Im in the NW unfortunately so my recommendations are no good, sorry!
Our house was basically gutted and I’ve got to be honest, I wouldn’t do it again. For the first few months, we found an expensive horror we couldn’t ignore every week - rain pissing into our bay roof cavity, loose walls, giant cracks, structural issues, etc. I had two weeks off work with stress in the end and it put a big strain on our relationship at times.
We spent around £60k in total and for that got a new bathroom, new kitchen, new roof inc bay, full rewire, rotten joists replaced and all our joists levelled then new (to us) reclaimed boards laid throughout downstairs, new boiler and heating system, one internal wall completely demolished and rebuilt, whole house plastered, 20 sets of helibars to knit the walls together and sliding doors between our reception rooms.
That was nearly 50% more than our budget despite us trying to keep costs down. I project managed all the work, did the rip out with my partner inc taking it back to brick, sourced all fixtures and fittings (every item in the kitchen & bathroom, skirting, coving, doors, lights, etc), my brother did some work for us at mates rates (sadly he wasn’t near enough to do it all) and we’ve done loads of DIY.
I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved for the money we had but it’s consumed my entire life for 20+ months now with no end in sight. There’s still so much paint scraping, priming, filling, trimming, painting, making cupboards and buying furniture like wardrobes, pointing, etc to do. The only positive is I’ve lost over 2 stone with all the physical labour 🤣
Materials, skilled tradespeople, etc are so expensive these days that renovating is extremely stressful if you don’t have very deep pockets or the privilege of not needing to work full time whilst also doing DIY! Please get some quotes before you go any further with your purchase and allow yourself a huge emergency budget. We got quotes and budgeted 20% for emergencies - that was gone within the first month!!