£16,500 to redecorate - am I being ripped off? How much were you charged?

[themummyway]

Being quoted the following:

£2.5k for stripping old wallpaper + carpets and clear.
£7k for "complete decorating" (assuming this is painting 3 bedroom, living room, hallway + a installing flooring in said bedrooms)
£7k to plaster all rooms

Based in London. Average 3bed 1930s house. Is this reasonable? Anyone done similar? How much were you charged?

@coronabeer23

Oh just realised the doors are just for bedrooms, no that's too much. I assumed all the doors in the house

Thank you @coronabeer23 Your input is quite different to others.

Can you tell me roughly how much your house renos cost?

Yes, my place is very old. 1930s and hasn't been touched in a while but the price quoted still seems very steep. But as you've said, perhaps it's reasonable given the circumstances...

And yes: it's just bedroom doors and possibly a new bathroom door too. Plus adjusting the door ways so that the doors open better.

Some of the wallpaper has been on for decades, however he hasn't checked the state of this/the walls to know whether they're in good condition or not.
It seems that he's just assumed that they might or might not be?

I know a fantastic plumber- glowing reviews on next door from a gazillion other people he's worked for too- so it wasn't just us he dazzled (and did a good job for) and an amazing electrician. Let me know if you need any contacts. Leave this chancer too it- he's majorly taking advantage of the fact he's been recommended by someone you know.

I know what I paid and it was £1100! I missed the bit about the flooring in the OP which we didn't have done but the rest of it was included. We don't have any friends or family who work in trades but I'm part of a local FB group of people who are and got different people in to do different things. Some of them had newly gone self-employed so we probably struck it lucky with how much we were charged.

Remember too this is going to include a bunch of skips and all the paints and delivery of stuff and cranes and other specialist equipment. They may well need to do some external work with drains and mains, all this costs time money and hassle!

Is he replastering and stripping back and reboarding or skimming over.

One is a big dirty job and the other is not.

We stripped back ourselves to save money and he boarded it out and plastered walls and ceiling for £ 670 to £ 750 per room depending on size rather than £1000. ( 5 years ago)
Stripping back plaster to brick was the dirtiest job we have ever attempted. There was dust over the house for several weeks.

If it is a good plaster job you can easily paint it once dry at little cost.

@coronabeer23

Remember too this is going to include a bunch of skips and all the paints and delivery of stuff and cranes and other specialist equipment. They may well need to do some external work with drains and mains, all this costs time money and hassle!

Fair enough.

I think I need line-by-line breakdown to really ascertain what this all entails.

The vagueness of the current breakdown coupled with everyone's initial reactions isn't really helping his case at all....

I mean this kindly OP, but have you got a relative or friend who can help you meet with trades etc?
You seem so naive to the cost of things that you metaphorically have "rip me off" tattooed on your forehead.
As ludicrous as it sounds if you have a man in your life, DH / brother / father get them involved. Mysoginistic and shit, but I bet the quotes will half at least.

So, we bought a 1930s fixer upper last year, London outskirts, 5 bed.

So far we have paid:

£4.5k for complete rewire, plus £1k for light fittings (supplied by us)
£4k for a new boiler and full central heating system replacement, plus £1k for 'nice' radiators
Approx £400 per room for replaster
Approx £500 per room for redecoration, including paint (but not including my more expensive wallpaper choices 😁)
£3.5k to fit a new kitchen (supplied by us), including opening up a larger window aperture and fitting new window (supplied by us)
£1200 for a quartz worktop, supply and fit

Over the course of the work we've also spent maybe £1500 having waste removed.

We have quotes lined up for a new en-suite (£3.2k plus fittings, which I'll buy separately), boarding and tiling our hallway floor and sealing our kitchen floor (£1,200) and a new bathroom (£4.5k plus fittings).

I've not included the cost of fittings because it's a good way to control the budget - with all of these things you can spend an absolute fortune on something or you can go relatively cheap (or get a bargain, or reuse existing, etc etc). Also, a dodgy builder can make a lot of money on this too. These are the pure costs for the labour on the house.

I've also had a wall knocked down and RSJ inserted before - came in at about £1700, including knocking out, the joist, boxing in, making good and building regs application costs.

Hope that gives you some ballpark figures to go with.

Builders deffo quote big if they don't want the work.

We've just had quotes for a loft conversion. One guy spent 1hr with us and gave a decent quote. Another spent 15mins and quoted double.

@Darkestseasonofall

I mean this kindly OP, but have you got a relative or friend who can help you meet with trades etc? You seem so naive to the cost of things that you metaphorically have "rip me off" tattooed on your forehead. As ludicrous as it sounds if you have a man in your life, DH / brother / father get them involved. Mysoginistic and shit, but I bet the quotes will half at least.

This person is a family friend and former neighbour (who did my parent's extension!!) hence my lax attitude to seeking quotes from elsewhere.

I do have a male relative who is no bullshit and coming round expeditiously to look through the breakdown. He couldn't believe the prices he heard himself, especially as this person did some work for him!

@sunlight81

Builders deffo quote big if they don't want the work.

We've just had quotes for a loft conversion. One guy spent 1hr with us and gave a decent quote. Another spent 15mins and quoted double.

Thank you! I'm also London outskirts so this is incredibly helpful.

Although this is just labour... it's already a fraction of the price I've been quoted. I really can't imagine your overall cost being anything more than £50k with materials and other bits like beds etc.

This is far more reasonable and what I will use to guide future quotes.

@cabbageking

Is he replastering and stripping back and reboarding or skimming over.

One is a big dirty job and the other is not.

We stripped back ourselves to save money and he boarded it out and plastered walls and ceiling for £ 670 to £ 750 per room depending on size rather than £1000. ( 5 years ago)
Stripping back plaster to brick was the dirtiest job we have ever attempted. There was dust over the house for several weeks.

If it is a good plaster job you can easily paint it once dry at little cost.

I think it's stripping back to brick which is why he advised me to move out during the job to avoid the dust...

Again, no real clarity

Wooden flooring is v expensive so that would bring your quote up. My bedroom which isn't a big room was over 1k for an engineered wood

My DH is quite amused at the idea of widening and adjusting the doorways to make the doors fit properly.

Surely it would be easier to adjust the doors? Unless the doorways are completely out of true? And if that's the case you might have other things to worry about than a greedy builder ...

Update: no nonsense male relative has come round and he's bemused by the whole situation.
For context, builder is ex-neighbour and male relative had some work done by him before.
Weeks ago, the builder told him that the whole job would cost me £52k yet we're sat here with a quote for £70-odd grand.

I've well and truly been had. Fuck this builder!!
Thank GOD for the good men in my life who are few and far between.

Ladies watch your backs.

We had a 4 bed 39’s house rewired, new box
£3290+ Vat

Just north of London by M1/M25

Sparky came from Bedford

My builder saved us 34% on our first quote too.

30’s, not 39!

I paid 1200 for the living room and dining room in a 1930s terrace In London to be painted so 7k for a whole house sounds broadly inline? That didn’t include the paint,

Op you might want to get quotes from others but a good builder costs a lot. I'm in SW London and we paid about the same, if not more. I was thinking the price was very high but the workmanship was amazing. They came highly recommended and had done a lot of work for a lot of my colleagues

Our downstairs loo was about 4K and our bathroom ended up being 25k but it was completely replumbing and reconfigure and a Japanese toilet

FourDecades blimey!
I'm NorthWest Herts, almost on the Beds and Bucks borders too.
We had our downstairs repainted, this was because of some water damage, due to water leak under the kitchen floor, we had the small utility room and downstairs loo, kitchen, dining room, and lounge done too, we have an 3 bed semi.. not huge as it was a 2up 2down, then we extended.
This cost us (about 5yrs ago now) £2000 then...

@coronabeer23 Are you a builder by any chance?

£15.5k clear old kitchen, fit new. new roof, re
move wall, install rsj YES, THIS INCLUDES RSJ's, ROOF, WALLS ETC NEVER GOING TO BE CHEAPER

What planet are you on? Your entire post is fictitious.

and our bathroom ended up being 25k but it was completely replumbing and reconfigure and a Japanese toilet

Seems ridiculously excessive for a bathroom.

We are in Hertfordshire. Last year we paid 3500 to decorate a 4 bed house. He did a fantastic job too!

I paid £9k to have my whole house (4 story/4 bed) painted inside and out. Included removing old wallpaper and making good the walls etc. And woodwork of course. Most walls were relined with lining paper.

I had some of my ceilings and some walls plastered, I think I paid around £3k about 50% of house I would say.

My carpet guy removed old carpets and disposed of them free when he fitted new ones. Probably spent £2k on carpets.

I'm in the south west and it was all done about a year ago. For London prices those quotes don't seem awful I suppose.