House refurbishment in 2023

[main789]

Dear community,

We will be renovating a 3bed/3bath 1500 sqft Victorian house in West London (Zone 2). No extension, no loft conversion, no structural work, however we want to do full internal renovation. Was last done 20 years ago, and was done well for the time.

I am trying to get a feel for how much it would cost. I am especially curious about reasonably high-end finish and working with a design agency. Not thinking expensive marble, fancy designer furniture brands, or ultra high-end appliances, but do want to do nice custom cabinetry, wood panelling in some places, high quality finishes, nice lighting.

What would 150 get me in terms of quality and finish? 200? 250? 300? 500?

Any experience with design firm price bands? Any examples of cheap, mid-market, and expensive agencies - names and how much they would charge? I know some would tell you a rough number per sqft/sqm for a typical house they do, which is already useful.

Any tips would be appreciated!

P.S. I went through www.mumsnet.com/talk/property/4473332-how-much-did-your-home-renovation-cost and www.mumsnet.com/talk/property/4442601-How-much-to-completely-renovate-this-house - already super useful. Any other threads or websites to go through much appreciated too.

We're doing a complete renovation of a similar sized house in the NE at the moment. It'll come in at about £180k.

No extensions etc. Includes full rewire and installation of heat pump, Solar panels and UFH. Doesn't include any work in the garden or driveway.

Not high end - Howdens kitchen, local bathroom company, tiles from Topps tiles.

Ours will include lighting from local independent company.

We eventually want to do nice cabinetry type stuff in several rooms but can't afford it ATM and want to live there for a while to see what would work for us.

It's a 3 bathroom/4 toilet house and we're moving two of the bathrooms which adds to the cost because of moving soil pipes etc

Can I ask how much it cost to move a bathroom please? I know every house is different but we're contemplating doing the same at the moment....

Following

What do you mean by design agency? Do you mean an interior designer?

So cost of new downstairs loo is about £2k (before VAT). That includes actual walls and a door, as well as new soil pipe and the other plumbing. The drainage alternations alone are about £900 before VAT.

The other one (shower room) isn't totally costed up yet as we can't afford to do it ATM. Replacing the upstairs bathroom is about £4k but that doesn't involve moving the plumbing around.

We are just completing a 130sqm extension. Getting the shell built and up cost us around £100k. Fitting out has cost us way over another £200k and still going. I thought the extension was the expensive bit but actually its the renovation and refurbishment. Labour is hugely expensive and whatever you are spending on fittings is on top. One tradesman is £1000 (or more!) a week now. I have been running at £5k a week on labour for weeks and weeks now. Plumbing and electrics are always more expensive than you think.

150 is probably not doable tbh. I think 200k will get a standard finish.

You are all fantastic!

@RidingMyBike thank you very much. This is so helpful! We also lived in the house for 8 months without doing any work (don't ask..) to build up some understanding of what we want, what doesn't work conceptually, etc. Would it be abusing your kindness too much if I asked for any indicative breakdown of the £180K per groups? That way I can start zooming into the specifics and research cost variations NE to London, as well as across different types of finishes.

@Hills2022 yes, exactly - an interior designer. I can see these vary a lot as well: from 1-2 people gigs to dozens of people who do projects internationally. There are some that are based outside of the UK and their work looks very pretty, though I suspect they might be just as expensive and I am horrified by how they would manage to pull off a project not local to them. But they must, given their portfolios contain projects all over the world. But then again, these are likely far outside my price range..

@nomoneytreehere thank you so much! Where are you based? As with @RidingMyBike , it would be extremely helpful if you have any sort of breakdown of the £200K!

@Alexalee thank you! By "standard", do you mean broadly the same vendor categories as @RidingMyBike ("Not high end - Howdens kitchen, local bathroom company, tiles from Topps tiles").

By the way, even with those vendors I could imagine there is quite a bit of variation between the kitchen you buy or the floor you choose, with at least 2-3x cheapest to most expensive option - is that fair? So I am also trying to calibrate what "standard" means to people :)

I'm curious to know how much the house is worth if you're thinking of doing £200k worth of work in terms of interior finish only and nothing structural. Will you get your money back? Are you rewiring / plumbing / reconfiguring?

I would say standard would be 10k kitchen 5k a bathroom. Tiles and flooring at around 20/m2

Just got a quote from Wren today for a large kitchen including installation and floor. 47k!!! Gobsmacked!

@AlanDavidson it's a great question and that's why I am trying to work out what would be a sensible budget. Houses in the area go for 1.4-1.6, and not ones that have been just refurbished or were ever done to a high finish. We are not after making a profit on the refurbishment, we are intending to live here a long time and want to do it nicely for ourselves. Given where we bought, I'd say that if we spent £150K we'd be looking at a pretty average price per sqm. And of course I'd imagine premium finish to sell above average. What is your view?

@ilovetomatoes I recently made the mistake to visit a design centre here in London just to get some ideas. You know, the kind of place where many firms have showrooms. A lovely gentlemen showed me around a stunning kitchen they had on display. £150K! Very, very far out of our price range :) Frankly I didn't even realise this price range existed (in retrospect, I should have figured..).

@AlanDavidson I should have mentioned, the previous owner already did extensive amounts of structural work and it is now a unique shell where the structure is very different from any other house on the street. It's just that this was done 20 years ago and so needs to be modernised. I am not sure re: rewiring / plumbing, I suspect it's one of those items that will become clear once layers are removed..

We are in Yorkshire. Doing a big extension and some structural work—-shell only for 50k. Adding about 1/3 of the space to a barn. Electrics and plastering approx £6000. God knows what the kitchen will be but budgeting about £7k as keeping the old appliances. I think to re do the whole place we might be around £100k but as it will add a third of the size, an extra bedroom and a feature open plan kitchen diner we are hoping it will add more then 100k value. We’ve been here about 8 months, builders are slow and I’m incredibly stressed and cold and damp!

We went for mid-range in the things we chose - so Howdens has three ranges of kitchens and we went for one of the middle ones. That seemed a good compromise in terms of quality vs how much we were spending. Same with the bathroom stuff, light fittings, doors/handles.

These costs are all minus VAT
Full re-wire - just over £10k
Kitchen (units, tap, sink only) - £6k
Utility room - £2k
Downstairs loo - £2k
Bathroom (shower over bath) - £4k
Replacement uPVC windows and doors - about £10k.
Under-floor heating, air source heat pump and solar panels I think came to about £20k in total. It would have been cheaper just to replace the elderly gas boiler and use existing radiators but we wanted the heat pump and the pipes etc weren't in great condition. We should get a £5k grant back from this though.
Flooring throughout will be about £12k that's a mixture of LVT, tiles and carpet.
Decorating throughout another at least £10k (undoubtedly more!)
There are lots of small(ish) things that end up adding up - replacing skirting boards, coving and architraves is another several £1k.
All new internal doors adds up especially once you factor in handles etc.
We are moving some walls, soil pipes etc so that adds up.
Some roof and brick repairs from survey will total a bit less than £10k.

We are spending what seems like a lot given the value of the house (probably about a third of its value) but this is our forever home and we need it to work in a particular way. It was carefully chosen to work for us as a working family and also as we get older. We did similarly in our previous house - spent about a quarter of its value renovating it, although we did that over a period of years rather than all at once.

So we are SE London and are just coming to the very end of a big renovation.
Ours has included knocking down an old kitchen extension and building a new one twice the size plus upper storey extension for new bathroom, plus internal new shower room and utility.

altogether, not including painting which we haven’t got to yet, we’ve spent nearly £200k.
includes Wren kitchen (their highest price range incl quartz tops) at £16.5k plus fitting of £3.5, so £20k on the kitchen alone (not including flooring)
Mid range bathroom fittings from Victorian Plumbing (quality bath from Better Bathrooms) - fittings plus install & tiling £8.5k
and cheaper shower room fittings from Victoria Plum - fittings, install, tiling £5k (excl vat)
Tiles from Topps Tiles and similar online outlets
engineered wood floor in kitchen from UK Flooring Direct plus fitting came to £6k (excl vat)

our extension shell with electrics, glazing, plumbing was £120k (expensive foundations!)

our builders and tradesmen were not local and not the cheapest, but we got quality and good work.

all design, sourcing of materials etc we did ourselves

I think the moment you add in any third party designers etc that is going to add a huge amount to your total comparatively

@4onway oh dear, I can totally imagine! We still have only 1 functioning toilet, no proper shower (just a hose thing attached to the faucet), still can't figure out how to operate the existing heating (we just about got it to work a few days ago ... but don't ask me how!), took us forever to work out how to use the oven (as so old no docs, and markings gone), kids share a bedroom. Yeah.. fun times!

You are amazing, @RidingMyBike , thank you so much! Is it correct to assume that the balance to 150K (180-VAT), which seems to be about 60K, is labour, and these 90K are for materials?
I am exactly the same as you on the spend - thinking long-term and can thus justify spending a bit more on the bits we would like to be nice, to the extent we can afford it.

@EntreMummy oh fantastic, thank you very much. This is such a helpful breakdown, as is having a London reference point. Congratulations on finishing the project - must be so exciting to be at this stage! Fully understood re: adding a third party, so need to see if we can afford.

Don’t use Wren for installation. We made that mistake and the wounds are still raw. We had to arrange replastering, tiling and electrics ourselves, it appears the only thing included is actually fitting the units and plumbing the sink. The fitter also dumped the old kitchen on the lawn - I foolishly and naively thought they’d use a skip - and we’re going to have to returf in the spring.