House renovation - Options

ChilliBob

Guys,

As some may know from another thread we've had the rug pulled from under us on our ideal property, which we thought we'd move into in August. Yep, right at the end

Being back to the drawing board we've accepted we might need to take on a project which requires quite a bit of work. I'm talking perhaps side extensions, new kitchen/bathroom etc.

When doing this do people tend to:

A. Have a firm which does it all, from architect visions, to bulling work, to decorating
B. Find each of the above separately and project manage yourself
C. Cut out some of the trades and DIY - eg on decorating, perhaps even architect.

I have a feeling A ends up being the most expensive but best. My partner thinks A might end up not being as expensive or take as long as going down route B.

Keen to know others thoughts.

For context, South East location, property is likely to be 1930s or so, three bed, 700-800k starting price etc.

knightstyle

IMO A will be the most expensive, B probably best IF you have time to do your bit well.
C will take a long time if you are working but you will get a lot of satisfaction and know that things have been done properly and how you want them.
Architects can be expensive, do you need one or will a surveyor or perhaps you be able to prepare drawings for permissions and trades to quote from?

stuart45

I work in the trade, although now I'm older I don't take on the work I used to. 
At present whichever route you take is a difficult time for customers, with labour and materials difficult to come by and really expensive. 
If you have plenty of cash and no DIY skills, or knowledge of the trade then a really good building firm to do everything is the easiest, but you will probably have a long wait for that. Most of the firms I've worked for in the past will take on a job, then start it so the work is theirs then.
Using subbies is usually cheaper, but more stressful  for most people.
DIY is fine if you have the skills.

ChilliBob

I can do some DIY, I'd say it extends mostly to decorating and woodwork, as opposed to say plumbing anything else like that.

I could knock up some drawings myself but I'd not have thought an architect would cost tonnes for something not too outlandish?

Now this is a really unlikely situation...Has anyone had any work done in the East London/Essex area (I can be more specific if necessary) where they'd recommend, or equally important, avoid, builders and all in one firms?

Interesting point on labour and materials, suggests if you do find something you might be better waiting a few months anyway. I'd forgotten about that, what with commodities funds going through the roof and all that, makes perfect sense. 

As regards waiting, I'm patient (unlike my partner lol), and I'd be a bit concerned if someone really decent said yeah, I'll pop round tomorrow and crack on lol

Subbies, sorry mate you've lost me there? 

stuart45

Subbies are sub contractors. So you get different ones for each phase of the job. Getting them all to follow each other at the right time is one of the many challenges. Doing drawing for PP is easy enough, but for Regs is more difficult.

ChilliBob

Ah I see, like when I had some bathroom bloke call in his tiler, mastic bloke and sparky? Makes sense, cheers  

stuart45

Sometimes you get lucky and say find a bricklayer who only wants to do the walls, but has a friend who is a chippy and gets him to stick in the joists etc. Between them they are bound to know other trades so it can work like that. Unfortunately trades are in such demand now it's not so easy. If you aren't in the trade it's really hard, as you don't really know who the good tradesmen are.
Some of the worst ones are really good at putting on a good image.
The South East has always been a difficult place.

seradane

This is my experience for some comparison, but of course your mileage will almost certainly vary.

So I recently (well, still ongoing but) did a project on my 1930s semi in the South East, no extensions but a fair bit of here & there internal works. I drew up the designs myself (so no architect fees) and went out to a couple builders to get some costings.

My budget (perhaps optimistically, in retrospect), we shall call x.

The two prices from the builders I got back were 2.5x and 2x. Oof. So that was out of the question. Luckily in providing the quotes the builders had given some good breakdown of all the trades, so that gave me a good starting point for looking at options B & C.

I started by getting some quotes for the parts we definitely couldn't do ourselves, and the best prices I was finding were maybe 80-90% of the costs given by the builders. So if I had priced the whole job as per option B I was probably looking at 1.6-1.8x cost, so still a bit more than I could justify.

So we looked at taking out everything we thought we could do ourselves (i.e. pretty much everything except plumbing, electrical, structural, kitchen fitting and plastering), which has gotten the price down to probably 1.1x. It's still ongoing at the moment, may come about on budget but trying to be conservative.

So in summary, my purely anecdotal costs for your options are probably about as follows:

A ) Full cost, a small about of your time. "Quick" at least in terms of building timescales

B ) 80% of A cost, but a fair bit of your time making sure you've thought of everything that needs to happen in the right order and not holding anybody up because things that need to have been done haven't been done, oh and if someone takes longer to do things than you estimated, making sure the next guy doesn't lose his slot and thus can only fit you in again in six weeks time. Probably not that much longer overall than A though, if you're on top of things.

C ) 50% of A cost, time as per B plus all your free time in the evenings and weekends for the next several months (if not years) depending on the scale of the project, will of course take much much longer overall.


So ultimately just depends on how far your budget stretches compared to what you want to do, and how much time you can/are willing to put into it from your end.

davilown

We did option C - took us almost 3 years and nearly a divorce before we eventually finished. Included in this was a kitchen, bathroom, ensuite, boiler, rads, complete rewire.
 However, it cost about £80k completed rather than £130k just for the 2 extension (with only electric and plumbing).
we had a very good builder on a daily rate who was invaluable.

davilown

davilown said:

We did option C - took us almost 3 years and nearly a divorce before we eventually finished. Included in this was a kitchen, bathroom, ensuite, boiler, rads, complete rewire.
 However, it cost about £80k completed rather than £130k just for the 2 extension (with only electric and plumbing).
we had a very good builder on a daily rate who was invaluable.

Meant to say we’re just about to repeat the above but probably more of option B this time

Justonemorecupoftea

We've done B with a spot of C - various different people with us doing painting, shelves and a few other bits. We probably could've used a bit more thought/guidance on the order of works, but it worked out in the end.

If you *need* an architect is pay for one though.