How much to renovate a 2 bed house?

[Alyosha]

DH and I are considering buying a 2 bed victorian house. It is quite small, around 900 sqm.

We want to...

Add in a wall between the living room and the hall (currently the front door opens into the living room)
Take out some very ugly looking un-original tudor style beams in the kitchen
Knock through lounge/dining room (there is already a gap but it's very narrow - like a doorway without a door)
Dig up the paving in the back garden
and the big one...
Do a loft conversion with an en suite

Any ideas? I'm assuming at the very least £100k...possibly much much more than that.

I think a 100k would be fine as you're not manning a side return/extension, just putting up a stud wall and knocking down a wall. The steels will be about 2k and I guess structural engineer costs on top. Are you likely to make the money back re; house value or stay there a long time? If not, then I wouldn't do that much.

'Manning' should say planning!

Depends on where you are. Are you looking to do anything else? Windows, boiler, electrics, kitchen, bathroom etc? I think it’s probably possible to do the work on 100k provided you’re not in an upmarket part of London.

We're in London - non trendy east London.

Not sure on plumbing/electrics etc. Property is already double glazed.

We aim to stay there for the long haul, not to sell on quickly.

We would also like to do a kitchen extension but the priority is a loft conversion really, as we would like to get that done before we start TTC.

I think that’s totally doable if you get to keep the windows as well. If you shop around, 100k should be enough to do it nicely.
I would just recommend using local tradesmen for various jobs and finding people that are below the VAT registration threshold. That’s 20% saved right there.

If you go with a big company to do the lot, it’ll cost a lot more as they’ll add vat and a mark up for all the subcontractors they have.

Awesome! Thanks all. Getting quite excited now.