Crazy quotes? Regretting buying your fixer upper? Join me in home renovation rants!

[Yemelade]

Some of you might remember me from my house sprucing (low level, manageable DIY) thread where I was preparing to sell up my old house.

That purchase is now complete, and we are now semi-regretful owners of a run down fixer upper.

I dillegently made a spreadsheet and researched possible prices of work needed. New roof, kitchen, bathrooms, windows. Its essentially a money pit. IIinitially, prior to purchase, thought we had a healthy budget at 62k, but have quickly realised this is nowhere near enough.

Please join me in rants, woes, discoveries and doom. It would be good to hear from anyone in a similar boat so that my colleagues are no longer plagued by this regularly! I am in North East UK.

X

We moved into our Edwardian semi last March. I LOVE the house. It has a bit of a bonkers layout but it's got 4 bedrooms and is in the perfect location for us, and it's full of charm. It's not a back to bricks full reno but it does need work. We had £25k and have just spent the last of that.

We've had:
full re-wire - £5.5k
Majority new windows -£6k
work on the roof (new ridge tiles and fixing the chimney stack) and new guttering - £3.2k
new boiler and radiators (including a couple of fancy column radiators) - £3.5k

The rest of the money has been spent on new furniture, replacing the astroturf with read turf, lighting, things like that.

We still really need a new kitchen but that's going to have to wait a few years. The house is terribly insulated and there's no access to the roof space currently (the attic is two bedrooms and there is no eaves access) so we really need to sort that too.

My husband has done all of the decorating and taught himself how to skim and do other small DIY jobs. We are just saving and doing things when we can now that the initial budget has gone. I wish we had sorted out insulation first, but we didn't realise quite how bad it was until winter.

My DP tied a selection of ladders together and somehow balanced while he plastered and painted the ceiling. No one wanted the hassle of doing the job for us so we had to make do.

It's a return cantilever stair case with mid landing so large drop onto the stone flags 🫣

The prices are currently very very high but with prowl c a keeping and scaling back hold right as they will come down again.

@creamsnugjumper what do you mean please? Why do you think prices will come down again - would love any inside info!

42k to fit a kitchen is utterly mad, I assume they didn't want the job!

I think 62k is actually a reasonable budget considering you're not extending, nothing is urgent and you're planning on being there a long time. You'll be able to get priority jobs done and then just save up for other stuff. The trouble is working out what is priority!

I bought my first house two years ago and knew it would need updating and maintenance (it's an old house) but I was in for a rude awakening when I started getting quotes. Someone quoted me £40,000 for basic garden landscaping 😂

So far I've fully renovated the bathroom, fixed a roof leak, and decorated the second bedroom. Getting new flooring throughout this month. Then it will be decorating the other rooms. I have paint and wallpaper picked out for the living room but I don't have the energy for the whole circus of contacting tradesmen, chasing them for quotes, then having the job take twice as long as they said it will.

A question for you fellow renovators... do you try to haggle for larger jobs (£5k+)? The flooring company I liked best quoted more than I had budgeted so I asked very politely if they could come down and I got a VERY snotty reply with the price in bold font, underlined, in about size 32.Is it not normal to negotiate?

I hear you on the DIY era comment. For years, people bemoaned that younger people couldn't turn their hand to DIY, but I think we are now starting to see that those DIY projects can cause problems for future owners. There's been lots of tightening of regulations and that can cause issues when you come to sell if people have erected, removed or installed things without getting permission. Some people were and are genuinely skilled at these things, but there was a whole generation or two where everyone was encouraged to have a go and it's now backfiring a bit.

Your budget is not remotely ridiculous, I'm in the north east and have a reno budget less than that for those jobs and more. Its easily doable in that assuming you bought a standard 2/3 bed not an 18 bedroom mansion etc...

Roof could possibly be the most expensive depending on how bad, a few fixed tiles and a reseal might just be 2k but a whole new replacement timber roof structure for a slate roof with new slates would be more like 30k.

Things like kitchen and bathroom are where you can save money in renos, they don't have to be expensive at all, people just often choose expensive options. Doing anything you can yourself saves a lot to, only spend where you have too (gas fitters and electricians for safety, possibly plumber for big jobs, maybe a carpenter for worktops as its a fiddly job).

Removing the trash if often a big cost people over look in all jobs, skips can be annoyingly expensive given they are just a big bin and very awkward if you need permits to use a public area.

We renovated 12 years ago when costs were not as extortionate. Best advice is to tell everybody you possibly can that you need trades. If you can get someone with a brother or dad who’ll do work for cash in hand at the weekend you’ll save an absolute fortune. I found it was often the boomer generation who had the best contacts.

Also ask EVERY trade before anything goes in writing if they’ll do it in cash for less money. 9/10 will say yes.

Have you run a dehumidifier for a month?

Many years ago I quoted over 10,000 to do a kitchen. In the end we got a cheaper tradesman kitchen from Howeden - it cost lest than 4000.

This time last year I had a reno job done. I had a set budget of 70k and a 10k contingency.

The best move I made was to get a recommendation for a builder who would do the lot and sub the tradesmen for me. He came and surveyed, suggested fantastic things that I would never have thought of and the end result is just great. I am a single female and was quite wary of being ripped off, but the recommendation came from someone I know well, I saw the work and went with this guy.

For 70k I got the following done -
New main bathroom
Downstairs loo + shower in a tiny utility where I can fit washing machine (his suggestion!)
New stair banisters and internal doors
New radiators and attic water tank + hot water tank in airing cupboard.
Load bearing wall knocked and RSJ beam
New kitchen and appliances
Total rewire of house (approved by the Network provider)
New laminate floors throughout
Replastering throughout
New triple glazed window in kitchen
New steps out to the back
Plumbing
Tiling
Painting
And some things I'm sure I've forgotten!

I spent an extra 4k on the kitchen, that came from the contingency. But the budget of 70k held firm as quoted.

That's the good news story, and I think the key was handing it all over to a builder. Now to be fair I could move out while the work was done. It took 10 weeks. They were there every single weekday from 9 -4 never went to another job.

This guy has now got a lot of business in my area as a result.

AND I live in Ireland, which is definitely not known for inexpensive building works either!

@Feverdream02 so you're advocating defrauding HMRC?

I have £30k max for renovation of 3 bed semi. Nothing structural but would like to update kitchen (respray cabinets and new tiles) replace one bathroom, carpet 3 bedrooms and stairs and repaint and add new lighting to every room. What will this budget stretch to tho?

if you use a solid platform ladder, you can then use an extending pole roller. That gives you an extra two metres.

Unfortunately there is stupid fiddly coving which will need painting by hand with a brush. Otherwise a roller on a stick would be great. I wonder how they did the sistene chapel?

I also need to clean the ceiling to get the black mould off

Having all the floors replaced this week, carpet for Amtico. The disruption will be worth it but I wish it were done already!

@Yemelade did you really get quoted 42k to fit a kitchen, or was that a typo?

Unfortunately, yes!

Likewise received crazy quotes for other things. To replace just the flat roofs above 6 dormer windows - £9,000. This doesn't include the pitched roof, facias and soffits etc!

That's obviously not just to fit a kitchen though. It's a kitchen, staircase and more!

I would not trust anyone willing to do a £35k job ‘cash’.

I will join you OP.
We bought a house 5 years ago that we knew was a huge project. Doing it up verrry slowly.
If you are both handy you could fit the kitchen yourself, we did this and it was fine. I hate to think how much it would have cost if we had to pay someone to do it.
What did the 42k include? I see you are asking for a lower quote just to do kitchen and staircase, how much was that new quote?
Our next project is a couple of bathrooms I think. Would love an extension but it isn't going to happen in the near future.
The 11k for windows seems very reasonable, how many windows? I am considering having our windows done.

Yep, just like I said in the original post where I mentioned the 42k... I did state this was for kitchen plus some other joiner jobs, that FYI are smaller than a kitchen fit, including making a cupboard and moving a doorway in a stud wall. The space is already totally empty and does not need a kitchen rip out, and we would be decorating ourselves. In my opinion, 42k is still excessive for the work quoted for.

Yep, this was also our thoughts! It's a registered business and we have used this company before, but we've since received some "hard sale" type messages advising their diaries are rapidly filling up and we should really be getting them booked in. We've just advised them we aren't sure this would fit into our overall budget and we still need structural stuff doing which takes priority.

I am leaning towards trying to fit ourselves! We've already done a lot of painting and ripping out ourselves, hubby disconnected water outlets recently so we could pull out bath and sink etc and we've done some demolition and reno works in a previous home (though never a kitchen). We'll see!

Apologies, I just replied off the post asking if you were really quoted 42k for a kitchen to be fitted!

What was his response for just the kitchen and staircase?