Can you upgrade a house for £10k or under?

[ChochoCrazyCat]

New kitchen, bathroom, floors and wallpaper/paint.
Standard sized 3 bed detached, think suburban 80s boxy type house.
Not fussed about what brand things are and kitchen/bathroom can be second hand/ex display/factory surplus stock (any suggestions of good places to get these in Scotland welcome).
Have you or anyone you know done something similar for under £10k? Or is that totally unrealistic?

My small bathroom cost £12k.

10k including labour costs or are you planning on fitting yourself?

@DecTheTreeTime
Including labour. Probably not doable

No. I don't think so. My other half's a builder & could do the majority of fitting but I don't think we could do all that for 10k, wouldnt cover materials. You might find a decent second hand kitchen or be able to grade your current kitchen doors or paint them & get a new worktop. But I think bathroom bits would probably need to be new. Costs will soon add up.

Is it purely cosmetic? You could maybe do it if you do most of the work yourself

Yes mostly cosmetic. When I say new kitchen I don't mean with appliances, just new cupboards and worktops.
Wallpapering/painting we could do ourselves but fitting the floors and kitchen/bathroom installation would have to be left to the pros.

I renovate a lot of houses and generally allow a minimum of £15000 for that sort of project.

Not doable OP, sorry. Kitchen & bathroom will probably cost more for materials & Labour on their own. What kitchen cupboards do you currently have? Could you paint them and get a new worktop? Tile paint?
Bathroom; could you just replace whatever the worst thing is; tiles or suite?
Painting if you do it yourself is a cheap way to improve the house.

I paid more than that just for labour. SE, kitchen, bathroom and decorating throughout, plus boarding the loft and moving the hatches cost £25k.

Change only the doors on the kitchen cabinets and paint . What is the floor of?
Bathroom you can get very cheap tiles if you’re comfortable doing a bit of tiling, get new cabinets/shower screen only
Re-paint the whole house / buy new curtains and cushions etc
Yes , I could do it with 10k and a bit of hard graft .

It's not my house (yet).
Looking to buy, within my budget are small semi detached/terraced with good interiors or bigger and detached but with everything needing replaced. This house I'm looking at, everything is functional but very dated (avocado type bathroom, very basic kitchen).

I suppose we could do things up over time but other than our current pre-baby savings we won't have any spare money for a long time due to childcare costs.

@pompey38 That's a good idea, changing only the doors and worktops.
Floors are carpets and lino, I'd want to put in hard floors, laminate maybe.

We did a 2 bad flat for 7k, but DH and FIL did all the work, so it was just materials (mostly whatever was on offer).

Are you sure you couldn't have a go at do going some yourself? Laminate floors are easy enough to lay and even tiling is doable if you take your time, and just get people in for the plumbing/electrics and things you really can't do. Would it be possible to just freshen up the existing kitchen with nee doors and worktops? That would save you a bit.

Course it is. 12 k for a bathroom?? Were the taps solid gold?? I got a 3 peice bathroom suite- basic but fine- for about 500. Tiles can be got cheap. You don't have to tile the entire bathroom ( in fact I don't like that).
Vinyl flooring is cheap and you can get something very plain. Plumber came to fit, cost about 1.8 k in total.
For the kitchen you can just replace doors and worktops, although IKEA are very good for whole kitchens.. You don't need posh worktops, you can get very good laminate ones. I had my small house totally re decorated with lining paper ( cheaper than plaster) and then painted myself. You don't need farrow and ball ( also it's shite!) You can get trade paint mixed to whatever colours you like. Flooring, higher quality laminate looks very like wood, and carpet shops sell off rolls that are already cut for cheap if you have smaller bedrooms. I replaced all my downstairs doors with doors from Wickes for under 400. I'm up north though, maybe ore trades people here that are affordable?

Also, sell what you can when you rip stuff out-you'd be surprised!

I doubt it if you're not doing the work yourself. Have a look at Ikea kitchens though, apparently they are not too tricky to fit yourself.
You might get better rates for labour in Scotland compared to the south?

Could you paint the whole place white before you move in to make it liveable? Things like plastering can really bump up prices if you need that done. Basic bathroom suite and learn how to tile yourself?

Having had LVT planks installed last year I would a) recommend them and b) say that I would not hesitate to install them myself in future, having seen how easy it was. You'd need to get someone in to screed though as that's quite a job.

You might be able to do it if

You can reuse the existing carcasses and appliances and just replace doors, plinth, cornice, worktop, sink and taps. You might be £2.5k from Howdens etc . Plus £1k in labour ( mostly joiner ) .

One thing that really makes a kitchen is good lighting and the materials are cheap , it’s just the labour for the electrician.

You can get inexpensive ( but nice tiles ) and don’t tile the full bathroom.

You use small tradespeople who are not VAT registered or someone who will do it for mates rates.

Bathroom stuff doesn’t need to be expensive, as long as you can use the existing layout ( moving plumbing is expensive ) .

I just did up a small bathroom and shower, tray , waste, shower enclosure, WC, WHB , taps and waste, vanity unit, heated towel rail and valves were £1100 ( and that’s with a branded shower tray as the one I wanted was out of stock ).

Tiles were £9 and £10m2 from Wickes. I only tiled 3 walls and floor and painted the 4th . That meant only 14m 2 of tiling and not 20. Also it’s less clinical IMO.

Your problem is going to be flooring as cheap flooring is often a bit rubbish. Also if half your cost is labour it’s a false economy. Could you get something decent for £3k?

So 4k on kitchen, 3k on bathroom and 3k on flooring ? You could put down cheap carpet for a lot less than that, and replace it when your kids have left home. But it will look a bit rubbish in a few years. I’d go for hard flooring myself.

That’s left nothing for decorating so you need to do all that yourself . You’ll be a few hundred for paint - are you just doing the walls or the woodwork and ceilings too? That’s quite a lot of work - it’s mostly prep. Are your walls in good condition ?

And it’s also nothing for contingency - you should ideally have 10%.

Nothing for new furniture. Or strip out and a skip. Nothing for plastering so let’s hope your walls are plaster on brick and not plasterboard.

Actually 2.5k on kitchen might be a bit much. Say 2.2k, gives you some spare for the kitchen splash back.

The thing you will have to consider is your house is actually 40 years old now, is the boiler up to scratch, are the windows in good condition or have the double glazing units blown? Yes it could just be cosmetic but once you start ripping stuff out you can come across problems even in a relatively young house so you will need to have some contingency fund.

It's not unusual to live with an old bathroom or kitchen for some years when you buy a house, if they are functional. Especially if you have large but temporary outgoings like childcare.

I think that those things are doable with closer to £10000 if you're happy to shop around and do work yourself. Fixed costs will be the price of labour in your area to fit a kitchen /bathroom/flooring. So why not find those out and work back from there.

Are there any other looking costs in the property? New boilers, roofs and windows are not cheap.

@IfNotNow12 That is good to know, your bathroom sounds affordable and the kind of thing we'd be looking for.
I'm in Scotland so it's not hugely expensive here either.
But on another thread people were talking about paying £30k for a kitchen and I panicked.
We're in our first own home at the moment, it didn't need much doing to it other than cosmetic bits and bobs, so I feel a bit out of my depth when looking at houses that need lots done.

@TeeBee

My small bathroom cost £12k.

Same. Paid the same price for my kitchen too...

So I'm in Scotland as well. Currently getting small en-suite and small bathroom done for just under 9K (wetwall not tiles so cheaper)
Even with only new kitchen cupboard doors and cheap carpet you'd be struggling for 10K

It all comes down to how much you do yourselves and what bargains you can find. If the carcasses are ok in the kitchen, new doors and draw fronts aren't much and easily diy-able. Likewise laminate flooring is fiddly to fit when you start but if you are competent and persevere then it's doable. Bathrooms can be expensive but you could do the stripping out yourselves just get the plumber to disconnect the pipe work first then you strip and remove tiles. You can make a cheap bathroom suite look much more expensive with good tiling and fitments. Painting and decorating is just a case of being careful and taking your time until you become more confident. I have renovated 2 houses and redecorated many more and helped my parents do various houses over the years. I have taught myself tiling, built and installed kitchen units, run electrical cabling and installed sockets and switches. The trick is to know when to employ the professionals. When I installed my own kitchen I had a plumber sort the sink and the pipe work for the washing machine and dishwasher and a joiner to cut and install the worktops. I ran the cabling for the electrics but had an electrician check everything and do the main board. Plastering needs an expert as does tiling unless you are very good and the walls are square and flat.

You might. I’ve seen some episodes of Homes under the Hammer where they’ve done that sort of work for less than £10k. So it’s doable.