Full House renovation + DIY- rough cost estimates

63e300

Hello, looking for a rough guide for a possible house purchase. The house itself is a 1930s detached house in London. Approx 1800 square foot. The house was lived in by an elderly couple and hasnt been kept up to date so it will need a lot of work done to it. I have made some estimates below. I have a couple of questions

1. Is it better to get individuals to do each stage or find one building company to provide everyone (electricians, builders, plumbers, roofers etc)

2. Are these prices reasonable or are we looking at a lot more. Everything will be medium spec

Downstairs bathroom and shower. We would be looking to fit a very small shower with a toiler downstairs by the door where we seem to have an excessive greeting area on opening the door. This would need a stud wall and new plumbing- £7500

Upstairs bathroom is currently split in two. Shower and toilet room. We would look to break the dividing wall and make a new larger room with a shower, toiler, sink. No new plumbing £5000

Replace the windows with double glazing. Two bay windows and one set of french doors (4 panels in total) along with 5 other normal sized windows. PVC. Double glazed- £10000

Downstairs Kitchen- Medium spec from Wren. Unplumbed Island. Break wall 3.5m between lounge and dining room to make open plan area (this will be where the french doors will be). Large tiles for floor with underfloor heating and insulation for suspended timber floor £22000

Carpet for second living/sitting room, stairs and upstairs 4 bedrooms- £5000

Wired Alarm £1000

Patch work for wires etc- £1000

New Roof and part of this will involve removing 4 chimneys from ground all the way up £20000

Replaster walls- £5000 (ideally some form of lime plaster as solid brick wall)

DIY: painting, CCTV, touch ups

This gives me a total estimate of:£75000

Emergency money- £25000

Obviously every job has its own challenges but are these numbers roughly in the correct region or am I being too ambitious.

jonnydeppiwish!

Shop around for the kitchen - you could probably pick it up already assembled for £5k from places such as diy-kitchens.com etc.

FreeBear

63e300 said: Replaster walls- £5000 (ideally some form of lime plaster as solid brick wall)

What finish is there on the outside of the walls ?

One of the "features" of a lot of 1930s properties was a pebble dash or rough cast render on the upper half. Often a cement based render, and almost certainly had a Sandtex or Weathershield paint slapped on at some point in its life.

If you are knocking plaster off the external walls inside (and ceilings), removing more than 25% in any one room triggers Building Regulation compliance. With solid brick walls, you would certainly need to add some insulation to meet current standards. This would typically be ~75mm of Celotex/Kingspan, 150mm mineral wool batt or cork, or ~250mm of wood fibre. If you are wanting to maintain breathability, then cork with a pure lime finish is the way to go. Not going to be cheap, but well worth doing if you want to keep heating costs down.

Edit to add - If anyone recommends Tarmac Limelite renovating plaster as a suitable finish, give them a kick up the rear end. A look at the MSDS reveals that it contains 25-50% Portland cement, 2.5-5% Calcium dihydroxide (hydrated lime), and a few unspecified chemicals. The remainder will be sand. The Limelite finishing plaster doesn't contain any cement, nor does it have much lime in it.

63e300

My previous message seemed to not have been posted. 

Walls are solid brick, no external render. There is some form of concrete which covers the first 5-6 brick. Not sure what thats about. Wont be doing any insulation currently. Waiting for EWI when we can afford it. Thanks for letting me know re the 25% rule. In that case may need to DIY strips the walls and patch any damage. I previously used steam but have seen that chemical peeling works much better and quicker so hopefully can grab some family and friends to help there. 

Will save some money there- should be able to fill in the odd patch there. 

FreeBear

The cement render at the base of the wall is often called a plinth. Mixed opinions on whether these are good or bad. Removing the cement invariably means you have several courses of heavily damaged bricks, so on that score, probably best left alone unless the cement is causing damp problems internally.

Insulating the walls internally, whilst it loses a bit of floor space, does mean you can do it on a room by room basis. Insulating around the window/door reveals reduces the cold spots that form in those areas.

Insulating externally, you have to pay attention to the detailing around the roof line and around the door/window reveals. If you have bay windows, the detailing around them can look piggin' ugly. You also hide the beauty of the brickwork which some people value.

Internal/external, they have their advantages and disadvantages - Only you can decide which one best suits you and your pocket.

63e300

Re the plinth I think we will leave it. The house is almost 100 years old and isnt showing any signs of damp or shifting.

The questions I had re external insulation, is it worth while doing this at the same time as new double glazing or is it easy enough to do retrospectively? 

We would also need a new roof as out current doesnt have much of an overhangg.

63e300

The other question I had was that the property as a significant number of copper pipes which are exposed (i.e. running up the walls). Given the price of copper do people replace these or reuse them?

FreeBear

63e300 said: The questions I had re external insulation, is it worth while doing this at the same time as new double glazing or is it easy enough to do retrospectively? 

We would also need a new roof as out current doesnt have much of an overhang.

Fitting EWI will require extended sills on the outside, and you may need to extend the roof overhang - The gutters & downpipes will need to be moved, which also entails digging out the sockets at the base of the downpipes and modifying the underground drainage. A pain in the butt if you have hard paving right up to the building. On the other hand, a good opportunity to install some leaf/debris interceptors.

How much the sills and roof overhang need to be extended will depend on how thick the insulation layer is. It makes sense to do roof, EWI, and windows all at the same time to save on scaffold costs (windows don't always require scaffolding). But that does mean having to find a big chunk of money in one go.

Fitting of replacement windows will quite likely make a mess of your internal plaster (certainly has when my windows were done). So you might want to do them first.