Would £40k to £50k be enough to renovate this house?

[HouseHelp12]

Hello, hoping for some advice from those wiser than we are! We are considering offering on this house: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/171573188#/?channel=RES_BUY

It obviously needs a fair amount of work, but if we were able to secure it for the price we’re hoping for, we’d have around £40-50k to renovate initially. The smaller jobs - flooring throughout and decorating - feel manageable. The bigger question mark is the kitchen.

The kitchen is in an extension and is single glazed. It seems solid enough from what we can tell, but it’s obviously very old and would need replacing.

In an ideal world, we’d completely knock through from the kitchen into the existing family room, then take around 3ft from the family room to enlarge the kitchen slightly, leaving a smaller snug/office space instead (see floorplan).

If that isn’t feasible because both are supporting walls/original external walls, we were also wondering whether we could at least remove the door, windows and lower wall between the existing dining room and kitchen to open the space up more partially (see picture). Then use the existing family room as a snug/office.

I know nobody can say for certain without a structural engineer, but has anyone done similar work and got a rough idea whether this sounds feasible within that sort of budget?

For context, we’re already homeowners but have only ever lived in a new build, so we have zero renovation experience but have fallen in love with this house...

Thanks in advance!

We just spent £400 on structural drawings for a supporting beam. The work itself ( wall knocked and beam installed was around £5k) not as bad as I expected.

As other posters have said, it won't go that far unless you're able to do a lot of the work yourselves.

We're on our eighth renovation, a few of which have been fairly major and unliveable by many people's standards. The biggest budget we had was 120k to do a six bed, 3500 sq ft Victorian house that had previously been converted into several grotty flats. That was the first where we did anything we could ourselves, learning on the job.

A few moves on and we demolished and rebuilt an extension. Next one we built our own oak-framed windows from scratch.

Currently we're renovating a considerably smaller Georgian cottage including removing a load-bearing wall and fitting steel, relocating the kitchen, partial garage conversion. Our budget including stuff we can't do (wiring, fitting boiler) started out at 30k.

We always use good quality materials (Edward Bulmer paint on this house) and source high end bargains online etc. Our preloved, hand-painted oak in-frame kitchen cost £500 (eBay). We got structural calcs etc (£500) then did the wall removal and added the steel ourselves - steel cost £200 plus padstones. Labour cost £0.

We're half way in and have just under 15k left. I'm now estimating a total spend of 35k. The whole project will take around three years.

It's a lot of hard work, incredibly rewarding - but not for everyone! DH had a desk job for many years, but he's taught himself so much he's now a builder doing conservation work.

I would do a level 3 survey. I did on a house that was on the market for less than 200k. My reasoning was it is an old property and whilst this is not a huge amount in terms of properties, it's a huge amount to me. It was 1300 pounds well spent very comprehensive. This will give you an .idea on the state of everything although it won't give u an idea on the cost of renovation

Cost of trades has gone up massively in the last few years so you'll burn through 40k very quickly unless you are doing a lot of the work yourself. How much you need will also depend a lot on what level of finish you are going for - with floors, bathroom suites, tiles etc there are cheaper options out there, but there's a lot more expensive options and all those things that are priced by the sqm escalate alarmingly!
The walls you want to knock down are the original back wall of the house so you're into the motherlode of load-bearing walls there, and the extension kitchen looks like a bit of a lean-to which may or may not be suitable for such a project, you might find you'd really end up having to totally rebuild the extension to meet modern standards.
If you love the house, I'd look at using your 40k to decorate and do up with the exisitng layout and think about planning and doing the dream kitchen in a few years maybe when you can access more mortgage finance to do it in a way that will really live up to your vision.

You could make it look a million times nicer just with cosmetic work. New carpets, decoration throughout , soft wash the limestone (with suitable soft wash) and tidy the garden and it would be a great start. I’d happily do all that myself. I couldn’t live with that fireplace so I’d have to get someone in to do that.
id have thought £40-£50k is doable if you do a lot of the work yourself.

If you do the kitchen I’d want to make it a vaulted ceiling where the extension is. It make the room feel more airy.