London Renovations [2024]

[EleMar]

Evening Mumsnetters,

As we embark on a major renovation project, it would be very helpful if you could share how much you recently spent or the quotes you are receiving for your London renovation.

For context, our house is a 250 sq m, 4-5 bedrooms, terraced house in west London. It's a complete renovation - new roof, kitchen extension etc. back to bricks essentially.

I'd be interested in this too! We are east London - 1840s house of similar size, listed. And are in stage of scoping for quotes.

I'm sure it would benefit from back to brick with an architect styling it but budget won't allow.

So I'm thinking get the basics done, roof (40-50k), windows (40k), electrics (12k), plumbing (15k), and then work each room one at a time. Kitchen will be most expensive.

An architect said budget 2500 per sqm, then professional fees on top. I'm not planning to spend anywhere near that. RICS estimate you can rebuild an entire 200sqm house for about 400k.

@VaseandCandle helpful to hear your architect said to budget 2500 per sqm + professional fees. We received the first estimate from a builder for £1m excluding kitchen - so we are trying to understand where the market currently is (whilst we also speak to other builders).

1m excluding kitchen? I’m crying. A builder we spoke to recently also mentioned his mate is spending this figure (but with kitchen).
Our house is 5 bed in north London. We recently got dormer roof replaced and the back extension roof done for 40+k we’re still reeling and feel we got charged a very strong price. Should have asked around more

We’re Sussex and are struggling to get quotes anywhere near £2500/sqm. Spec will make a huge difference but we’re nearing double that for a 36sgm single storey extension. I work in the industry and costs have just gone haywire over the last two years - our architect was gobsmacked by some of the quotes but we can’t find anyone to do it for less.

Not trying to be negative - we’ve had to make some really difficult decisions around scope of works when we’d have been able to do what we wanted easily within our budget a couple of years ago.

@McCheck @TwinklyTornadoBear thank you both. It is helpful to know that the estimate is in line with market and that we are not alone!

Hello! We just viewed a similar size Victorian house in west London and interested in how much you ended up paying or budgeted on your renovation works to understand if we could afford putting an offer down. Thank you

We have not started yet, but current estimates are around 1.1m for back to brick + kitchen extension + some basement work (there is already a large cellar which we are extending) + new roof. High spec works with a couple of interesting features. We are due to receive a more accurate estimate in the next few days.

Oh good luck and thank you for sharing. Do you mind sharing how much you were quoted for basic foundation work: new roof, wiring, plumbing, plastering? Since we probably won’t be doing the similar high spec stuff. Thank you xxx

Prices are crazy these days. But it comes down to what level of materials and finishings you want. An architect sounds like a big expense but you will save in the end. Recon you can’t do anything with less than 200k. My architect is working on a mews house - full renovation - and she mentioned something around £400k. But that’s using posh everything.

Our kitchen extension came in around £65k a couple of years ago, but I know that's sadly unrealistic nowadays. We used a company called Home Tales for our design who were really great with helping us budget and understand what we could achieve, I found it a bit terrifying when I was looking on here and seeing everything from 50k to 500 k 😥