Changing surface mounted rewire

[sunshineday20]

Hope someone could advise me on this.
Looking to buy our forever home, we've found one in a lovely area, however it needs quite a bit doing. It has been recently rewired, I believe in 2020 however the majority of it is surface mounted. This is something I'd want to change before doing anything else as I've heard it's a messy job.

Will we have to pay for a full re-wire or will it be less as we just want to hide the wires. Also is it worth doing this before actually moving in?

Thanks

You need to consider all the ‘chases ‘ in the wall - this is a 2” wide channel cut into the wall for the cables to go in dropped into a chased out flush box need to then been bonded and skim plastered over - you can’t plaster over wallpaper so this would need to be removed , not just 2” about 25” wide across ceiling down to socket so in reality the whole wall needs to be stripped so this is going to be quite a job if all your walls papered if it’s a long term home does look better but it’s a lot of work I suspect this is why you’ve got a surface installation in the first place

It might be nearly the same cost as a normal rewire. All you are saving is the cost of a few meters of wiring at best.
If you can organize a rewire (plus extra sockets, usb points, external lighting, car charger etc) before you move in, then great.
As per PP, it’s a full redecoration job usually.

If you are just chasing surface mounted fittings into the walls you could do it as a DIY job.

We rewired our kitchen as a diy job and the chasing and prep is the worst of the work as pp said. We did a lot of ours through the ceiling too so if yours is all external you might need to consider the impact to upstairs flooring as well as the walls.