First home - new kitchen, underfloor heating, pocket/sliding door... COSTS!

[BMOZ]

Hi all, this is my first ever thread on here. I find this platform so helpful that I thought I'd go ahead and ask my own question. Myself and my partner are in the process of buying our first home, I'm hoping you lovely lot can clarify some costs for me and tell me if I'm being realistic, or even let me know how much you paid. I've outlined the costs I've budgeted for below.

Kitchen
£8k including all appliances and worktops (I know may be cheaper to source appliances and worktops separately so that’s an option, I’ve also heard that Howden’s have a sale in October)
£1.8k for fitting, plastering and adding any new electric sockets

Pocket door or sliding door
£600 including door and fitting

Flooring - 36sqm
£2-2.5k for electric underfloor heating (in hallway, kitchen and living room not the downstairs w/c).
£2k for porcelain wood effect flooring throughout downstairs and carpet upstairs, including fitting, also to replaster any walls that may have needed the skirting removed when replacing the flooring. (I know flooring depends on what we choose - the one I’ve seen for downstairs is around £14 per sqm). My partner does have a family friend who fits flooring but not UFH.

Basically, we’ve budgeted £15k but ideally needs to cover all these aspects, we were planning on going with Wren originally because they do the 5-year interest-free payment plan, but we were advised to go with Howden's that unfortunately don't offer it. Hoping from my research I’m not too far off but let me know if you have any suggestions or experience with these home reno aspects and costs! Thank you in advance

I think your flooring budget is v unrealistic and depending on how big your kitchen is potentially you have under budgeted for that as well. That is also a big area for electric underfloor heating to cover, have you checked the running costs for that?

You can certainly do a lot for 15k but you won't get good value if you are not prepared to manage the trades yourself and you go with an all in one kitchen company. I would go ikea for kitchen, do your own research on appliances etc and try and get ex display etc where you can. Are you sure you only have 36sqm of flooring, that floor area is more like a studio flat?

In the UK a porcelain floor heated electrically is an unusual choice.
In the kitchen it depends if you are moving locations of sinks and ovens, adding external venting appliances.

I think you have underbudgeted your kitchen if it's to include all appliances and worktops. Fitting might be OK but not the electrical work. Plus if you have gas you need a gas safe engineer to connect it, and what about plumbing?
Surprised you are not putting the underfloor heating in the loo that's one place I would.
Your flooring budget won't cover replastering, and not sure why you'd need to though (I never have).
£14/m2 is incredibly cheap and your measurements are off - 36sqm is not that big and no way is a kitchen, livingroom, hallway unless your house is tiny (and upstairs?). What about preparing the floor - something must go over the underfloor heating elements.
I'd have budgeted £15,000 for the kitchen alone (to include the cabinets, appliances, worktops, fitting and associated works). Perhaps the flooring.
And what about prep. Who is removing the old flooring and kitchen? Will you need to hire a skip? Who is preparing the ground? Have you budgeted for the electrics- you may need a new consumer unit etc?
Your underfloor heating plus flooring on top will raise the floor levels- you may need to plane the doors down and remove the skirting and even architraves as you say - have you budgeted for a joiner to do that?

Kitchen isn't massive and we won't be changing the location of washing machine/fridge/cooker/sink. It's an L shape. We have underfloor heating in my rented 3 bed house in London, electric bills are £90 a month, half the price in the summer months. The house is a semi-detached house, hallway leads to kitchen/diner and there's a french door leading to a living room with access to the garden (can also access this room from the hallway). With Howden's we would work with a joiner, so it wouldn't be an all-in-one kitchen company.

On the porcelain wood effect tiles, I came across these and did a bit of research and they seem to be a good fit (justanotherhouse_reno): www.instagram.com/p/CLqogwznHmg/

Flooring could well be wrong, I'm going off the floorplan we've been given by the estate agents - we're hoping to go back and measure properly in the coming month.

Floorplan states:
area 403 sq.ft (37.4 sq.m)

KITCHEN/DINER
4.27m (14' 0") X 3.05m (10' 0")

LOUNGE
5.18m (17' 0") X 3.35m (11' 0")

DOWNSTAIRS W.C
2.13m (7' 0") X 0.61m (2' 0")

ENTRANCE HALLWAY
4.83m (15' 10") X 1.83m (6' 0")

I would not opt for electric underfloor heating. We have it but we never ever use it. Total waste of money.

If you’re worried about floors being cold then you could opt for vinyl tiles like Karndean, or engineered wood.

We have UFH in our rented house and love it, as the house is quite small we'd ideally like to free up wall space by getting rid of the radiators.

Is it electric UFH in the house you are in, or is it a piped system?

You'll get much better value at DIY kitchens.

As another poster said a tiled floor in a living room is an unusual choice in a country that doesn't have a hot climate but if you fancy it it's up to you.

I am guessing the footprint upstairs is about the same so you will be looking at at least 750+ for the carpeting alone.

DIY kitchens are definitely worth looking at PP said. Good quality and cheaper, plus easier to fit as pre assembled units.

I'm not entirely sure what system we have here in London, it could well be a water-based UFH (which I know makes it cheaper).

Thank you, I have been looking at DIY Kitchens, when it comes to getting the keys and planning the kitchen I do plan on contacting multiple kitchen companies. If you have any other suggestions please feel free to let me know.

I did originally look at LVT flooring but came across the tiles which I believe are easier to clean and that they work well with UFH - do let me know if you have any other recommendations.

@OneEpisode - porcelain floor with underfloor heating is more common than you think in the U.K. for downstairs.
For the past few years nearly half the jobs I've done have had this or underfloor with LVT
OP
I wouldn't recommend electric underfloor for the whole of your downstairs unless it's designed for it (superinsulated or inscreed) as the running costs are high. If you do go ahead with UFH make sure you get the correct rating for use as primary heating source not as a secondary one. If this is for the whole ground floor you may need to factor in upgrading the mains fuse on the house depending on the age/rating of the electrics.
The sliding door is probably ok as long as it doesn't need to be fire rated.

I can’t give you any idea on costs as I’m not in the UK. But I’m a massive fan of hard floors - if you are having UFH then I don’t see the issue in having tiles in the lounge. We only have tiles and solid wood floors in our house.

I would definitely include UFH for the WC - an extra 2sqm will not dramatically add to the cost.

One thing to bear in mind with solid floors is that you’ll need soft furnishings (eg a nice rug for the lounge) and curtains to make it look cosier. Also because of the acoustics - the acoustics were terrible in our house initially as there were no soft furnishings to absorb the sound. It’s surprising what a difference having hard floors makes.

If you have gas don't get electric underfloor heating the running costs are abhorrent

We are having our kitchen done now. South east. Here are costs we have gone for

Room 3.5 meters by 3.5 meters
Ikea units and trims £4000 that includes sink taps and £450'dishwasher and under unit lights

Worktop £650 solid oak online company

Plastering £250

Electrics £600

Ceiling Light from Next £99

Paint £50

New fancy radiator £400

Smeg range £2400 😫 dh wanted a really nice cooker

Flooring oak engineered wood £1200 inc fitting and plywood under

Fitting day rate but expecting £1600 approx 2 two men We are putting units together. They are just hanging and Doing worktop

Plumbing still waiting on quote
Tiles not chosen yet as shops shut but shouldn't be too much. £300 max. We are tiling ourselves.

Hope that helps. We are doing an awful lot ourselves. All painting decorating and tiling will be done by me but this is my 4th house and I've done 3 kitchens previously.

Electric underfloor heating would put buyers off when you come to sell on.

Thank you so much @whenwillthemadnessend for going into so much detail, I really appreciate it. Good luck with your 4th kitchen! ☺️

Okay so I’m now starting to reconsider the UFH, I’m getting such mixed reviews. My next question is, do any of you have vertical only radiators? Do they let out a lot of heat?

I have vertical rads in the kitchen and hall and they chuck out heat like nobody’s business

It would be put off having under flooring heating in that kind of house OP, it's costly to fix should there be a fault, expensive to run and not very environmentally friendly

You'd be better off spending the money on a better quality kitchen that would last (and look) better.

I have a vertical rad in the kitchen. It is very warm and lovely to stand up against in really cold weather.

Compared to gas central heating Underfloor heating can be really expensive to run, and very expensive to fix if it leaks as the floor has to come up.

I'm a prospective FTB and I would be put off buying a house with UFH, isn't it very expensive to run? Also what happens if there is an issue with it, I'd have no idea where to start that. We have a vertical radiator in our kitchen to save space and it works perfectly fine. I only keep it on low as don't need anything more but I did test it initially and it's just as good as our older horizontal ones that we have in the rest of the house.

We put electric UFH heating in our small bathroom 2 years ago...turns out it costs £50pm to run it...so we turned it off and don't use it. I would NEVER have electric UFH again!

@chloechloe you aren't supposed to have rugs with electric UFH, you also shouldn't have furniture that sits directly on the floor it must have legs. This is because it can overheat and break or worse be a fire risk. It's not a problem with wet UFH systems.

OP vertical rads work just as well as horizontal ones as long as they are an adequate size for the room.
Try a website like www.bestheating.com which has a calculator to tell you what size you need in BTU/Watts and then you can find a matching radiator you like.