How much can I realistically do for £15-20k?

[Snakesandpropertyladders]

Possibly purchasing a house that needs quite a bit of work to make it lovely. It's been a rental so everything is basic, bland and functional but not pretty. It's a 1930's 3 bed end terrace.
Ideally we would like to do the following work;

• fit new bathroom ( ikea or b&q nothing fancy), remove tiles and use acrylic panels around bath. Paint rest of the room and tile floor.
• remove old unused hot water tank.
• knock down wall between kitchen and dining room ( probably load bearing), fit ikea kitchen with glass splash backs. Paint and replace flooring with engineered wood in new kitchen/diner.
• redecorate large hall and stairs to include wood chip removal.
• redecorate large living room, 2 double bedrooms and a box room and understairs toilet.
• new flooring throughout probably engineered wood.

We will have about £15-20k and we are not handy at all so will need to get people in. How much can we realistically hope to do on our budget?
We are in greater London.

Should be able to do all that if you decorate yourselves and are not extravagant or have too many surprises.

Watching with interest, we're looking to buy an ex local authority too. In fact yours sounds so much like the one we're after that I thought we had competition! But we're nowhere near London, and will have two bathrooms.

Can you do any of the work yourselves? That helps massively I think, DP is quite handy and his DF is a builder by trade so knocking through for us will cost much less. But then big plumbing/electrical jobs we'd fork out for professionals.

Can you tile the kitchen/bathrooms yourselves? What about the decorating?

Our budget is roughly the same too.

I think you (and I!) can manage it on that budget as long as we don't get carried away with snazzy mixer taps and chalk paint :D

Knocking down the wall, fitting a steel will cost you about £10k of that.

We have just done that and fitted a 12k kitchen , decorating, flooring and new boiler hasn't left us with any change for £35k

Wow none of the people I've asked have said it cost anywhere near 10k to knock down their walls.... That seems a lot.

10k is way off the mark, obviously depends on size of steel going in and if structural engineer is needed, worst case 1.5-2k, I know as just had to fork out for struvcturasl calcs etc, 10k is pie in the sky!

Thanks Kieron that's more what I was expecting.

You should get most done for that- 10k for knock through and steel?! no way! Well unless its a massive room! Get a structural engineer to calculate the size you need (This will cost couple of hundred quid) phone up a steel works place get them to tell you how much the steel will cost - then get your builders quotes and make it clear you know how much the steel will cost so then they won't pull a bull shit figure out of the air! iIRC knock through 4m load bearing room and installation of steel, making good about 1k - not London but in the south.

We moved into a 1930s house about 5 years ago, and I would say that budget it tight for what you want to do, and we my husband has done quite a lot of the work himself (he is very DIY savvy) saving us thousands. Certainly on the "big ticket" items you've listed, I think the load bearing wall and making good will be at least £2-3k. I can't imagine you'd get it for anywhere near £1k nowadays.

Kitchen (depending on size) can be probably as low as £3-4k including fitting if you shop around / use a good joiner. Depends on what kind of appliances you want etc.

Bathroom - maybe £2k if you can make use of contacts / go budget for suite and tiles and you don't change the position of any of the suite.

I think you could probably spend £2-3k on decorating - again, depends where you are and how much of the prep work you can do. You don't have to be DIY savvy to strip wallpaper / woodchip. Yes, it is a pain in the neck but its not technical.

So that leaves you will £3k - £8k for the flooring and fitting it, plus any contingency. Engineered wood, plus underlay etc and fitting can be expensive.

I think the contingency is one point that you don't mention, and I'd be quite surprised in doing all of that work that you don't discover something that needs repairing / replacing. Windows / electrics / plumbing.

£10,000 for knocking down a wall and putting an RSJ in. They must have thought all their birthdays and xmases had come together!!!!!!

I know we won't get it all done but I wondered how much was feasible.
I've tried to design a kitchen on the ikea site and god the planner is awful! We could reutilise the kitchen that's already in as it's fairly new just not exactly what we would want. I'd rather spend the money on decorating to get the place looking nice.
DH is not great at it and is rather lazy so it would take months if he did it.