Guesstimate the costs please

[Ladedaaa]

I will look into this properly, but for the purposes of my Sunday afternoon workings out…would love anyone who has recent experience of these sort of projects in London to help me guesstimate the budget required…

Am looking at a 1930s terrace in London (zone 3). 960 sq ft including a small rear extension. It’s been rented out and fuse board and boiler look good but it’s very tired. Work I’d like to do:

• take up carpets and renovate floorboards upstairs and down
• move boiler from upstairs bedroom to kitchen
• strip out fitted wardrobe in master
• add downstairs loo at back of galley kitchen
• take down non load bearing wall
• new radiators
• new kitchen (small - gallery opening out into dining extension) incl floor and appliances
• new bathroom (bath, shower, WC, tiling)
• new stair carpet
• redecorate throughout (inc stripping wallpaper that has been painted over in bedrooms)

Trying to get a ballpark sense of it to think about what would be affordable, what could be done straight away and what would have to wait!!

Any thoughts / recent experiences much appreciated…

Shamelessly bumping!!

No one can guesstimate these because a couple of the could be wildly variable depending on info that you haven't told us. Like where do the current boiler pipes run upstairs and down and where are your outside toilet waste pipes running?
I am guessing a new bathroom in London would be 15-20k? But that would depend on what spec you want. A new kitchen could be £15-40 depending on what kitchen you put in and whether you make any structural changes. I think you are meant to spend a certain percentage of the house price on a new kitchen as a guide? So that might be helpful.

Tbh it sounds like the amount of damage caused would be equivalent to a full renovation so I would guess at upto £200,000. And if you are doing that then you probably want to put lots more sockets in too so I maybe add some for electrics.

Ca. You do any of the work yourself or are you gettinf people in for everything? Even just doing the decorating will save you thousands.

How much of this are you planning on doing yourself? Will you get a company to do it all or will you project manage yourself and get individual trades in?
Moving the boiler - where do the pipes run? This could be a fairly expensive job depending on the work needed to relocate not just the boiler but all the pipe work/ electrics.
Downstairs loo - where is the soil stack? Can you even have a loo where you want it I.e can you add to the soil stack if it’s in that area or will you need significant grounds work?
New kitchen - budget 10k - premium £150k (this depends on your taste - do you want laminate worktops or high end marble? Do you want an MDF kitchen or solid wood? Do you want wickes or howdens or bespoke, from your local joiner?
Bathroom - again, what spec do you want? I did mine myself and it still cost me £6k (no marble or oak either).
Full decoration - does that include loads of skips to remove waste? Plastering? Anything skilled like coving? Are you painting yourself?

There are far too many variables but if it was me, I’d budget £100k to do the work myself and have higher end bathroom/ kitchens in terms of finishes like worktops, even the appliances. If you are getting someone else in you’ll need to be far stricter with the budget and need much clearer ideas of what you actually want. For example, I had a gas engineer fit my radiators and they put really horrible cheap valves on. I then had to replace with £50 valves - an expense but gives the look I wanted.

Thanks, this is good for thought. The bathroom is directly above where I’d like to install a downstairs loo so hoping that’s good? Thinking I’d do decorating myself…

OP we have done nearly all of this and I can share prices but not tonight, will type up properly though. Our house sounds almost identical to yours in config location and floor plan. Be prepared for some very nasty shocks on pricing though. Basically think of a reasonable figure and triple it. More tomorrow.

Oh thank you @Plmnki that would be amazing.

• Ok I’ll tackle this one by one - describing how we did it …

take up carpets and renovate floorboards upstairs and down

take the carpets up - do it yourself, free, pull up the grippers and nails with pliers

we used a local company off checkatrade to sand the stairs, and the entire upstairs including filling the gaps, looks great, but the gap filling stuff is brittle and breaking up, they should have used something with flex. Live and learn.

Cost about £2,500 cash but they buggered the stringers on the stairs which is going to take me many days of diy reparation to sort out.

time about one weekend to pull up the carpets

one week to get the professions in

about 15 days of diy time to fix the problems created by the professionals

HUGELY MESSY

• move boiler from upstairs bedroom to kitchen

we didn’t move the boiler but allow £1,500 for labour
allow between £150 per rad to £1,000 per rad for materials - demands on your style

allow £150 per hour for a decent plumber (recommend the Italian plumber in west London - they are expensive but worth it). A crap plumber will be expensive too.

assume it will take two days labour to change all your rads and another day to ,one your boiler

you won’t see much change from £8k sorry

• strip out fitted wardrobe in master

Do it yourself

free!

if you have never done this before, time to learn!

• add downstairs loo at back of galley kitchen

we Paid £4,200 labour and some parts

we supplied loo and basin

highly recommend a rumless loo for easy cleaning

our job was easy as we has a 900mm space under the floorboards to runs the waste pipe to the drains - on other properties it might not be so easy

take down non load bearing Wall

truly non load bearing??? Really?? Do it yourselves

actulally load bearing - £5,000 to £7,500 including labour, skip, structural engineering (£1200), building regs, RSJ, and a lot of arm waving and council fees

• new kitchen (small - gallery opening out into dining extension) incl floor and appliances

we are in this place right now. Seriously this is impossible to price. You MUST get a design and quotes

to give a feel -

we were quoted £3000 to remove old kitchen and £3k for skips (INSANE)
£3k for plastering (INSANE)
£3800 for electrics (yep - insane)
what about flooring and lighting..?

lighting - we got recessed LED COB lighting on a dimmer switch wireless controls hidden in the cornice. What a massive money pit. About £1500 in materials and labour, looks shit and amateur cos the bellend electrician didn’t supply a diffuser, arrrgh. Be very careful, do your research, do NOT Trust trades, do not trust samples, sorry to be negative.

worktops around £4k to £6k from howdens and similar at Schmidt
cabinets £25k howdens no discount and similar at Schmidt
ikea more like £5000 but don’t fit at space too narrow
appliances depends on your branding

get quotes and designs from a few places, we had a £35k budget and the local places wouldn’t return my call, budget too small.

nextcdoor got theirs done howdens £17k for materials unknown installation cost. Looks like it’s been put in by a teenager, really shit finish, they love it.

or go to somewhere like plykea or uncommon projects, you’ll pay but they have ,any happy customers

we have not done the kitchen, not yet, still dithering - you can see why!

• new bathroom (bath, shower, WC, tiling)

Depends on your material choice

£6k to £15k

you need to find a really really good place and go with their recommendations

• new stair carpet

labour £350 to £500

materials depends on your choice

• redecorate throughout (inc stripping wallpaper that has been painted over in bedrooms)

diy - about £300 per room in materials
character building - free

professional - fucking thousands … don’t even go there

If you don't just get one builder to organise it all make sure you do it in a sensible order, don't do things like floors and decorating before building work, plumbing and electrics or you will be doing some of it again. It sounds like a lot of work, but some of it trivial. I would get a few quotes from builders to do the whole job, possibly minus decorating if you feel competent to do that. I second the £100k + ballpark in London.

Unless the boiler is virtually new, replace it with a new one

Thanks all, especially @Plmnki for all the detail which is super helpful. Two more slightly random questions:

I was thinking floors ought to happen last…but how does that work with moving furniture? Some of it will need to be rebuilt in bedrooms and is heavy. Any sense in doing upstairs floors before we move in and doing everything else incl downstairs when we’re there?

Other question - right now there’s a brick extension across the back with doors to the garden. It has a flat room and looks maybe 80s. Am hoping I can keep and improve it - add sloping roof with roof lights maybe? Is this hopelessly naive??

thanks again!

Flat roof, not flat room!!

• Remove carpets (upstairs and downstairs) – do it yourself with a Stanley knife. Where a mask
• Sand and renovate floorboards – hire a sander (£300–£400). DIY if you have the energy.
• New stair carpet – Dunelm have some great ones (£100 - £200) staplegun it yourself.

• Move boiler from upstairs bedroom to kitchen – £1,200 ish labour only.
• Buy a new boiler yourself (£700ish) to save money.
• Add downstairs WC at rear of galley kitchen – hire a solo plumber (not a company). Cost depends on waste pipe location.
• New radiators – are you replacing like-for-like or repositioning?

• Remove non-load-bearing wall – ~£250 if it's just a stud maybe £500.
• Strip out fitted wardrobe in master bedroom – £90–£100.

• New kitchen (small galley opening into dining extension) –
• Are you relocating or just replacing units/appliances?
• Include cost of flooring and appliances.
• Buy 2nd hand kitchen off facebook. Kitchens are the biggest rip off going.
• Buy worktops and stuff seperately e.g Worktop Express - solid oak 40cm thick worktops about £100 per metre
• Ditto appliances

• New bathroom (bath, shower, WC, tiling)
• Straight swap or changing layout/pipework? Again just use a single plumber don't hire a company.

• Redecorate throughout.
• Strip wallpaper yourself (invest in a steamer -about £40).
• If walls need replastering: ~£600–£800 per room.

We did an extension a few year ago in London that came in around 70k though I'm not sure what current building prices we be. We used a company called home tales who were great at giving us a free estimate .