Renovation cost

[Mostunexpected]

We have viewed a lovely property, but it needs a lot of work and is grade 2 listed.
It’s almost 4000 sq feet so there’s a lot of house to renovate. Plumbing needs altering with a new boiler and some new radiators, full rewire, the windows need replacing or repairing, new kitchen and 2 new bathrooms plus 2 additional toilets. Main roof is fine but a small extension bit will need a new roof in the not too distant future. It is habitable, but we’d want to get most of the work done before we moved in.
Luckily not much needs doing in terms of layout as we think it’s almost perfect for us already. We’d like to knock down one wall but I think that would be allowed.
I know this is like asking how long a piece of string is, and we’d obviously need many more viewings with professionals to get quotes for work but I wondered if anyone had a ballpark figure to know if it’s even worth my time booking additional viewings with trades people or whether to forget about it.
We are in Wales.
Thanks in advance

It is an early Edwardian house. So each window is almost 6 foot high and it bays bays (so 3 windows in each). Plus a large set of French doors- wooden and double glazed. 1 window was arched

so 9 large windows - 3 bays each were about £10k each
3 slightly small ashes- about 5 foot high
2 windows about 12-15 foot wide and 4 foot high
3 about 6 foot square
1 about 8 foot by flat
3 tiny windows- toilet 30 by 60 ish
3 dormers- 3 sided
1 about 60 by 120
I think that is it

£100,000 with VAT. I got multiple quotes

22 windows? Then I'd revise my estimate to more like 200K as a bare minimum.

That so helpful. Sounds overall similar apart from this only has 3 bay windows. I count 25 you had done? If the bays were 10k each and we’d only need 3 of those, then maybe 60k is about the right amount?
Like yours some are tiny and also there are some completely normal windows. I’m also assuming almost all of them need redoing but there’s a good chance some wouldn’t. I think the windows would take up such a huge part of any budget that getting a specialist in to quote for that would be a good idea

@BlueMongoose yeah I know the windows will make a huge dent in any budget. 200k total we could work with though and it’s not far of what I was hoping far.

Should add- we haven't had them all done. That was pre-covid and we have had about 0% done in blocks. I did get a quote for the final bay and it was £16k now but I think It would be a bit lower if I shopped around

Yeah it being pre-covid might make a difference.
The house is livable but I don’t want to spend every spare penny I have for the next 20 years fixing bits. Though if the current owners had spent anything at all on it in the last 20 years, it wouldn’t be in the state it is now

It is worth it if you can get through it without too many setbacks. We will try our hand at anything really which helps enormously because things cost so much but also it’s really hard to find good trades people-the good ones are SOO busy. I have started having a go at things myself to save money. For the last 2 months I have been tiling the floor throughout the cottage and next week I’m going to tile the downstairs shower room ( never tiled before).

Hey OP,

We have this project and it's a money pit.

Grade II listed Victorian Sandstone villa, 5 beds, 3 reception rooms and a utility.

We are only part of the way through but I would say you need deep pockets and find good trades people that are used to working with similar buildings.

So far we've had:

• Full rewire (and then additional work after faults found :( ) - £15K
• 3 small windows replaced so far (original wooden sash and case upgraded to double glazed wooden sash and case that complied with listing & conservation area) - £2K
• New boiler, almost complete replumb, new radiators (still a few radiators to go) - £12K
• New bathroom and another to go in in April (converted small spare room into family bathroom) - £11K for first (replacement) £20K for second (putting in new pipework)
• New downstairs WC - £5K
• Renovated utility (ongoing) - £10-15K
• Replastered throughout - £6K
• Knock through (ongoing) - £70-80K
• Under floor insulation - £2K
• Rebuild Sandstone garden wall - £6K

For our large windows to get them upgraded to double glazed we are looking at between £2-3K per window (with a bay window = 3 windows). We have 2x bay, 10xwindows and one original double height arched window in the stairway. So looking at £60-80K plus whatever the large window cost.

We've been quoted for £20K per side of the house for sandstone restoration and cleaning.

Kitchen is going to be god knows how much.
Also re-instating cast iron spindles as per the original plans will cost £5K.

We will then only have 1 more bedroom and bathroom to do! Luckily roof is in good nick and is still under guarantee.

@DeedlessIndeed Thanks so much!
That sounds not too bad actually and similar to what we’d need to do.
But we’ve only got one small wall we’d want to knock through and no other building work. If they said it was going to cost 70-80k for that wall to be knocked through we just wouldn’t do it.
In this house the bathrooms would stay where they are and the only thing we’d need to do is put a toilet in to the one bathroom that doesn’t have one. The downstairs toilet is already there and would just need a new one fitting on the same place so I think bathroom costs would be a lot less than yours though there would be a substantial amount of pipe work needed as it’s so old.
The outside of the property seems really good. There’s an outbuilding which would need work but that’s something we’d do at a later date ourselves.
I’m guessing yours might end up a bit over 300k. But there’s quite a few things on your list we wouldn’t need doing, and I can’t think of that much that I know we’d need to do in addition to what you’ve done.

@ZsaZsaTheCat you've done a great job! I think we’d try to give things a go. We’ve done tiling before, and fitted a kitchen. But we have 2 young kids and busy jobs so just can’t do loads

We have a grade II listed late Georgian house that we inherited and (for various legal reasons) can't sell anyway at the moment. It was my family home and is a really great house but when I inherited it part of it was in an absolutely derelict state and the liveable bit was working but things are falling apart at quite a clip. We are not living in it though.

The best thing we did was employ a local architect who we got on really well with and, because the house is pretty rural, she knows local builders and the planning and conservation officers really well. She mainly works on houses with a listing so isn't going to go far out of what is allowed.

We had spoken to a couple of builders who didn't seem keen (it is an eight bedroom place all in all) and so much needed to be done that we found it hard to find anyone. Again our architect said she had worked with a company before and showed us their work and the scale of things they had done and gave us their details. We now have a great medium sized company who will do what we want when it is needed and have been great.

Again planning and conservation was much better because she put in all our applications and was able to get the conservation officer round, during Covid, who said they would rush things through because it was falling in and might kill someone.

The quote is high, we think it might add up to £350k hopefully not much more but we want to do things properly (lime plaster, lime pointing, original or reclaimed slates, reclaimed materials where possible, everything done as historically as possible secondary glazing throughout).

It is such a privilege to own the building. It was there long before me and, if we do things properly it will be there long after I have gone. Dad always said we are only temporary custodians and need to look after things for the future. I love this philosophy, and want to make it a pleasure to live in while retaining the history.

I can recommend SPAB as they have so much free advice if you are a member, and run courses which are really practical. Also the Facebook group 'Your Old House UK', which is amazing for knowledge on how to do things well.

One thing to be aware of which I have found very difficult (the rest I was pretty knowledgeable on) was how difficult it is to get home insurance for an unoccupied building in a somewhat dilapidated state. It took 7 months and if the rebuild cost (not the value of the building) is over £1m, which for a listed building it probably will be (value of our house £500k - rebuild cost 1.7m!), very few places will agree to insure you. We finally got some through Abode brokers but it's expensive - once it is done though it will be much cheaper!

Good luck, it is such a wonderful privilege to live in an old house (funds permitting!) and bringing (potentially) yours back to a loving family home will be a wonderful legacy!

That’s such a lovely post @Knickersinatwist36
This house was owned by someone who seems to be a bit of a big deal in these parts and it would be amazing to own a little piece of that history.
The building is definitely livable and no part of it is dilapidated, and it’s only a couple of miles down the road so I think it would be occupied - probably by my husband while he gets bits of work done and we’d split time between there and our current house.
But the potential cost of insurance even after it’s all done does give me nightmares!

Going by the work we did, I'd say you're looking at north of 600k easily

Oh God! What work did you have done?
I’m sure I'm being really naive but I don’t see how it can possibly add up to that much

(just to clarify- we had our work done/did it after covid started, so the prices we paid do reflect the big post-covid rises)

Thank you. I feel like pre-covid prices are so different that it’s almost irrelevant to what it will cost today.
But I’m also aware that things really aren’t cheap here. Everyone thinks Wales is cheap but we found we could get things done cheaper when we were in London!
We are off on holiday in a couple of days so will give it a lot of thought, and probably drink enough cocktails that it seems like an excellent idea (and then resign ourselves to never being able to afford another holiday again)

@Mostunexpected , glad that helps!

For the knock through it started at estimated 25K. Quickly went to just under 50 but had already started so we carried on.

If we'd have known it was going to get anywhere near 80K we'd have never touched the bugger!

It's the joys of an old house, fussy planning departments and post covid labour costs.

@DeedlessIndeed What went wrong to increase the cost that much?! It’s something that worries me a lot.

@Mostunexpected - I suppose working in old, listed buildings there are always unexpected costs, but yes a bit worrying. Luckily we had saved enough for in kitchen budget so could cover costs.

We had a structural engineer and architect to get it through the listed buildings office at the council, however when work was started we found various bits were in a worse condition than first thought.

Basically, we needed 11 structural steels instead of 4. Then there was a foundation which was in poor condition and needed rebuilt. Joists had to be replaced and pipework had to be re-routed.