Time / disruption of building works

[SerialRelocator]

We're in the process of buying a house. To combat my bad case of cold feet, I've been planning how we could make the house suit our taste / lifestyle more. Problem is that we really do not do that well with disruption and workmen in the house.
So, if I wanted to create a large kitchen diner + utility which, as a minimum will involve removing (structural?) walls, building a new (internal) wall, moving radiators, possibly boiler, water, electrics, updating windows & doors, new floors + designing & installing the actual kitchen and utility and, finally, also create a new opening to the living room ... This excludes any extension.
So, how much disruption are we looking at, and for how long? Would we need to move out for a while? Are we looking at a month, 3 months, more? Is anyone who has done similar happy to share their experience?

It does make sense that if you are going to stay that you do whatever it takes. I
I hope that if we do the work we will want to stay. However, if I had to think about it as a 20 year commitment it would definitely freak me out. Fortunately I didn't feel the same about the commitment to my husband! 😆 (20 years come March)

change the glass in every single window in the house

I’m intrigued, what sort of glass are you changing from and to?
If it’s single glazed to double glazed surely you’ll need new frames too

As regards adding value: we’ve done some expensive work to our house and I’m reasonably sure we won’t get it all back (likely to be here for another 5/6 years). This does make me uncomfortable from a financial perspective alone, on the other hand when I think about the ways we could have saved money I can see why we spent it... The “luxuries” we could have jettisoned are the bits that make it special and we really get value from them. Whether a buyer will value them as much, I don’t know, but in the meantime we’ll have had 5+ years of enjoyment.

@minipie - Already double glazed and frames in good condition. However, it has faux leaded glass which is ... not my thing. So will be putting in 'plain' double glazing. Everything is genuinely in good condition which makes it harder to justify the spend somehow. But as you suggested, it's what gives one enjoyment (or not).

We had an annexe completely refitted/rewired. Took walls down in the kitchen to a bare shell, moved supplies and radiators and had kitchen fitted. Created a bathroom from scratch, refitted another and knocked through two spaces to create yet another. Also had part of a wall shifted. Plus of course all the little surprises an old house throws up along the way. We used a building contractor who started in April and finished in September. We thought we would benefit for loads of their guys working on the project all the time but in reality at least half of the time it was just one or two guys. I hate disruption so couldn't wait for it all to be over.

In terms of cost vs adding value. I think ours probably cost what it added at the time but we were fine with that as we wanted to stay here long term. We're still really happy with it all 4 years on.

Gosh @TheDogsMother, I'm getting palpitations just thinking about 5 months of that ! Did you move out for while?

@SerialRelocator. We had the annexe (separate small building in the corner of the garden) done first with a view to moving into there. In the end we set up a temporary living room in a downstairs bedroom which has a conservatory and en suite. It was actually quite cosy with comfortable chairs, rug and TV. In the conservatory I had a fridge, freezer (stocked with loads of batch cooked meals) and a borrowed microwave. Cutlery, crockery and condiments with a rudimentary work top. I hope this isn't putting you off !! As we have a butlers sink outside by the back door with hot and cold water we had our dishwasher and washing machine plumbed in on the patio. I can laugh about it now

Our current house we completely re-arranged the layout downstairs. The previous owners had added a fairly big extension on the back of a very traditional house, and hadn't really thought about the layout enough, IMO. So we made it make more sense, I reckon. They had 3 small reception rooms and a massive kitchen downstairs (the extension had extended their original tiny kitchen and added another living room). We opened it all up to create an open plan living/dining/kitchen abs moved the kitchen to the other side of the house. It required new steels, walls knocking out, chimney breasts removing.

The cost of most of it will be reflected in value. For instance we had new windows, new boiler and central heating/radiators throughout, new wiring throughout (there were no plug sockets in upstairs rooms?!?!). We've put a new kitchen and downstairs bathroom in, as well as plastered throughout and new flooring. All of those things will add value. But there's lots of things we did regardless of adding value, which we considered a price for us to live in a house we enjoy. So if we've spent £50k on renovation, we may have added £30k on the value. And that was a conscious decision. £5k for a wood burner won't add £5k to the value, but it's worth it for us on rainy & cold mornings!

That sounds like a fabulous open space @Kolo, but a lot more expensive to do than £50k. I assume that was a number just to illustrate the point?

@SerialRelocator

We have done exactly that extension which included the old kitchen becoming a utility.

It took 4.5 months from start to finish. That included fitting the kitchen and decorations.

It could have been finished slightly earlier had we not had underfloor reheating and waiting for the screed to fully dry but only 2 weeks shorter. Do think about UFH as it isa wonderfully gentle heating and we have no radiators at all on the walls so looks so streamlined.

We have wet underfloor heating in parts of our current home @Sunflowergirl1. I do like it but not sure whether to have it for the next house. That house has solid floors and lower ceilings than we currently have / would like. I'm thinking that installing a wet system on top would decrease the head height of even more, but I might be wrong. And although we've never had an issue with ours, it would be very disruptive if we did to lift all flooring etc.