victorian terrace renovation --> open plan

renovate-plymouth

hello,
i have a little question i'd like to ask. i am aware that noone on here will be able to give me exact answers as this is only in the idea stage at the moment but it would be great to hear a few opinions.
basically, my partner and i would like to buy a 3 bed victorian terrace in plymouth with the view to break up the structured ground floor layout (seperate sitting and dining rooms and small kitchen in extension) to create a more open plan feel. i am thinking of removing all interior walls downstairs (im sure some/most of them would be load-bearing).
has anyone got any ideas what sort of price range we could be looking at for works like this to be carried out? forget about the decorating, we're happy to do that.. just the structural stuff!

again, im not expecting an exact quote but would be interesting to know if this job would be more in the range of say 5000 or 30,000 pounds to see if its all worthwhile...

thank you!:)

ormus

as a rough guide you can budget for 1k-2k per wall, for knocking down a wall and having a steel rsj installed.

think carefully before you do all this work, most peeps want rooms not open plan living. so your house resale price maybe lower than the average.

ed110220

ormus wrote: »

as a rough guide you can budget for 1k-2k per wall, for knocking down a wall and having a steel rsj installed.

think carefully before you do all this work, most peeps want rooms not open plan living. so your house resale price maybe lower than the average.

If you want to remove 'most or all' of the internal walls, you probably won't just need individual RSJs installed but an interlinked system of steel supports. That is, if you want to remove a wall and would normally put in a single RSJ, but also want to remove the wall that RSJ would rest on, you can instead use square section steel bolted together.

I'd be inclined to say if you want an open plan house, a Victorian terrace isn't a good place to start... try and do something that suits the house and it will be cheaper and more satisfactory in the long run. If you must have open-plan living, a newer house would be a better starting point.

rustyboy21

I live in a victorian property myself and was put off doing what you want to do, by watching a grand designs programme on Channel 4.

Victorian properties have weird brick work, the internal walls, even party walls with next door seem to be rough cut bricks, the stuff housebuilders now would dump. This programme showed that the house they were working on, didn't even have decent corners to the brickwork, they were just cemented together and not laid properly.

I know that when I had my kitchen done, the builder took all the plaster off the walls ( about 6 inches thick!) and the state of the wall with next door was horrendous, really bad rough brickwork and bad state of repair.

If you are going to do it, get a very good reputable company in, who know about working on Victorian properties.

Victorian houses seem to throw up more issues, the more you mess with them !

Link to tv programme. If it doesn't take you straight there it is series 3 episode 6.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/4od#2920081