House renovation cost

[jentt]

Went to see a beautiful house on the weekend, built in 1955. It’s not in too bad condition but needs fully renovating upstairs and down, new boiler/radiators, walls removed to fit new kitchen, downstairs & upstairs bathroom needs replacing and upstairs needs re plastering. Not sure if it would need rewiring but probably would. Would 75k be enough to do this? Just want to make the house liveable as we have young DC.

We wasn’t considering a renovation at all but have fallen in love with this house. Just don’t want to end up buying a money pit and end up broke and regretful😬as we have zero experience with renovations.

Is 75k delusional?

I don’t think 75k is enough, it’s quite likely more will need doing that first thought and costs spiral. Talking from recent experience

Fo you mean renovating or decorating and are you able to do anything yourselves?

I'd say 75k is too little for that much work to be done at once. You'll need flooring and decoration (including paintwork, ceilings etc), plus curtains/blinds once all that work is done.

If it's in "not too bad condition", you need to work out what actually NEEDS doing and what's you just wanting brand new everything. "not too bad condition" and needing the upstairs completely replastered sound like two very different conditions to me.

We’ve just done a part renovation in a 1950’s house

bathroom - £7,000

removing fireplace and serving hatch/plastering/two new radiators/flooring/decorating/carpeting - £10,000

No. You need at least double that unless you are diy-ing a lot.
Between kitchen and bathroom you are expecting around £30k if you go for mid-low end suppliers. A good rule of thumb is £2.5k to £3k per square metre. You can do the math…

Your situation sounds so similar to what I’m going through with my house right now. We bought it a year ago, 2 bed 1950s semi-detached which had a family in it for almost 40 years prior to us and had had very little done to it in that time. When buying the house we were adamant we were going to put a rear extension on it straightaway but once we got quotes back for that we realised we just simply couldn’t afford it! So instead we have done all of the below and just to give you an idea it is adding up to about £80k (based in Scotland though, unsure where you are). The only space we are not touching at the moment is the bathroom - that will need to come later.

Sounds like the house you viewed is probably a bigger footprint if there is an upstairs and downstairs bathroom, but maybe you could avoid doing some of the things we’ve done and make it work for your budget.

So our expenditure has covered two bedrooms, stairwell and landing, and the whole downstairs (living room/dining room/kitchen/small entrance lobby).

Had the whole house rewired
Structural wall between kitchen and dining room knocked down and replaced with steel beam to make open plan kitchen/diner
New wall built between living room and new kitchen/diner to make separate living room instead
A window blocked up so we could utilise the wall for kitchen cupboards and exterior of house rendered in that area
New kitchen with all new appliances (£15k)
Completely stripped back every room and had re plastered
New skirting, new internal doors throughout
New mantle piece and built in shelves in living room
New banister and electrical box cover built in hallway
New front door and entrance lobby repainted with masonry paint
New back door
New radiators
New boiler
Laminate flooring throughout downstairs and carpet upstairs
Painting to a finished standard everywhere except the two bedrooms which we chose to finish ourselves

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