First flat – full refurb advice needed (SW London, tight budget!)

[YourCosyLilacWasp]

Hiya,

I’ve recently bought my first flat on my own (1-bed in SW London) and after living here for 4 months, I’ve got a clear idea of how I want it to be.

It’s perfectly livable but very tired – probably 20+ years since anything was done. I’m now thinking of a full refurb, including:

• New kitchen & bathroom
• living room - knocking wall between kitchen and living room to make it open plan - not structural wall (according to surveyor)
• Flooring throughout
• Plastering/skimming
• Painting/decorating
• Plumbing & electrics
• bedroom

Budget is £30–36k, and I might leave the bedrooms for now if needed to stay within that.

I work full-time and don’t have the capacity to manage individual trades. Would you recommend hiring a main contractor to oversee it all? Is an interior designer/project manager/ architect (who can manage the project) worth it on a budget?

I have got an idea but, no visual plan for it.. how should i go about and get plan drawn up? - do I need a drawing for flat refurb?

Feeling a bit overwhelmed and would love to hear how others tackled similar projects – what worked, what didn’t, and any tips on finding reliable people.
I am quite new to the area and don't know many people around. Also, spoke with neighbours few months back and they also shared horror stories and struggle of hiring reliable tradespeople -- so.. asking for recommendations from neighbours may not be a good option for me 😆

Thanks in advance!

Hi OP. Where abouts SW London are you? I just did a total refurb of our house and found a brilliant company who manage all the different bits of the project for me. They were absolutely fantastic and I can’t recommend them highly enough. If they are anywhere near you happy to share details.

You have a decent enough budget, you have no time to do the work yourself, there are people as @user1477249785 has suggested who will take the job on as a project and manage it, because they will "know" people and will bargain hard to maintain their cut. Get a really decent contractor, not just the cheapest. If you try and do this yourself, I think you will go through a world of pain. A few things I would add: a) Make one contractor accountable and pay according to a pre-defined schedule, when you are satisfied that bit has been done to your expectations b) although £30k is a lot, you are asking for a lot, and you may have to lower your expectations on some things, so if you may have to think that one through with your main contractor, there are some cheap gains to be had c) it will hardly be liveable when the work is being done, either go on holiday, live elsewhere for a couple of weeks, or put up with dust and the mess, it always takes longer than you think, and the faster you want it the dearer it will be. My experience, if it helps, is based on sorting our house after our roof blew off in Storm Arwen in November 2021, the rain came in and damaged 8 rooms, and we engaged our insurance company to deal with it because we "did not know the people who could start to sort problems of that magnitude". Despite having a main contractor, they were hopeless, and took over two years to sort, all tradesmen blaming each other, we were moved into temporary accommodation in the end, and finally got our house back in 2023, I have no idea what the final cost was, but I suspect £100k plus. I have over 200 emails desperate to move things on, but largely ignored for weeks. It is a completely different situation, but I lost 2 years of my life to it. I now wish I had just asked for a settlement, and contracted a "trusted, recommended" person, and I think that might be the key to these things. Sorry for rambling on xx

@user1477249785 Hi, it is near balham area

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I don't think you need a project manager to redecorate a flat. Their fees would eat up a good chunk of that budget too, it's not loads.
I work full time, and am in the process of redecorating my 90s house. Yes it's time consuming but I would rather do my own research and make my own decisions. And stuff like painting you can easily do yourself. Just make a plan and work through it, it will take longer but the money saved and the satisfaction gained will be well worth it.

Yes I think you definitely want one main contractor not to have to manage subs yourself, but not sure a full project manager or interior designer is necessary or affordable on your budget either. If the wall is literally just a stud wall (no steels etc needed) I'd go with a really good builder to quote you for the full job of strip everything out, knock down the wall, first fixes and install new kitchen and bathroom including everything you've said, and get them to manage all the sub contractors. That's a fairly standard project for a builder.

You will need to design and order your own kitchen and bathroom plus flooring and paint, builder won't do that for you, but so long as you can work out a floorplan / dimensions of the rooms once the walls are down you can take that to any of the big companies (builders like howden the best because of not having to assemble the units but consider Ikea, DIY, Wickes etc as well) and they can build you a kitchen to your specification and churn out a plan for the builder to work to. Obviously an interior designer can help with this plus decor choices etc but I think your budget would be better spent elsewhere - ChatGPT and Pinterest are excellent tools plus consult MN!

Since this is a flat, isn’t it also going to be important to make sure the OP’s neighbours in the other flats know the timeline & see her sticking to it, and also that noise & disruption for them are minimised as far as possible? If a project manager helps with that I’d have thought hiring one could be well worth it.

I’d be very surprised if you can afford a project manager on that budget. A general builder can do the wall and flooring but it’s arguably a small job and you may struggle to find someone willing to take on. Small job.

Be careful. Builders will often claim you’re paying for an electrician / plumber but you’re probably paying a labourer with an electrician / plumber looking at signing off work. Most people assume they’re getting an electrician when they’re paying for one.

Would be astonished - but very interested- if you could get all of that done in South London for that budget.

Sadly I agree.