How much to renovate small 3 bedroom house in London?

[stilllovingmysleep]

Hi, we've done some viewings of 3 bedroom houses in the area we are looking to buy... we've found 2 houses both of which we like a lot, both of which need full renovating.

Can I ask: what budget should we be looking at (approximately obviously!) to do a full renovation for a smallish 3 bedroom ie:
--take out carpets
--painting through out
--put in shelving
--floors probably
--kitchen
--bathroom
--wardrobes
--potentially plumbing & electrics

I am obviously aware the prices vary dramatically. But I'm lookingquite urgentlyfor a rough estimate so that we can know what kind of offers to make. We're looking to do this nicely but relatively low-end i.e. use IKEA wherever possible. For the moment we're not thinking of doing loft conversion / kitchen extension.

A final question: would you contact a building company to check out the houses and give more exact quote before making offer or after?

Many thanks for any help!

Plumbing and electrics will be the big expenses plus the repairs after installation.

For electrics, count approx £70 per point. A point being a light switch, a socket, a downlight or pendant or wall light, kitchen cooker socket, shaver point etc etc. ie the more sovkets and lights you add the higher the cost.

Then after the electricians have chased out all the walls and made holes in your ceilings, the whole place needs skim plastering and plasterer repairs throughout. Approx £1000 per room. This varies pending on size of room and repairs to be made etc.

Plumbing can escalate quickly. You may need a whole new supply in from the road if you have lead or galvanised pipe.

New hot and cold water to be put into kitchen bathrooms from new boiler.
New rads, new boiler and pipe work installation.

It's hard to say how much because it depends on sqft of house along with ceiling heights and general insulation/double glazing or not.

I'd be very surprised if you had change out of £7000. Unless your DH is handy and can do things like stripping out the old pipe work himself and digging trench outside of new water supply is needed.

Also do not reuse old copper pipe work runs. It might seem easier and cheaper. However the solder joints corrode over time and will start to leak. Esp if you're putting in a nice new boiler with more pressure.

Carpet can be as low as £15 P sqm.

Kitchen. A nice ikea one can come in at £5k. Again size of kitchen, worktop type and appliances play a part.

Posted too soon. Average renovation costs are circa £800 to £1000 p sqm. If you want high end finishes and installations, this can go much much higher.
The average for London now is approx £1300 p sqm but if you're looking at ikea kitchen and doing some bits of work yourself you can bring this down below £1000.

Also shop around for quotes. And beware of contractors who offer a nice over all "turn key" service. This is mega expensive. The contractor organises the trades across all the work and adds up to 35% on top to put in his own pocket.

Much better value to hire people directly even though coordinating is more hassle. Unless you're minted.

Both DH and I know nothing about DIY and we also don't have much spare time so a company who would do the whole thing would be preferable even though I appreciate this comes at a premium.

I am confused though! You say average renovation cost 800-1000£ per square metre?! Surely that can't be right as it would mean cost of renovating house of 60 sq metres would cost 60,000??? Surely that can't be right!!

Not sure about London but we are renovating our 5 bed at the min. Similar list to yours above, except my DF is an electrician and has done a lot of things for us, has contacts in various trades etc. Bathroom was about 2k with mates rates. Kitchen I'm still costing up estimating 5k or so. Living room was about 1500. Hall and landing about 500. Bedrooms have only really needed painting / new carpets so approx 200 each. Still have a lot of outside work to do (fencing etc). I've found whatever you budget, double it, and that's with mates rates / free electrician! Probably not what you want to hear, sorry :(

I also wonder how it's possible to make an offer when it's unclear what building work a house may require? Both properties, for example, that we saw just this weekend had many positiveswe basically loved them bothbut both needed unspecified (and lots of) building work. Do people generally get a quote from a reputable company before or after making an offer, and if after, how can they know what they're buying (for example, it's unclear in both properties whether a loft conversion can be done; it's also unclear whether electrics / plumbing may need changing).

I am mid renovation of a Victorian 2 bed semi. Central heating installation, rewire, new timber bay window, new kitchen (cheap), moving bathroom upstairs, flooring, plastering, decorating, chimneys removed and stud wall built, doorway widened, decoration. There's probably more but I can't remember it all! House is approx 870sq ft, don't know what that is in metres! I've budgeted 45-50k, and so far I'm on budget. But I'm organising it all myself, living in chaos, doing a lot of donkey work and it's stressful and knackering!

We did a 3 bed semi in 2010, complete strip back and start from scratch.

Rewiring, plumbing (boiler, rads, pipes), kitchen, bathroom, plaster and paint and flooring throughout. Oh, and new windows/doors.

Cost about 40k, London/Kent border. Was chaos though and we didn't have to live there as were still renting our old place.

We knew when we looked around that it hadn't been touched since the 70s so would need lots of work. The estate agent organised for a builder to look round with us and he gave an approx quote for building work.

Perhaps (given that we've never done something like this before) it may make sense to do as much as we can based on our budget and then do further work gradually?

If you're going to be living in it then you won't want to do it all in one fell swoop anyway I would think. Some rooms will have to be useable!!

But there will be a sensible order to doing things, like rewire and plumbing before anything decorative, or new kitchen etc.

Two bed flat last year, doing pretty much what you've suggested apart from we just replaced kitchen unit doors and worktop instead of the whole lot. £20k. 48sq m. It looked AMAZING.

We spent around £6,000 on the materials for large new ikea kitchen, bathroom, wooden engineered flooring downstairs and carpets upstairs. Repainting everything and new skirting boards in some of the house. Labour was heavily discounted as it was my uncle-in-law with us doing as much as possible but I think he said he would have charged around £6,000 to do the work for someone else. Also not including white goods as he had them already. No idea about electrics though sorry. Also we put in things that we loved but scoured for the best we could get for the lowest price. I always see expensive tiles I love but had to keep it relatively neutral to keep in budget. But the finish looks good still I think.

If you are going to do everything on your list, I'd say budget £40 - 50,000 if you are using a builder

Always good to have at least 30% allowance for budget overruns.

I think budgeting 40,000 or even up to 50,000 (but doing it gradually, as we'll have some more money coming in next year) is realistic. Then if we have money leftover that's great.

The other thing I want to ask is: do people take energy efficiency ratings hugely into account when making an offer? We have found a lovely Victorian house (needs total renovation though) which has an energy rating F. Would you stay away just for that reason? The house does have double glazing.

I didn't pay any attention to energy ratings! Probably stupid of me, but I wanted a Victorian house so I knew it would never be the worlds most efficient. New boiler and electrics, new windows will help a bit though I think, insulating the loft etc.

It is labour that's expensive. Especially in London. If you don't have any friends or family giving you special rates and aren't doing anything yourself it's going to cost far more. I would say 40-50 sounds about right. It cost us 8k to have our bathroom done - that was to rip out old and out in new and move the door. That was with a b&q bathroom so we didn't go to town on the cost of the actual suite at all. And for the kitchen, we spent 9,000 on kitchen units and appliances but the fitting cost over 10,000. Even painting one bedroom cost several hundred. I am very jealous of people who know people who can help them out with labour or who have partners who love spending the weekend doing DIY!

Autumn! The fitting of your kitchen cost over 10k?!

Surely that's phenomenally high.

Yes 10K just for fitting costs sounds incredible!!

and unfortunately no we have no friends or family members who can help.

Energy rating F will reflect the fact that the property is completely unrenovated, and therefore no double glazing, no insulation, etc. Your renovations will presumably improve its energy rating dramatically. I wouldn't worry about it.

I'd also do the work slowly, starting with kitchen and bathroom - but you will need to budget £60K in London. A loft extension will set you back £40K just by itself (we had ours done by an excellent small firm for slightly less, but without en suite and it was a small property).

We've seen a house similar to what you describe (in London) and worked out we needed budget of £100k to do what we wanted to it - and that doesn't cover a loft extension!

We were looking at b&q prices but with an extension and knock through for the kitchen. Still haven't decided if we can handle it but it's the only type of house we can afford around here.

We definitely wouldn't be able to afford £60K to start with. We are not planning to do extension / loft at beginning. I think we will start with £30K, do what we can with that (basic for me would be bathroom renovation / change upstairs carpets / floors / painting / any basic structural work.

I think next year we'll be able to borrow another chunk of money (on top of our mortgage) ie around 50£ so then we can hopefully do kitchen extension with some of that. I think perhaps we can get advice on how to very basically decorate the kitchen at this stage so that we don't redo the kitchen when an extension would be far preferable in the near future. Do you have advice about very basic / cheap little changes to existing (not nice) kitchen just to make it presentable?

Loft in future if and when.

Does that sound realistic or am I being too optimistic about doing what we can with £30K?

The other thing I wanted