Estimate rework cost before buying first house

okhajut

I am a first time buyer, buying house as a single person.

I have found a house which has spacious bedrooms, grand garden and good location. It is a semi-detatched 3 bedroom house.

The house is in south of Gloucestershire area. The house does not seem to have been looked after well for some time.

The house shall require following things to be done:

Essential:
1. Recarpet the entire house
2. Repaint and/or rewallpaper the entire house.
3. Clear out the overgrown garden.

Good to have in near future.
5. Remove the small unused redundant fireplaces in the bedrooms.

4. Move the boiler out of master bedroom and into the kitchen area downstairs.
5. Move toilet seat into bathroom area and replace the bath tub with shower cubicle.

Simple observation shows that the house has some cracks in it where the wall meets the ceiling (in a few places) but cracks are expected in old houses.

Now my question is, who are the people skilled in the doing the above things? I know plumber can do plumbing but the above list goes beyond that. What type of organizations do the above work? I want to estimate the work costs before I buy this house.

Robin9

I would move the boiler much earlier -

and decorate before carpet - but do it in phases.

By toilet seat do you mean wc ? If so leave it where it is - you have a family house and need to think about selling in the future. Ditto bath v shower .

Overall probably less than £15k ; small builder.

Albala

For (necessarily very approximate) costings, I found it helpful running things through on here: http://quotationcheck.com/visitor-sitemap/
A lot of sites you have to state a specific job and they find quotes for you, which is useless and slow if you just want ballpark figures, especially if you aren't very experienced. This site gives you updated averages (but of course, that's all they are, so look carefully at what they asked people to include). Sometimes they give regional variations. So far, we've found the averages pretty consistent with our previous experience and specific quotes we got from local tradesmen afterwards.

Albala

Two schools of thought on 'decorate before carpet'. In terms of work and mess, definitely yes, especially the woodwork. But remember there is a much wider choice of paint and wallpaper than there is of carpet....so maybe choose the carpet first, decorate to match, then actually have the carpet fitted. Decent carpet firms will let you have samples.
(and do any rewiring, or anything requiring work on plaster, before both!)

dimbo61

Are you getting a full survey ?
Does the house need a full rewire,
New combi boiler, new roof etc
You can live with old carpets, a leaking roof or dangerous electrics are a different story.

okhajut

The house looks kind of ok (but old) but still needs a survey done on it.


The thing is, being a first time buyer I don't know what surprises to expect. Like what could be hiding behind those wall papers that are coming off?


Since the house has not been decorated means that all potential problems are fully exposed.



Do I search for "builder" firms or what on gooogle?


There are so many type of specialists like plumber, electrician, carpenter e.t.c. wonder which ones I shall be needing.


Thanks for the link to quotation checks website albala.

AdrianC

okhajut wrote: »

The house shall require following things to be done:

Essential:
1. Recarpet the entire house
2. Repaint and/or rewallpaper the entire house.
3. Clear out the overgrown garden.

Good to have in near future.
5. Remove the small unused redundant fireplaces in the bedrooms.

4. Move the boiler out of master bedroom and into the kitchen area downstairs.
5. Move toilet seat into bathroom area and replace the bath tub with shower cubicle.

Decoration and gardening - get DIYing!

"Remove the fireplaces" - woah, hold on... Let's see some pics. How old's the property? You could be ripping out original features, and harm the value.

Replacing the bath with a shower - not hard, but a fair bit of making-good around it. Or fit an over-bath shower?

What do you mean by moving the toilet into the bathroom? Is it in a separate room currently? If so, you may find it easier to just remove that wall and make a bigger bathroom. The waste pipe for a bog is not something that's straightforward to re-route.

And, of course, once you get into kitchen and bathroom work, then the sky's the limit in terms of what you can spend, depending on the kit and finish you want to end up with.

okhajut

AdrianC, there are small fireplaces in the bedrooms. But they "are not open". I am not sure why they have not been already removed.


The toilet seat is in another small room. I think people in UK call it WC. The bathroom is quite thin and long. There is a bathtub with sink right next to it. On the other end is a washing machine with a shelf surface on top. I never use bathtub. So I thought moving toilet seat into bathroom and replacing the bathtub with standing shower would be good idea. And, move boiler into the WC room. However, you have mentioned that moving the waste pipe in the house will not be a simple task.



The boiler should be in the bathroom or WC. I wonder why it is in the bedroom upstairs.

Davesnave

okhajut wrote: »

you have mentioned that moving the waste pipe in the house will not be a simple task.

If the WC in in a seperate small room right next door to the bathroom, it probably won't be a massive job relocating the WC.


But if it is next door, removing the wall to create a better shaped bathroom/shower room might be a better option, even if it has to contain a boiler.

diggingdude

My bedroom has a cupboard with the boiler in it, I think it was some sort of Loopy craze at one stage late 90s

babyblade41

Removing chimney breasts (if that is what you mean) is not a job for Bob... !!