What order to renovate in?

[StripedTiger]

We’ve just bought a new house and need to do some work downstairs.

We’d like to knock down a wall between the kitchen and dining room (I’m sure this isn’t a load bearing wall), build a stud wall to create a utility room, change a window to a door, redo the downstairs loo, then new kitchen, new floor throughout the whole of downstairs, new skirting and then we’ll decorate.

We’ve never done anything like this before. Please can someone help with what order we should do things in, and if anyone has a very rough idea of cost that would be great.

Deconstrucrion before construction and work top to bottom of rooms.
I would redo the loo first as a stand alone job and that gives you time to plan the detail for the big smash out. Then get the window replaced with a door. Messy but not too bad.
You want to do all the dirty smashing stuff in as small a time as possible. Make sure you seal off the rest of the house by taping up the doors. The dust goes everywhere. I would also buy a trade vac from screwfix for hoovering the dust. They are brilliant.
Then build the stud wall, board it, first fix plumbing and electrics and then get a plasterer in. Then paint (excluding any bits you will be tiling) fit kitchen and utility, do worktop, final fix electircs and plumbing, tile.

The cost will depend on how much you want to do yourselves.

We did very similar, and this this order: whole kitchen and downstairs loo gutted, floors stripped out, wall knocked down, window taken out, initial plumbing in place, stud wall built, initial electrics in place, next phase of plumbing in place, door installed, plastered, new floor in, next phase of electrics in, new kitchen and appliances in, electrics finalised, tiling kitchen and loo, loo suite in.

This costs £40k, inclusive of new kitchen appliances, loo suite and tiles.

Can I suggest you live in it at least six months before doing anything. See how you use the space and how it works in reality with light and so on at different times of day.

if you do this now you will almost certainly want to change it later

I know I called it a new house, but we’ve actually been here nearly a year! I think it still feels new because we’re doing it up. We’ve done upstairs, but that was mostly like for like. Downstairs definitely needs something a bit more.

The current dining room is completely unused. It makes much more sense to knock through and have a large kitchen diner. And we currently have no access the the garden from the back of the house, hence the changing the window to a door. And we have beautiful countryside views which I want to make the most of. And doing the washing in the kitchen is driving me nuts! I’ve always had a separate utility and there is a perfect alcove in the kitchen to make a decent size one.

Did you do any of the work yourself? £40k is roughly our budget, so that’s good to know.

DH is very capable of doing lots of the work, but we might look to getting trades in to speed it up.

No didn't do anything ourselves – that also included all the decorating and custom cabinets built in utility.