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.

I'll pm you!

Sorry about delay getting back to you @main789. So some of those have labour included - the new window price, for instance, includes labour, as does the rewire, whereas the kitchen price just includes the labour to fit the units and sink themselves, not all the extra stuff that goes with a kitchen. So that is some of the 'extra'.

There are an awful lot of 'bits' of things that add up. So the structural engineer was about £450, building control costs add up depending on number of inspections they need to do, waste disposal/skips about £2.5k. Portaloo hire about £650. 'Builders clean' at the end of it all about £300. Plant hire was just under £1k. Each new internal door has an allocated amount of about £150 for door, handles etc and fitting but there are nine of them so that's another £1k+ just on doors. The doors are from Howdens and the builder helped by identifying which ones were in that price range as we didn't want to go wildly over, but we haven't chosen the handles yet.
We've got a few walls that needed repointing, the chimney needs some work to make safe on the roof.

Very helpful, thank you @RidingMyBike !

Hi @main789 we're just finishing a renovation of a 4 bed house just outside zone 6. We haven't extended at all but in total (without furniture or decorations but including paint etc.) was £120k. We didn't need rewiring as the house was from the 90s but did need a new fuse board. There were 15 windows and two sets of doors though.

We didn't use an interior designer as I love that stuff and my husband did some of the decorating and cabling for the internet to save money. We also did a part conversion of our external garage but that isn't included in those costs.

Kitchen was from HMKOC and I spent a lot of time sourcing everything from internet based companies to get good deals or discounts. For example we have real Carrara marble tiles in our family bathroom which I got for £35 psqm. We were working on 50/50 Labour vs materials as a result.

I don't know much about interior designers but while you pay them I think they also make a percentage on the fixtures and fittings you buy. I'm not sure that this makes it more expensive than you could buy it for yourself as I'm sure they have deals with the suppliers.

Most interior designers I see when I look at Houzz have a particular style so maybe you could start by finding someone's work you like and finding out how much they cost? From what I can see from some accounts I follow, a lot do varying levels of help from a couple of hours and a moodboard to full management so maybe that's a way of getting the look you want without paying for a full service.

i have a spreadsheet somewhere with all the costs broken down if it would help?

@SollaSollew that's so helpful! I love interior design as well, it's just that, unlike you, I am terrible at it :) I am also scared we'd spend all this money and then the house won't even look nice or flow as it should.
Oh wow great deal on the tiles! Sounds like shopping around is a must, and I do partially hope that the right design firm would have all the tips and tricks for sourcing quality materials cheaper than I could. May be wishful thinking though!
It's exactly what I have been doing, phew - trying to understand their style (and mine!), reading a lot, and contacting some of them.
A spreadsheet would be amazing - I just PM-ed you.

get A spreadsheet and list our everything you will need that start estimating. I have just spent £60k on a kitchen extension. On top of this I have budgeted downstairs only

I have budgeted
£25k for kitchen including some appliances and quartz worktops
£5k for utility room
£10k for flooring
£4k for new radiators
£2k for downstairs loo
£5k for new patio area
£2k for lighting
£2k for decorators
£7k for new sofas, dining table, island stool and hall console.

mall include material and labour

@Stripedbag101 thank you, this is exactly what I am doing. It's just that for costing each item, I wanted to rely on what people actually spent when they did similar projects. And likewise to even define the top-level categories - otherwise I might miss something. No more accurate estimate than what people actually spent.

it is so tough to budget for these things - it varies wildly depending on taste etc. flooring can cost anything from £15 sq M for the really cheap flooring to well over £100 sq me. My hall floor is £60 per sq meter. The rest of half that.

a new kitchen can be anything for a few thousand to £100k. Radiators can be cheap as chips or thousands.

you really need to make the list and start looking at what you like and how much that costs: for example if you are going for quartz worktops that’s maybe £5k for a average sized kitchen. There are sites you can get instant quotes. Or a few hundred for a basic countertop. I spent £1k on a boiling water tap - Ia Basic tap is less than £100.

so quite often what other people spend isn’t a that relevant.

I had forgotten to budget for blinds, radiators, the decorator and the outside patio!

it’s lovely putting your own stamp in a house - but stressful! Good luck

Exactly this.

I am still picking my jaw up the floor from having to spend £2400 on blinds for two windows. This is what happens when you allow architects to design weirdly shaped/angled glass in your home. I thought the windows were expensive, but that’s before I found out the price of blinds to cover them.

Curtains are very expensive. The H&M Home options now look very appealing.

Lighting is crazy expensive. Let’s say you want 2 wall lights in bedrooms and bathrooms, that’s around £100 per light if you are thrifty and willing to do a lot of shopping on weird China-based websites (my tip: use Trustpilot. There are loads of fraudsters in that area). That’s not including the electrician, wiring and dimmer switches - or the bulbs, which also add up.

Ceiling pendants, if you want real quality you’re talking thousands per pendant. Even “cheap” knock offs will be mid-hundreds.

If you want led strip lighting, for instance on stairs, joinery, kitchen etc, that’s probably another grand or more if you want good quality, continuous (not little dots of light).

Joinery - we were quoted over £150k on joinery alone. That didn’t include the kitchen. And (sadly) we didn’t have anything gold plated. In the end I assembled a mishmash of ikea, DIY kitchens, bespoke doors from Superfront, Noremax, etc, and sourced door handles on Etsy, Amazon, and trade websites. I saved a lot but the time spent on coordinating all this is huge.

Decorators - I am in awe at people allocating 2k, we were quoted £34k (although our house is roughly twice the size of yours following extension). And I’m pretty sure that was labour only (didn’t include paint or wallpaper).

On wallpaper : nice, Designers Guild/Pierre Frey etc will set you back £1000-3000 per room in supply only, not including installation.

Such a load of nonsense. You can get lovely lighting for a fraction of those prices. Heal’s for example do wall lights around the 100 quid mark, not some knock off Chinese site. Ceiling pendants do not cost thousands.

Given that this poster was quoted 150k for joinery and talks about their architect, one has to assume that they are not very savvy and rather inexperienced. Do not be put off by such completely out of touch figures. I just feel bad for them as it looks like they have been ripped off a bit.

how long is a piece of string? Every house is different, every project is different.
If you want a slightly more 'scientific' figures seek a quote from a professional builder. Min 3 if you can and make sure you compare apples to apples. when you choose your quote and your builder, add 20% on top and you may be lucky to get the job done within budget. Good luck.

£34k for a decorator??? @Yellownotblue i worry you in have been taken of advantage of. Even at a a generous rate of £300 a day that is a lot of days to paint a house!!! That’s a painter working solidly for about four months!!

@dollymixtured , why are you so rude? People get very defensive on here whenever budgets are mentioned. I am as savvy as anyone, maybe my standards are higher than yours. I’m getting tired of the personal attacks. 🤨

The OP is in a similar area to mine. You won’t get a full house decorator quote for £2k. That’s pie in the sky.

The cheapest wall light at Heals that isn’t just a bare bulb, is £100. The most expensive is £6900. I don’t think I’m misleading the OP by saying £100 is a minimum. The same goes for pendants, Heals alone has some going up to 11,500.

Yes I have an architect, we are doing a large extension on a house in London and it would never have been granted PP without meticulous planning. That apparently means I’m “rather inexperienced”? Sounds like sour grapes to me.

You don’t have to worry about me, I know exactly what I’m paying for. Thank you though!

Okay, point taken! It must be some size of a house - I am very jealous😊

@Stripedbag101 its not even that big! But it’s got a lot of detail. And my contract has a fixed price for decorating, so the fact that decorators are costing an arm and a leg at the moment, is being absorbed by the builder, not me.

OP, you also asked specifically about bespoke joinery, designers etc.

On joinery, we had quotes for £17k for one walk in wardrobe, and 12k for a large shelving unit and tv bench. 20k for a walk in pantry.

Bespoke joinery is extremely expensive and tends to book up months or more ahead.

On tiling: I used to be a fan of Mandarin Stone, I am not anymore after this project. Their tiles are wonky, uneven and hard to lay tidily. Even in the same range, tiles will vary by 2mm - this shows when you grout.

Give me straight edged Porcelanosa anytime.

I have found it quite hard working with designers, but I’ve concluded it’s because I actually know what I want and don’t need the handholding (and ridiculously inflated prices). But if you have a very comfortable budget, not sure what you want, and you are not focused on bagging a bargain (an obsession of mine!), it must be really nice to sit back and let someone else do all the hard design work and put entire arrangements together.

Still, there are designers that will happily work on an hourly rate (budget £50-75 per hour) if you need a sounding board for specific questions, such as - should my skirting boards be painted white or the same colour as the walls? What’s the best white paint for ceilings? Should I go for a painted bathroom sink or white? What height should my living room pendant be? Which grasscloth wallpaper will look best on my wall? What size ceiling rose do I need in this room? etc. I think spending a few hundred pounds on this is money well spent, just so you can avoid mistakes.

OTOH a good project manager is invaluable, I would not have managed without mine. He is particularly good at understanding what I want, and making it happen. They also take some of the stress away - problem shared/problem halved and all that.

Good luck!

Those lighting prices seem very expensive. We went to a local independent hardware store with an excellent lighting section and chose lights at about the £85 mark. They had some that were more expensive but not more than a few £100.

It might also help if people specified WHAT the quote is for? £2k or £34k on decorating is going to be for very different houses using very different materials. And probably in different parts of the country.

Our decorating quote is for about £10k exc VAT for a six bedroom house. That's for labour and using Dulux paint in a max of 3 colours so will end up costing more than that as we'll have more colours.

My decorating costs were downstairs only. All my costs are downstairs only

£2k is to paint the kitchen, living room and hall. Woodwork, doors and walls. 25 year old house, no wall paper to strip or damage.

I will supply paint.

These types of posts are very difficult because the range in quality is immense. We splurged on a Chelsea lighting designer and our lights were thousands of pounds (she only designed a few rooms) but we had motion lighting and our large family room zoned etc. However, some people will order from Amazon so cost difference will be extreme.

Regarding decorators, we were quoted 2k for basically one and a half walls, ceiling and skirting for one room. We've decided that's where we can claw money back but I think the only way to get a true indication of cost is from your builder or tradesmen. Even our architect got our renovation cost estimate massively wrong. It was double what they thought!