How much work to renovate this house to basic livable conditions? Time/Cost estimates

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Hoping to have your advice regarding a property I am considering to buy. Floorplan and photos as linked below. A few photos were from EA, but most of them were from my camera.

postimg.cc/gallery/Vm0JPBM

I am FTB, no DIY skills, and don't particularly enjoy DIY. How much would it cost to bring the house to a basic livable condition? My standard is very low, heating and running water is enough for me to survive, anything else can be dealt later. But i will appreciate your help to get a rough idea, if I have two months time before moving into this property after completion, is it enough time to get the following things done by hiring contractors?

1. Rewire the house
2. Take out the old boiler and water tank and install new boiler and probably radiators
3. Replace the carpets in upstairs bedrooms
4. Peel off wall paper and fresh paint.
5. New windows if possible

Can this be done in 2 months time? How much would it cost in London zone 4?
Thank you.

I bought a house in the south east like year and I paid:

• Full rewire, new sockets, removing old light features, new fuse board: £5k. Took 5 days.
• New boiler: £3k. Done in one day
• carpets: I removed them myself, got a sander and restored the old floor board that was underneath so the only cost was some repairs to damaged floorboards and then buying floorboard paint so about £300 for the whole house
• I also painted the whole house myself to keep costs down.

I would say the main difficulty is to find reliable tradespeople.

It is likely will be expensive and also the best ones are usually booked in advance so your two month timeline might be a bit tight.

Also there might some hidden issues once you remove the wall paper and you might need some re-plastering.

It doesn't look that bad.

I'd say - so long as you have people ready to go - you could do the work in that time. What you will struggle with is the lead in times for things like windows and possibly carpets.

We had a 10 week lead in time for windows.

May I ask how you decided the order of which work should go first. I would imagine as long as the house has electricity/water/heating/door/windows then it is livable. So I would prioritise in the following order

1. Fix any broken door locks, yard fences, or window glasses (new windows years later even though the current one are very old)
2. Install new boiler and radiators
3. Rewire
4. Strip the walls and re plaster/paint, focusing on upstair bedrooms first
5. Replace the carpet upstairs
6. Install a new kitchen (months later after moving in)
7. Fit a new bathroom (months later after moving in)

The list above is ranked by my priority of needs, but I don't know if this makes sense in terms of renovating work flow. Could it cause repeated work and unnecessary cost due to wasted money/time spent?

The main issue will be finding good people who can do it on such a tight timescale. A good rule of thumb when employing tradespeople is that you can only ever have 2 out of these three things, good, cheap and fast. So if you want it done well and fast it will cost a lot more.

I think you are looking at £7000 to get a full new heating system including radiators and a boiler. And 5000-6000 for a full rewire.

That will involve taking all the floors up and channeling into all the wall though, so the house will be a mess afterwards. Everything will be covered in building dust and all the carpets will be dirty and need a serious clean or replacing. The walls will need at least patching or realistically skimming

Does the house need rewiring? Unless it is really old, you can probably get the fuse board and consumer unit upgraded to modern standards and then upgrade the wiring to each room as you work round and decorate them. Same with plumbing. You can get a new boiler and then do the radiators a room at a time. It is better to take them off for decorating anyway.

New windows will be around £500-£1000 per window and doesn't make much mess so that can be done at any time, even once you have decorated.

If you are renovating slowly and living in then it is best to make sure the house is watertight and insulated first, so I would prioritise loft insulation and windows, followed by boiler and electrical fuse board and consumer unit upgrade. These should be way to get booked in for the 2 months you have. Get recommendations from people at work or neighbours or family and be very wary of anyone who has quick availablity, rather than a spot in a month's time.

For wallpaper stripping, prepping and painting you would probably pay £1000 a room. However this is a really easy place to save money and learn some DIY skills. If the walls are not in great condition, you may end up having to get the rooms skimmed once you remove the paper and this could be £600-£1000 per room. You could easily strip and redecorate one room in evenings and weekends as a beginner diyer in 2 months, maybe 2 rooms of you are quick or could rope some help in.

For a new consumer unit and fuseboard , an electrician should be able to do that in a day and it might cost £600-£1000.
New boiler will be whatever the cost of the boiler plus maybe some new pipework so maybe 2-3 days of plumbing time (£800-1000) plus the cost of a boiler and parts (not sure about this but maybe £2000-3000?

It will cost slightly more to rewire and replace radiators a room at a time but you will be able to live there at the same time. Don't fit a new radiator in a room till you have decorated it, or you will end up trashing it when the room gets decorated.

So in each room, rewire and strip wall paper first, then repair damage, patch plaster, fill holes, clean, then paint, from ceiling down, then get radiator fitted, then do floor.

I'd say the opposite about radiators, get them replaced and then decorate. When we had our radiators replaced, the old ones were much longer than the new, so we were left with holes in the plaster and floor where the pipes/brackets used to sit. Then we had to decorate after.

Sorry, I meant, remove the old radiators, then decorate, then fit new ones. Apologies.

To answer your additional questions:

• I prioritised doing the rewiring first
• then the new boiler first and repairing a leaky toilet cistern
• I also removed the carpets early on and painted the walls once the rewiring had been done
• then I did the flooring (sanding and painting)
• I moved in at that point and continued with some painting and decorating
• then I tackled the garden after a couple of months later
• then the shed about 6 months after that. I changed the glass windows for plexiglass and painted it myself as well as all the garden fences
• the kitchen was fine so I did was paint the cupboards sage green and I also painted the wall tiles
• The only thing I have done so far in the bathroom beyond fixing the leaky toilet was re-plumb the shower as it wasn't draining well.

Now I am saving every month in case the roof needs some work in the future and at some point I will improve the bathroom. It is a long term project for me :).

Thanks to all for answering. I actually don't know if the house needs rewiring or not, I even do not know what rewiring really mean. I remember having heard before that when buying an old house, it is better to rewire the whole house first. If I have £50k savings after the house purchase, is it enough to get electrical/lighting/boiler/carpet/wall/fence work done (all by builders/contractors?

I meant to spend £30k on the renovation, can I get the work done by hiring builders/contractors?

The problem with renovation is that it always throws up extra costs. I'm refurbing a house at the moment and, for example, I thought the walls would need skimming but, when we removed the wallpaper, it was clear the plaster was too poor for that so, in about 60% of the house, we've had to go back to brick/lathe and start from scratch. There's also lots of incidentals you don't account for: waste removal, parking permits for tradespeople, tool hire etc.

Yeah you don’t want to be rewiring just because of something you once heard. Looking at the pictures from what I can make out you seem to have quite a few modern sockets in all the right places? If that’s the case and they work fine then you don’t need a rewire. Even if you want to add a few extra sockets that’s easy enough to do (probably need to lift a few floorboards) but that’s not a full rewire.

Sorry, realistically you can’t get all those jobs done in two months. The main problem being lack of reliable tradespeople. Often they won’t call back or have a lead of at least two months. Also, renovation throws up unexpected problems and expenses.
i wouldn’t buy a house like that unless I could do a lot of it myself.
However, it could be a lovely house.

Take it from me, as a fellow FTB with no DIY skills do not buy that house. Walk away and look for somewhere else. I bought a house in a lot better condition than that and the process of redecorating it has been expensive and honestly soul destroying. 18 months in and I'm not even halfway there. I wish I had bought a house that someone else had done up already.

This is my experience too. The DIY elements that took the time because you need to let things dry between stages.

With your £30,000 I would get new windows, a new boiler and the electric boards upgraded to modern standards and then with any left you might be able to get a couple of rooms painted and new radiators and carpets but probably not the whole house.

These quotes look very accurate or at least very similar to what we had

I think depends on where but rewiring, central heating, decoration + skimming would be likely £25k and then windows would depend on listed/needing permission etc but would be more like £20-30k at a minimum.

If you get a good sparky and the walls are in good condition you may not need a plasterer after a rewire.

@Kevinandtheargonauts unfortunately if it's a full rewire, building regs mean that all the sockets have to be raised to standard new build height so it does end up leaving a mess. Also it would be crazy not to add lots of new sockets which again usually needs a bit of neatening up, although not necessarily full plastering/skimming.