, there should be no argument.

we put our cables for cinema surround sound in the gap between wall and edge of wood flooring, then skirtings on above. chased cable into plastered wall. Ethernet and AV go in ceiling/floor void.

have a look at the Sonos speaker for your ipod. Again on the bling thing, sometimesiif you have amazing sound system but just an average player it can come across worse than having average both - good speakers expose poor sound processing.would be like putting a 20 year old video cassette taped off the TV through a blu ray super HD thingy.

Back again - definitely use the opportunity to do any recabling needed when plastering. Also if you're getting your heating done, worth considering the position of the radiators (& if they are adequate) if you are planning to be there a while. We have a very old, hodgepodge of a house, but we had underheated rooms as well as those where the radiator position was IMO daft. Really easy to fix while you're getting the job dome, total pita otherwise (esp if not handy).

The other thing I'd say is be all over timescale and budget. We weren't despite the fact that I'm a programme manager by profession . It's all come out in the end, but as we have been living in the place it was a it of a nightmare.

Oh and keep back a pot for nasty surprises. Hopefully the age of your house means these should be minimal (but you mention rewiring...), but pretty much 100% of our overspend was related to "oh shit" moments. Now we have a very old house and I think the previous owners were probably certifiable so I doubt you would encounter anything like, but there will be something.

Are you staying in the house while this work is done OP or moving in she it's finished?

I saw scaffold upthread. If you're getting a scaffold it's worth getting quotes for anything that might need it that you think you may want done. Yes, builders will be arsy, but unless you've got 1 tiny job for definite and 10 large maybes they should be able to give a ballpark per job.

Once engaged, our builder was quite happy to take us up the scaffold in the first few days to show what he'd found if he was recommending extra work. (I know, health and safety whatever, but I recall the way the subcontracting worked it was technically 'our' scaffold that the builder was using).

I would disagree about "fancy" radiators. It's true there are lots of stupidly expensive ones out there, but by shopping around I have found attractive, interesting radiators for all the rooms we have done so far, at very little more than bog standard ones, and they are way smaller and more effective than the 1980's ones which they replaced. I just wish we could replace the bizarre plumbing, but that would be a monster job (old house, 2ft thick walls, etc)

Re radiators - we have nightmarish electric storage heaters at the moment so all are being replaced, and we will be changing the position of some of them.

yes, to a OMG pot - think I will call that the Oh Fuck Account.

Won't need scaffolding, I don't think. They won't need that for the windows, will they?

Will look at those speakers, thanks. We are not sound snobs, so I doubt we'd notice the differenct, tbh - I like the look of the Bose ones (and they are German!) We are building a wee German hoose.

We had 22 radiators to replace, 7 0f which in a large open plan space. Before I looked at cost, I looked at which ones I would like. Suffice to say, I quite liked the look of a Bisque radiator but quickly decided that it would look odd just to have 1 and we definitely couldn't stretch to 22 of them! Cue decision - to replace vintage radiators with fairly average but modern & more efficient white radiators x 22 with TRV's. Earlier that same day, we had given the go-ahead to order 24 oak veneer interior doors with brushed chrome door handles, hinges & latches at an extra cost so in our case, we upgraded the doors significantly but not so much the radiators. We decided that we would appreciate the doors more.