Renovate entire victorian flat in 6 months?

ScandiMigrant

Hi,

After a lot of reading it's finally time to create an account!

We've just bought a victorian raised ground floor flat, which is in need of quite a bit of love. As I'm new I can't post with links to the floorplans as-is and to-be unfortunately.

We want to:
1. Knock down half the (presumably) load bearing wall separating the living room towards the street, half is about 3m long (have not been in touch with freeholder/BC yet)
2. Make the current kitchen smaller and turn into a small kids bed room, it's situated next to the living room toward the back
2 Move the kitchen to the living room and replace it. It would sit at the wall against the "old" kitchen.
3. Combine, resize smaller and redo the bathroom/WC
4. install electric underfloor heating throughout (currently no heating or gas supply)
5. change carpets to wood flooring (seems we'll get permission from freeholder if we add sound proofing insulation under).
6. other bits and boobs throughout, removing the fireplace (not the chimney breast) etc.

Assuming we get freeholder/BC/PP permission, is this all feasible in 6 months? Including BC permission for load bearing wall removal. The flat will be completely empty and we can stay in our rental until end of March.

Is the best approach to hire a single building firm to do the lot? seeing as some of the work will be dependent on other being done. Would want to do some stuff ourselves, like tearing down a few walls and installing the underfloor heating.

Would appreciate greatly for feedback on anyone who's done a similar project or have knowledge on it.

Many thanks in advance

phill99

This kind of work is my stock-in-trade.


There is no reason why this can't be done in your time frame assuming all of the permissions are in place. You will need an engineers report and calculations to remove load bearing walls. Your freeholder will make a charge to allow consent and may want his own engineer to give a second opinion (which you will have to pay for).


I really would not recommend having different companies to undertake different aspects of the work. With the extent of the work you are planning you need one person to have overall responsibility and to ensure that each sub contractor has done what is required of them, that work isn't being doubled up and that where problems occur, the parties don't blame each other.


The work will need a decent time programme and it is essential that you have a clear objective of what your end goal is. Your destination is critical. Starting off without clear objectives is asking for trouble.


Make sure that you make clear decisions on finishes, sanitary ware etc a number of weeks before they are required on site.


Make sure you allow for contingencies (allow 20% of your budget). Remember that no matter how well you plan, things will come to light during refurbishment that no reasonable person could have expected and this needs to be allowed for in both time and money.

Brummie85

Depending on the length and cost of your overall works, you may need to appoint a CDM co-ordinator for your project if you a firm in to do the work.. Typically the lead/main contractor will assume this responsibility, but it's worth making sure that this is agreed and they are aware of the obligations that are placed upon them.

Get an idea of the things you want and create a realistic budget for how much it would cost to buy them. You can then see a clear cost in terms of materials and labour, which is useful when comparing quotes.

For the things you do yourself, don't be faired to shop round. There are large differences in price for the same items. I saved 30% on my consumer unit by spending 5 minutes on Google. Overall I've probably saved maybe £600 on the cost of a rewire, because I didn't throw all of my money at one supplier. Even the sparky was taking notes about where I was getting stuff from because I was getting better prices then he could from his normal places.