Cost saving floor and wall finish ideas please

[cinnabunbun]

We have planning permission for a small 2 storey rear extension plus loft conversation on our terrace house in London. I'm gutted that our budget of £225k looks like it won't stretch past the most basic shell.

What is the absolute cheapest but safe with kids thing you can do for flooring? I've seen some big concrete effect tiles that look like a low price per sq m but are there other costs associated with tiling that make it more in the long run than just putting pine floorboards down?

Does ply boards plus cheap carpet work out more affordable for upstairs than proper floor boards? Or do you need proper floorboards underneath any boarding anyway?

Ugh..we need to really cut costs somehow. Any magic ideas?

Use property magazines

You don’t need floorboards no, you can just have them boarded then carpet or tile or lino laminate etc straight over the top.

There is lots of really decent vinyl these days (on a roll, not 'luxury' vinyl) that would be great for your downstairs. Upstairs you can just board with standard flooring board (chipboard, I think) and then carpet in top.

Lino/vinyl. My old flat had it (on top of floorboards, as was upstairs). It held up well for 10 years in a living room & halls, was starting to wear in the kitchen

I don’t have a lot of experience with cheaper carpets but understand they are quite good now & with kids I probably wouldn’t spend a lot on carpets anyway due to marks etc

@languagelover96 hahaha I'll need to use them as wallpaper too I think.

Is having lino in a living room totally weird?

Good to know about flooring board OR floorboards as this is a saving.

Their extension is a very small footprint so I thought originally we'd have underfloor heating and some kind of tile or LVT but the labour and basics costs is just making that impossible.

Ugh.. it's so frustrating having to make these decisions so early on as they all have different thicknesses/thresholds

I had wood effect vinyl - everyone thought it was wood

We’re currently converting our garage on a modest budget after spending all our money on the rest of the house. One thing I’ve learnt recently is that you don’t actually have to have your walls plastered. They can be plasterboarded and taped then painted over and you’d never notice the difference. It is quite common in new builds. Also my flooring top tip would be Elka laminate, it’s made by the same people that make quick step and it’s very realistic and hard wearing but at a really reasonable price. We’ve bought sheet vinyl for our garage conversion and I’m really impressed. It was over £20 per sqm but the laying costs are negligible.

All the sub floors in our house are chip board screwed and glued to the joists so you definitely don’t need floor boards, it’s much quicker and cheaper. When looking for carpets always compare costs of your carpet shop with online suppliers. The fitting is actually quite a small part of the cost and normally local flooring shops will reduce their quotes if you can show them a like for like comparison.

The plasterboard walls is standard in US so a v good point