SW London Major Refurb

[planforeverything]

Looking for any ballpark figures from anyone who’s done a recent full refurb on a house in London. It’s a 1500 square foot 3 bed terraced house, has been lived in for 60 years and needs everything out and everything out back in plus side return, loft extension, windows etc. Literally everything new and it’s likely not liveable for us due to the heating being so poor. SW London but going to try builders from London and Surrey/Berks etc.

I can’t get a builder to come out to quote me for the works - all saying they are fully booked for weeks. Anyone done similar?

There is a thread on this board where a quote for a side return is costing 90-100k.

There is a shortage of labour and materials on top on increased demand.

I don't know how much you have got to spend but this will cost you a lot of money, time and stress.

Sorry to be so bleak.

SW London here - we had 3 builders round last week to quote for dormer loft extension + full bathroom, existing bathroom refurb, removal of two chimney breasts and replacement stairs.

One wouldn't quote as we don't want the work until next spring and said they couldnt guarantee prices, one wouldnt quote for some spurious reason (i think didnt want the job) and one quoted £62k + VAT (excluding bathroom suite). Hope that helps!

We are in Clapham/Battersea and had just finished a major renovation

We applied for planning in January and got 5 builders to quote on the basis of our plans
Only 3 did and there was a spread of £70-110k for the quotes
We accepted one in February/March on the basis that we would start when we got planning, but the earliest they could start was May

They finished at the end of Sept and last I heard, they were nearly fully booked for the rest of next year

That said, I would recommend them in a heartbeat so if you want wait til later on in 2022, I’d happily PM you their details

We had already done other works and this was the final part of the refurb but roughly speaking:
£20k for 2 new bathrooms
£20k for a new boiler, megaflo and radiators
£80k for a new side return and small extension (excluding the kitchen but including glass)
£20k to replaster and lay new floors on the ground floor and stairs
£30k for new wooden sash windows throughout
£5k to landscape the garden after it was finished

The loft was already done when we bought it so I don’t know what the going rate is now

How many bathrooms? Are you getting any work done externally? You should budget at least £150k. There is no way anything less than five figures will suffice.

We’re adjusting a ground floor extension, doing a loft conversion and refurbing a (soon to be) 4-bed house in SW London (c. 1,800 sq ft). We’ve budgeted £200,000 but that seems to be considered on the low side.

I'd budget £150k-£180k for all of that work.

We have a Victorian semi 5 bed that needed full refurb (heating, wiring, plumbing, plastering), in SW London. We also did the loft and side return. Slightly horrified to say it cost us around £400k - tho a chunk of that was architects and we were reasonably high spec, so could have done it more cheaply with different choices. That was in 2018/19 - from what I’ve heard costs have gone up.

Sorry, meant to say we started at c.2000 sq ft and have gone to about 2300ish

It was a similar scale of change to how yours sounds (we did manage to keep some windows!) tho obviously a slightly bigger starting point. We had to move out - rent was on top of those costs…

We renovated a 3 bed terrace in 2017 but no side return extension or loft..work involved redoing kitchen, WC and bathroom, new windows including some wooden sash throughout, new carpets, decorating, installation of new chimney flu and fireplace and all sorts of annoying bits of work which needed doing but didn't cosmetically improve anything..also removed pebbledash, had bricks repointed and did front and back gardens. Think it totalled about £85k. Had to projevy manage it all ourselves - had lots of different tradesmen involved. Doubt you'd get change from £200k with everything you are suggesting, and at today's prices.