House Renovating

[Christian]

Just wondered if I could get some opinion about costs/difficulty involved with renovating houses. I am looking to move home and have found a couple of very different properties that require different work, both in Greater London. The first is a decent size three bed semi in need of style renovation...perfectly livable but every out-dated feature you can think of is included in every room except the kitchen...dado rails, every wall has pattern wallpapered, textured ceilings with shapes around the light fitings, fireplaces that remind me of crematorium (marble and gold!), architraves round each ceiling. As such, I think all 5 rooms and the hallways and stairs would minimum require stripping, skimming and decorating, then new carpets. Not having done anything like this before...is it a major job and how much would you need to budget?

Next property is fine inside but has a small but very child-unfriendly garden...



At some point, if we went for this, we would probably need some landscaping as there are steps and paving slabs everywhere. Again, is this a major job that costs a lot?

Trying to budget both options in our rough calculations!

[notenoughwrists]

Loads of people here will have all sorts of costs. There are huge variables, so nothing right or wrong, but having done this to my house within the last 18months...
£10k for the garden to make it however you want.
£1000 per room to have them ripped out and reskimmed.
£500 a room to redecorate.
Another £500 per to recarpet.
Some money for waste removal/skips.

But, once you strip the paper, plaster might be blown and need to come off. So add 50% more for boarding then skimming.

And add £10k contingency at least for finding things you did not expect once you start pulling things out.
Honestly... lots of considerations:
Lighting, electrics - additional sockets, fuse board renewed, new lighting. How old is the cabling? Woodwork - door frames and skirting boards. If it’s an older house (pre-war) then renovate them rather than remove.

I guesstimated 25k and am at £40k now, although that includes a new kitchen and bathroom.

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[RustyBin5]

Garden looks ok to me. A skinned knee is character building

[Kingstepper]

Agree, a nice garden!

[Christian]

Cheers guys.

It's the usual problems of which things to compromise on when each property we've seen has their own positives and negatives!

[W124]

The age of the property makes a significant difference to the quality of the damp course and amount of stuff which has settled in the cavity, causing damp to flash across above the damp course.

We have a detached 1924 with smooth Accrington red brick to the front, and commons around the other three sides.

The airbricks were blocked with fallen dust and crud, and the poured bitumen damp course was cracked and decayed.

We took the bricks out above the damp course one at a time, cleaned the cavity and reset the bricks with damp proof mortar.

The horsehair plaster in the ceilings and walls was addled, again we added damp proofing to the sand and cement render which was used up to waist height.

With modern high flow airbricks, we have no damp problems.

[AlphaOmega]

If the children are very young, you could do what we did which was to temporarily tie cushions to certain furniture (inside and out). This saved redo-ing everything to be safe for a toddler - that stage doesn't last long.

[DragonJade]

I started off just wanting to repaint the kitchen walls and ceiling. In the end I had to have one wall reboarded and plastered, and new roof ridge tiles put in. That easily added £1500 to my kitchen renovation costs.

I'm doing my living room now, and am finding problem after problem. It seems like it never ends.

[Kingstepper]

Anyone say typical cost to skim a ceiling, say 4x4m?

[jwillans]

Given the dated interior of the first house, would it also need a rewire? To say the obvious, you can always renovate a house, but you can't change location or (easily) extend a garden.

[AP1]

We renovated a 1930s semi in Greater London fairly recently. The house was liveable (just) when we moved in and we renovated top to bottom over the course of 3 years. We took on a lot of the work ourselves apart from fitting the windows, fitting the boiler, plastering, fitting the multi fuel stove and laying a patio but we did everything else. It was a lot more graft than I first anticipated, especially the garden Landscaping but rewarding and I’m glad we did it. Cost us about £40-45K in total.

[numberjack]

Anyone say typical cost to skim a ceiling, say 4x4m?

suppose it depends where you are , here £25 /m2 is top whack for that sort of thing in my experience

[boris9]

Anyone say typical cost to skim a ceiling, say 4x4m?

In my recent experience of renovating our property, that’s a “day rate” plus materials. £200 ish in East Anglia. This is provided the ceiling is ready to go.


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[xellos99]

Different price between areas and people you hire.

In London it will cost a fortune probably so shop around different workers.

In South West Wales I could find you a plasterer and painter / decorator for £15 per hour each.

My dad until recently was plastering / skimming for £12 an hour.

[Kingstepper]

Thanks everyone, sorry to go slightly off topic!

[Christian]

Great to have the rough idea for prices...I feel like an idiot when it comes to property knowledge!
Thanks all.

[DragonJade]

Plastering - I seem to recall reading the other week that there's a day rate of about £300 for a plasterer.

And if it's an old house, asbestos and lead paint may be other things to consider on top of old wiring and copper pipes.

[Kingstepper]

Plastering - I seem to recall reading the other week that there's a day rate of about £300 for a plasterer.

And if it's an old house, asbestos and lead paint may be other things to consider on top of old wiring and copper pipes.

Are copper pipes bad?

[Paneraiseeker]

A plasterers day rate is around £170 - £200 plus materials

[lewie]

A plasterers day rate is around £170 - £200 plus materials

Id say this is about right - although I find my brother slightly cheaper at 4 mugs of tea and 1 packet of chocolate digestives - should it be a whole day there is an additional expense of a round of bacon sarnie's
Obviously this is before VAT

[hogthrob]

£200 a day in Greater London?

Things that will be expensive to do: roof, windows, damp proof course, electrics, plumbing, kitchen, bathroom, garden.

If you could tell us the age of the houses, you'd get better answers about what is likely to need doing.

[DragonJade]

Are copper pipes bad?

Crap. I meant lead pipes.

Lead water pipes are bad.

[Kingstepper]

Crap. I meant lead pipes.

Lead water pipes are bad.

Yes, didn’t think plastic had entirely taken over yet!

[Paneraiseeker]

Id say this is about right - although I find my brother slightly cheaper at 4 mugs of tea and 1 packet of chocolate digestives - should it be a whole day there is an additional expense of a round of bacon sarnie's
Obviously this is before VAT

Most are just one man bands skimming ceilings etc in residential properties so will out price themselves going VAT registered. Especially when a bag of multi is £5 per bag

[Sahara]

I would price higher for the painting and decorations, we have just had three rooms painted, £900 each for bedroom and kitchen, £1675 hallway stairs landing.

[prexelor]

^ I didn't realise painting is so expensive. I would have said you could get banksy in for that.

A read about a furloughed pilot doing painting and decorating, he is apparently quite good at landings.

[Christian]

I would price higher for the painting and decorations, we have just had three rooms painted, £900 each for bedroom and kitchen, £1675 hallway stairs landing.

Similar experience. I had a one-bed flat in London that I got a quote to paint the bedroom, hall and living room. No preparation required as the walls are white and the whole flat was refurbished 5 years ago. Property is empty so it's literally a case of pitching up with the rollers and paint and cracking on. The chap wanted £1600 plus VAT. I was shocked...the job would have taken me two days I reckon absolute max.

[DragonJade]

Similar experience. I had a one-bed flat in London that I got a quote to paint the bedroom, hall and living room. No preparation required as the walls are white and the whole flat was refurbished 5 years ago. Property is empty so it's literally a case of pitching up with the rollers and paint and cracking on. The chap wanted £1600 plus VAT. I was shocked...the job would have taken me two days I reckon absolute max.

Cleaning the walls would have been required, no? But yes, £1600 is shocking. He probably thought you were made of money.

I've got my own painting nightmare. My dad's managed to splash gloss onto the living room walls and ceiling. I'm in the process of painting everything with a matt, but have had to sand down the gloss a bit, and will have to paint primer on before I do my topcoat. Added to this, there are water stains on the wall which I've used Zinsser BIN on, but have still managed to leak though somehow when I slapped some polyfiller on to afterwards, and discovering damp in another wall and a couple of small places where the plaster had blown.