Floors/ walls/ bathroom? …. Where to start when fixing a house up?

[Wobblyhousehunt]

We’re moving into a house soon, people live there so it’s livable, but it’s also pretty grim. I can’t see myself relaxing in a bath or cooking a nice supper in there as it is 😬

It urgently needs a new bathroom, kitchen, wooden floors resending, some carpets, ceiling panels lifting, painting in all rooms …

What would you do first? Where do you stat on a big project? All floors and walls or one room at a time?

If you are not altering the bathroom in terms of location - the bathroom. It stands alone so to speak. At least that will provide a sanctuary.

Other than that, what are you doing with the kitchen? Are you taking down any walls? Does anything need altering? Water, electrics etc? If not, do the kitchen. Even if you need fairly substantial changes do the kitchen. However you might wish to leave the floor until flooring decisions are made.

Then do all the painting. Then do the floors. Revise this if you are remodelling and get the builder to schedule for you.

I would do one room at a time but things like electrics, central heating systems etc should be done at the beginning if they all need replacing from scratch. Windows/doors can be done individually but often you get a better deal if you do just the front or back or whole house.

No I’m not changing electrics or any of the layout in the house

Has it had an electrical check?

If you are buying an induction hob or modern oven you will need to look at kitchen electrical supply. Up to date regulations should be adhered to. Do you have enough sockets in the right places? What about lighting? It’s rare you can just replace a kitchen in an older house without remedial and updating work.

If you plan on living there during the work, do one room at a time, and prioritise according to what you personally need most for relaxing. Some would say a luxurious bathroom, others a cosy bedroom. I like a nice tv room to drink wine in

We need to renovate the whole of our new house.
We started with the kitchen as it was far worse than we first thought. We're still on with it months later .
We're going to do the main bathroom next as we have an en-suite we are using as it's more bearable than the main bathroom. If we didn't have the en-suite I'd have started with the main bathroom rather than the kitchen as it's disgusting.
We had the new heating system put in as soon as we moved in as we knew it would make a big mess as it wasn't a straightforward job. We also have a door and window replacement scheduled so we can finish off the kitchen.

We're leaving the decorating and carpets until later as they're easier to cope with than the awful kitchen and bathroom.

Make sure you do any large or very dirty jobs first and prioritise anything that could get worse such as leaking doors or bad plumbing (as in our case).
If the house is dirty as well as needing work, make sure you check thoroughly to make sure you haven't got any infestations. We discovered mice and fleas .

Probably depends on whether you're doing the work yourselves or getting trades in. You might not be able to schedule people in for the order you want.
We're doing everything except the plastering ourselves.

Roof, rewiring and any water based things that need changing. Is the shower on the top floor powerful?

Then decorative stuff.

The OP didn’t mention roof, wiring or water!

Unless you've got something big like electrics or heating that impact the whole house, I'd do it room by room; if you try to tackle all the walls/floors at the same time, you have nowhere to retreat with a glass of wine/cup of coffee when you've finished for the day.

From doing ours up recently, I'd say start planning out and deciding on the kitchen and bathroom immediately. They're taking ages to be delivered and to have available trades ready to fit them at the moment. So I'd start with getting the ball rolling there, and accept it might take 3 or 4 months or so for them to be completed.

Then easy stuff you can do immediately - like painting, get this done before you change the carpets and flooring so you don't need to worry about protecting the floors. Quick and easy and it makes a big difference to how bright and clean it all looks. Carpets and flooring you could then do immediately after this. Ours arrived within a week of ordering it and was fitted a couple of days later. You can then get your furniture in, and have a sanctuary of a clean and nice lounge and bedroom for example.

Get some nice bath mats, rugs etc to put on a grotty bathroom floor for a while. Get a clean storage unit for the bathroom, so you have a nice place to put toothbrushes, toiletries, makeup etc until bathroom can be done. I couldn't bear to put mine in the really gross built in storage so it helped

I did living room first (because that’s where all your guests go), then bedrooms so we have space from each other. Working on bathroom just now and hall next. Kitchen last because it’s at the back with stand alone access and the biggest expense.

I've mentioned electrics because I've had to do a lot of upgrading of electrics that were OK a few years ago but the regulations have been changed. Rewiring is a pita & does need doing before any decorating, etc.

We did living room first as that work didn’t impact on anything else and it was lovely to retreat to at night when all else was chaos and dust.

We then did the bathrooms and en suite, as we needed a new cylinder (megaflo), and found out half the radiators weren’t working and the pipes were micro bore and all sludged up. So that was a lot of plastering where we replaced old big radiators with smaller modern ones and floorboards up.

Then kitchen, utility. Now, a year later we are ready to get decorators in after Christmas and then flooring.

We had one company managing the bathroom and plumbing. Then a second company doing everything else subsequently. Managing all the trades would have been a nightmare.

It depends on your plans for the house. I see people saying to do flooring last as it gets damaged by other jobs, but that only applies if you’re going for new carpets/laminate/vinyl etc, whereas you say you want to sand the floors. Sanding is definitely not something you want to be doing after renovating everything else - it needs done early on, though after pipe work or anything else that might necessitate lifting any parts of the floor such as moving radiators. Same with tiling a kitchen or bathroom floor - get the pipes in the right place, then tile, then install kitchen/bathroom fittings.

Agree bathroom is an individual discrete space.
You need to decide if you want to rip it all put and start from scratch now. I'd so do it upfront when you move in personally especially if not rearranging the fittings.

Kitchen - I'd say give it a really good scrub and take your time to plan and redo later on.

Bedrooms and what not are fairly cheap to redecorate. I'd say £500 per room for a high quality/nice finish if you do the work yourself.
It's fairly easy

• Rip out all the carpets
• Sand and repaint all wood work (doors, skirting board, windows)
• Paint or rewallpaper
• fitters in to lay New carpet (buy underlay and grip yourself online not from carpet store- its much cheaper)

If you’re doing flooring, do it before decorating because to do it properly you’ll need to take off the skirting boards - and once reattached, you will need to sort out any damage to the walls.

Painting should be last so you don’t damage it with trades bringing in materials / tools.

Anything else, do room by room so you have space to store things from the rooms you’re working on, and you don’t have no kitchen and no bathroom and no living room - psychologically, that’s really disheartening!