First-time house renovation

BB1984

Hello Matt! :santa2:
Welcome to the mad world of house refurb! As you can probably tell from reading through this thread, between us we've managed accumulate a fair amount of experience over the past months, so if you need any thoughts/opinions/advice, or just need a sounding board, hopefully we can help!

Your renovation sounds similar to ours - we bought ours at the end of September and moved in a couple of weeks ago.

In terms of budget, I totally echo what Andrew said about money being eaten up by screws, sealant, filler etc - we've spent hundreds on those bits and pieces already.

Our budget is a bit vague...as we've continued to earn/save money as we've gone along, which has helped us. I guess our ballpark target was about £15k, and we'll be fairly close to that. That doesn't include furniture, soft furnishings etc.

We negotiated £35k off the asking price on the basis of all the work that needed doing. Of course, we found plenty more problems once we bought it! But also there were some things that didn't end up costing as much as we thought. So not too bad!

Of course, you'll have to set up a blog now, as we're all very nosey and want to see photos...!

I look forward to hearing your progress...

BB

TomsMom

Hi Matt :hello: , glad you could join us. I'm sure we're all looking forward to hearing about your renovations and reading your blog so hopefully your offer will be accepted. Blog, by the way, a must, as BB says we all like a nose

Budget???????? What's that :rotfl:

When we put an offer in on our house we knew it needed updating and that a lot of poor DIY efforts of the previous owner were in need of remedying. So we put an offer in to reflect that which was grudgingly accepted.

What we didn't anticipate was the full structural survey (and boy was that the greatest decision of our lives!) showing that the previous owner had done a substandard DIY loft conversion, without any planning permission or building regs approval, and he had removed all the supports for the roof and cut into the main lintel by 2/3rds to give headroom on the stairs. The surveyor estimated this to cost about £20,000 to remedy, arranged for an architect specialising in loft conversions to come out who then said No, it will cost nearer £30,000 to put right :eek: . We negotiated, with some difficulty, but managed to get £30,000 off the agreed price to remedy the loft.

So, the builder comes along, we add extras in the form of installing french doors, rewiring (which we didn't anticipate but it was easier than tracing the botch electrical job already there), replacing the conservatory poly roof with a slate roof to match the rest of the house, and a few other things like re-jigging the upstairs layout to change the shape of the bathroom, form a new storage cupboard and shower cubicle, and the £30,000 went up to about £45,000.

We had originally expected to spend about £20,000 modernising - new kitchen, bathroom, decorations, carpets, etc. and it's possible we may come in around that figure for the originally intended works, it's just the unforeseen stuff that has increased our budget. We had to have a new boiler as we found out the day after getting the keys that the one already there wasn't working despite assurances from the previous owners that it was. And because we bought a Vaillant on recommendation for quality and reliability that came in close to £1,000.

We sold our original property and purchased a cheaper one so we had money in the pot to do the renovations. As long as we don't spend more than is in the pot we'll be happy as we'll have a nicer house and everything will be modern and up to date so hopefully no further major works for a very long time.

Looking forward to hearing more from you.

helping_hubby

Hello everyone, I've been ill so I haven't been about. The bathroom was finished bar a couple of minor issues which they will be coming back to fix in the new year.

Our budget was smaller than everyone elses so far. We had £10k which was kept back from the deposit money, and we've had to work round this figure and prioritise. It disappeared like so

£1000 dropped kerb and application
£1300 New french doors (the back sliding patio door didn't even lock when we moved in - we had to attempt to screw it shut!)
£2500 2 radiators in the living room (there were none) and a combi boiler and removing the death trap backboiler that broke down after a week of moving in (there was a pipe taking the gases from the backboiler to the outside of the house THROUGH the living room. And the pipe was like the stuff you use for a tumble dryer!)
£1350 - bathroom suite and tiles
£1650 - Plumber & tiler
£1650 - Electrician (rewire of lights, new consumer unit, extra sockets and doubling existing singles and installing cooker).

That adds up to £9450. We've probably spent another £2k on screws, wood, plasterboard, no more nails, skirting board, tools, bricks for garden, skip hire, paint,...blah blah blah

We've still got a brand new kitchen to fit, but that will have to wait 5 years I think. The rest (carpets and the garden) needs to be saved up for. And we'll be needing some furniture like a new double bed would be nice, but I'm keeping a lookout on freecycle.

Shimmyhill

My budget is 35p but i have blown that

Basically anything i dont spend now comes off the mortgage so i am reluctent to spend anything ! We have had to put a new kitchen in but we did it ourselves (well we still are) but even the cheap option has cost around 600/700odd - quickly adds up, units + worktops + taps + all the bits you never budget for like sealent/screws/paint/wood etc !

We are very lucky that i know a chap who does anything building related, also fitted the kitchen with us so labour costs have been low. Still we have had the boiler checked/serviced, drains unblocked and some electrical work and it all adds up quickly !

Now we are in the plan is to do a room at a time and save up to pay for anything major while sorting out as much of the maintenance/updating stuff ourselves or with help of friends in various trades !

I would say just to get us into a moved in state we have spent 2/3k and none of that has been on major work - i wish we had 20 or 30k to just blitz the place but as my parents constantly remind us 'they had nothing when they moved in, not even carpets' so we will do it as and when we can afford it.

latecomer

Hope everyone one had either a relaxing or productive weekend.

I had high hopes for getting the skirting boards on in the front room but a combination of other things put an end to that (namely OH not being well, getting a Christmas tree and lights and other general non-productive stuff). We did manage to move the 2 sofas into the front room at about 10pm on saturday which was interesting. I cant believe how hard it was to find white christmas tree lights anywhere but thats another story.

Yesterday I was trying to rescue some of our skirting boards but apart from making a lot of mess in the garage I didn't get very far and I've had to bring in the mitre saw to give it back today. Originally we were planning on using it all again but give that a fair bit of it has been damaged we are going to price up some replacements provided we can get a reasonable match as I dont want to have to pay for custom made stuff. Either way they'll have to wait until the New year now.

helping_hubby

Merry Christmas everybody!

I finally painted my feature wall Did it freehand in the end and I think it's come out well. Happy with the colour too. Really warms up the room. I'm now thinking of getting chocolate brown curtains to replace the cream ones. (the cream ones are old - and are just temporary - I want these in the spare bedroom eventually).

I am so looking forward to Christmas - 4 day weekend! Yay!
And NO DIY!

latecomer

I've got the rest of today and tomorrow and then I'm off until the 5th. I'm planning on doing a fair bit of DIY and a lot of relaxing.

Our spare room is going to get redone as it just got a quick lick of paint when we moved in. Going to put up a basic cornice but need to adapt a cupboard built in above the door first as its too high for a cornice to be fitted. Then we've going to paint the walls and hopefully put on some new skirting boards if we can find some that are a reasonable match for the rest of the house.

I'm also going to try and fit the extractor fan in the bathroom as I've had the stuff for ages but need to cut a large hole through the outside wall and chase the wall for the wiring of the extractor fan and isolation switch.

latecomer

@BB - what did you use to draw your floor plans? (I've just noticed them on the blog for the first time )

@ShimmyHill - 'they had nothing when they moved in, not even carpets' so we will do it as and when we can afford it.' - we dont have any carpets either and we've been in for 10 months

TomsMom

Glad to see you've all made a bit of progress. Helping_hubby, that's a really nice colour on your feature wall.

Our utility room floor got grouted a few days ago. OH spent the weekend sanding the new plaster in the utility room ready for a mist coat. He found it took quite a bit out of him so he's having a bit of a rest now.

We've got some serious decisions to make about furnishings etc over the next few days and hope to spend some time shopping once the sales have started. There's a lot to buy so we're hoping to get some good prices. The kitchen has been ordered as there is a price increase in January - got that from the local chap in the end, it was the first kitchen I liked and I never changed my mind no matter how many others I saw :rotfl: . We got a good price off him and he'll store it for us for a while. I'm trying to get him to come close to internet prices on appliances now but I think it needs further work .

Builders will be back on 5th January so fingers crossed for dry weather as the roof is hopefully coming off to start the loft refurbishment.

Andy - that is one sweet pup you have there but didn't they have any blue bandages for him :rotfl:

Hope you all have a great Christmas, have a good rest from the DIY if that's what you want, hope you get lots done if you really want to carry on renovating.

BB1984

Aww Andrew your puppy is so sweet! Poor little thing with that big bandage and collar, hope he doesn't have to keep it on too long.

Helping Hubby, love the lounge, it looks great. We've done our feature wallpaper in our lounge alcoves now, which look good but I haven't had a chance to take any photos yet - been very busy getting not much done...!

So yes, in terms of progress over the weekend - we were out all day Saturday visiting family (during which time I kept thinking how much DIY I could have been doing...!) But we both had yesterday off work, so still had a 2-day weekend, and David is off until next week now so he can get some more done. The lounge is basically finished now, bar the carpet. The alcoves are wallpapered, the bespoke curtain pole (my Dad's a steel fabricator) is up and curtains are hung. I love it! Just need to organise carpet and put some shelving up. I painted the top coat in the bathroom, so that's finished now too - including a shiny new cabinet over the basin. The only small thing we've got to do is put one more coat of sealant on the slate floor. In the kitchen, the doors are finally on all of the units now, so I can have fun organising my cupboards...! Just the kickboards to fit. We invited friends round last night - our first ever dinner guests! A very auspicious occasion
In the hallway, we painted an undercoat, and David's going to do a second undercoat this morning, and hopefully a first top coat later this afternoon. We've gone for one of Dulux's "Light & Space" range - probably a complete con and no different to any other emulsion, but we figured we didn't need that much of it so it only worked out a couple of quid more expensive than the other stuff.
Yesterday we had to do a bit of shopping and I met a friend for a coffee, then spent a couple of hours frantically tidying/sweeping/hoovering/mopping and cooking before our guests arrived! So didn't get all that much DIY done, but hopefully David will finish the hallway today and tomorrow.

It will be nice to have a couple of days off!

BB