How much does it take to fully refurbish a two bedroom flat

Shirley21

Hi everyone,

I am a first time buyer and I viewed a flat yesterday. The flat is a two bedroom (50m2, very small though) and it requires lots of works. I am not kidding and I think the last time that the vendor did the refurbishment was 20 years ago. Everything is aged and need works: kitchen, bathroom, floors, ceilings, radiators, boiler, even skirting boards and doors are very very old and a few are damaged. （I am not sure whether I should do rewiring and how expensive is rewiring to a flat and whether it is complicated?)The toilet is also broken and leaking as I noted the floorboard under the vinyl sheet in the bathroom was warped. Hopefully it is not damaging the timber joist underneath, but it is suspended timber floor with air bricks to both front and back so I think it is fine? Any suggestions? 

I might make an offer though by taking into the consideration of all the above. The reason I want to make an offer is purely I like the location and would like to do the design myself if I can buy it in a much cheaper price. However, if the price can’t meet my expectation, I won’t buy it as I don’t want to take risks of spending much more than expected. 

I would like to know how much people spent in reality for this type of full refurbishment. Would be appreciated if anyone could share their experience or story on this. Any underestimate on prices at the beginning and why the final costs are over budget? Or anyone achieved it within the budget. I live in London so I believe the cost will be more than other locations. 

I saw lots of news about construction labour shortages and materials shortages so am wondering how easy in this time to find a good builder or I might need to take a risk of buying building materials on a more expensive price, etc. 

I also understand that if I successfully buy the flat I may still go to stay in a rental property in a few weeks as the toilet is broken and I do need to replace it first before move in.  

It will largely help me to decide what’s the offer I am going to give! Any suggestions would be appreciated! 

Emmia

What is your level of experience with trades like plastering, electrics, carpentry, plumbing & decorating? DIY would be cheaper but you need the skills.

Personally I wouldn't attempt a rewire myself as (given I have no idea where to start) getting it wrong would be dangerous - and the person doing it these days should be certified.

I have however replaced ceiling lights on a like for like basis when one of the previous ones decided it wanted to be a floor feature instead, covering me in glass and nearly knocking me out in the process!

I do my own interior decorating too.


The flat may also already be priced to take the need for refurbishment into account - so you may not be sucessful at getting a reduction on that basis.

HampshireH

Do you have a rightmove link?

You can rewire an average size flat for around £3k

But the plastering afterwards will cost another few thousand.

You can have a nice whole bathroom suite fitted for about £5k-£6k(obviously can be done cheaper)

A kitchen will cost you anywhere between £3k -£20k  depending on your standard, where you buy it and the number of units/appliances. (Ours cost £5k Inc Integrated appliances at b&q but didn't include fitting or flooring etc in our house but places like DIY kitchens were cheaper.

Decoration is a couple of grand unless you do it yourself.

New boiler ? £1500 or new electric storage heaters £250 + a radiator.

Doors are cheap. Flooring doesn't have to be expensive. A 2 bed flat can be carpeted easily for £1300. There are some great sales to take advantage of too (we got 40% off our new floor last week online compared to the same shops quoted price in store - they matched it)

Obviously the above are very approximate and will vary so get some quotes.

If you have skills yourself you can save costs on fitting kitchen, doors, decorating etc 

Labour is expensive and in high demand so prices are being pushed up and sme materials are short supply you are right.

Find your self a reliable and decent multitrader and see what price they would give you for the job (get quotes obviously for comparison)

Personally I'd avoid places like Wren kitchens it's extortionate and you can get more for less elsewhere

I'd budget a minimum of £25-£30k for what you want and any unforeseen issues.

tacpot12

It's unlikely that the flat will need rewiring, unless you want many more sockets and lights or lightswitches in different places to where they are. PVC cables typically last 50 years or more. If the flat doesn't have a consumer unit (aka fuse box) with RCDs or RCBOs then you can pay to have the consumer unit upgraded to provide this valuable protection. Cost of an upgrade might be £500. 

It's also unlikely that the radiators and central heating pipes will need replacing. The central heating system can be flushed before installing a new boiler to make sure that there is nothing in the system that will damage the boiler (this would also be necessary for the warranty on a new boiler to be valid.)

Skirting boards can have holes filled and damage repaired. You can even fit additional mouldings to change the  appearance of the boards to some degree, so you may be able to restore the skirting boards. It is surprising how good they can look with a fresh coat of paint.

The floor repair could be a bit involved, but old joists are very resilient to water damage. If there is some damage it can probably be repaired by "sistering" the joist. This means that a short section of timber is fixed across the damaged area with bolts to strengthen the joist. If the problem has been left for years, there might be some rot, and you could reduce your offer to reflect this potential. (It would be for the seller to prove or guarantee there is no rot). 

You can pretty much guarantee that the final costs will come in over budget, as there will always be things that have been overlooked, In an ideal world you would have a contigency fund of about 10%, but in practice what I did was just delay finishing the work - I lived without the property being decorated for a few months until I could save up the money that had to be spent on work I couldn't do myself. 

Keswick1uk

Am I the only one that laughed at 20 years ago!

My "new" kitchen is 23 years old. Lol to be fair it's not the current white, grey shiny fashion finish but it's excellent quality wood and cleans up well and so by no means an absolute disaster to live with.

GDB2222

Keswick1uk said:

Am I the only one that laughed at 20 years ago!

My "new" kitchen is 23 years old. Lol to be fair it's not the current white, grey shiny fashion finish but it's excellent quality wood and cleans up well and so by no means an absolute disaster to live with.

No, you're not the only one. We moved in here in 1998, and we've essentially done nothing since. Some of the house was rerfurb'ed in 1998, but some of what we never got round to was looking pretty dated when we moved in.

Indigo_and_Violet

We've just had work done on our new two bed in London. We paid about £12k for a kitchen and £8k for a bathroom. I'd describe both as 'high street' - neither are particularly lux but we also weren't working hard to get a bargain. Bathroom included adding underfloor heating which probably added about £800 parts+labour (possibly less, I'd have to check the quotes). We replaced about 5 radiators (they were rusty and leaking) and that cost probably about £1000 (about £170 per radiator plus about £200 fitting). 

We have definitely found it hard to get people to do work, and harder in the last couple of months. We had a local friend lined up to do the whole thing but then he and his family all got quite sick with covid and he couldn't take on the work. We ended up getting the kitchen fitted by Magnet as no-one else was available (Magnet were okay, we were ordering during lockdown and are FTBs so the handholding during the design process was useful, the aftersales was awful and in the future we'd go elsewhere). The job then became too small for our guy to do (he specialises in whole property re-fits) so we had to find someone else to do the bathroom. We had a couple of recommendations locally but they were all very booked up so we went through checkatrade. We originally put in the their recommended budget for a small bathroom (which I think was £5k) and couldn't get anyone to quote at that level. We've been trying to get someone to come and look at some damp for about a month and just couldn't get anyone out. Eventually our freeholder 'asked a favour' of their contractor to come and look and they also told us if we wanted them to do anything the lead in time was at least 2 months. 

If you can, I would start asking around and getting local recommendations now and seeing if someone can come and do a quote before exchange. That means you can get yourself provisionally booked in with them for a few months time. Remember though that if the quote comes in at e.g. £30k you can't argue that means you should offer £30k underasking, because the price already takes into account the decorative state and you will get some benefit from having the new stuff and done exactly to your taste. 

badger09

Keswick1uk said:

Am I the only one that laughed at 20 years ago!

My "new" kitchen is 23 years old. Lol to be fair it's not the current white, grey shiny fashion finish but it's excellent quality wood and cleans up well and so by no means an absolute disaster to live with.

Absolutely not!

We sold out house in August last year. We moved in in 2000 and did a lot of refurb, including (top of the range) new kitchen, bathroom, ensuite in the first year. One of the viewers commented on our 'fabulous new kitchen'