Any advice on renovating whole house

[iusedtohavechickens]

We are getting a loan of £60,000 to do up our whole house. Any hints or tips anyone would like to share to keep costs down.

We have written a list and budget and all the money is going into a separate account to track it.

We are doing lounge, kitchen diner, 3x bathrooms, 4. X bedrooms, 3 hallway levels, utility room and back garden.

First I'd revise your budget! Depending where you live and size/quality you are looking for, £60k sounds very tight.
Get all permissions and building license in place.
Warn your neighbours! A preemptive bouquet of flowers will go a long way.
Start top down. Workmen will be traipsing through your house so you don't want them messing up rooms/hallways you have just done.
Get one bathroom done first - you need to have one in use. Unless you will not be living there? If you are not then talk to your builder about timings etc - it will go faster if you aren't there for sure.
Plan meticulously. Cost rack up if you change your mind mid renovation. Do your research - costs vary a lot and if you source your own stuff you have more control. I source flooring, tiles, bathroom, radiators, lighting, kitchen etc. I leave the building materials (wood, plaster etc) up to the trades.
So: move out if you can
Gee permissions and warn neighbours
Start top down
Source your own fixtures
Plan meticulously.
Good luck!

When you say renovating, what do you mean?
A real renovation - new roof, putting in CH, re-organising rooms, moving walls, retiring etc?

Or just putting a new kitchen and redecorating?

I did a total renovation of a very old house, and probably spent around £140,000 and that was almost 9 years ago. So be prepared for £60k to disappear quite quickly.

We’re renovating at present but in phases as we have to live here, our first phase was 80ishk and that was for extending the driveway, (but NOT dressing it as we are having blckkpaveing done once the house is finished)

A very small extension with a balcony (balcony partially done as the is a supply issue with the balustrades) ,

bifold doors,

1 sash window,

changing of rooms so we had a kitchen diner installed where a lounge used to be and a downstairs cloak and utility room installed where there wasn’t one,

New kitchen and bathroom items inc tiles for downstairs cloak

A new en-suite partially done (new sink and loo but no shower of tiling due to that being finished during phase 3 as that room changes slightly in size) and that was started in November 2020 and finished feb 2021, phase two starts in few months but we are waiting on the quote for that

Our kitchen was a Howdens and the cloakroom and en-suite items were from Victoria plumb so nothing handmade or special they are still lovely but as I said its all more big standard than Instagram worthy 😆

Hope that helps you have some idea of cost! It was supposed to be 70k but we had to have new wiring and plumbing and new pipes everywhere as both electrics and plumbing were not to modern legal standards 🙄

I think we are hoping to come in at 160-180k in total after everything has been done! There’s the attic to renovate, (2 bedrooms and a bathroom) main family bathroom and en-suite to sort, staircase to move, sash windows to install, a new front door to knock out (and block up the old one) rendering and block paving! And maybe a new roof? We aren’t sure yet until we have it fully checked , I’m sure there’s other bits but if it’s anything similar to mine, I’m sorry to say but you might need to double your budget 🙈

Are you just decorating or doing building work? We've just done a single storey extension to create a decent size kitchen diner, obviously included new kitchen, we spent £90k ( my top budget was supposed to be £80k!! ... £10k credit card bill unfortunately due to unforeseen issues along the way) we have gone mid range on most things so although could have done cheaper, we certainly didn't go crazy on luxury!

Woth the kitchen don't buy and fit from same place as fitting is way more. Get worktops online not in a shop. Carpenter to fit kitchen.

Make sure you get items in sale periods and store...probably now!

Unless you're doing the work yourself, you'll need more money.

We will be doing as much of the work ourselves as possible, bedrooms are just needing plaster and paint but we are planning to replace central heating. Again everything can be done by us except the boiler but we have lots of mates in the trade thankfully can get guidance from them too and good rates for fitting.

We will be fitting our own kitchen too, just getting someone in to tile floor and walls.

Don't get a loan. Either re mortgage if you can, or save up and do each job separately when you can afford it.

Agree with others that £60k seems low if it’s to include three bathrooms, a large kitchen and new boiler and central heating. We renovated our small two bedroom house with a fairly small kitchen and bathroom and went with medium quality range for everything and ended up at around £25k in total - and that was back in mid-2020 before prices went crazy. We’re told we’d now be looking at almost double that: our friends in the same area looking to have a very similar spec kitchen fitted soon are getting quotes between £6k-£8k higher than our highest quotes and kicking themselves that they waited to save up.

My advice would be to budget in a cheap AirB&B and move out for at least a couple of weeks whilst the messiest and dustiest work takes place. We renovated our house all in one go in and having a sanctuary to retreat to rather than trying to wash, dress, eat and sleep (and in our case, work) in a shambles was a godsend.

If you’re having hard floorings, consider reclaimed wood. Our reclaimed parquet cost a fraction of the price of new (and has more character.)

Anything involving demolition and disposal of waste materials that you can do yourself will save you thousands and requires very little skill. We reckon we saved at least £4k that way.

If you're doing all that stuff I would advise you tile the kitchen splashbacks yourself too. It's really easy. Not the floor due to level issues...is a lot more work!