My daughter is looking to buy a Victorian ground floor flat that's not been upgraded for years. Re-wireable fuses, lath and plaster, poor insulation etc etc.. It would seem sensible to budget for rewiring, maybe replumbing (although current stuff IS copper), plasterboarding walls and ceiling (and adding insulation to modern standards.
Is there a way of roughly estimating the cost of all this work based on floor or wall area? Just be nice to have some ball park figures.
Tim
No idea. However ...
Beware "insulating to modern standards". It *is* possible, but you need to understand what "interstitial condensation" means.
A lot depends on where she is and to what standard she wants the work done (and if she wants to live there while it's being done).
I took a builder round a house I was thinking of buying. Apart from the rew iring and replumbing which I would do myself, everything was 'a few hundred pounds'. Even knocking down the scullery walls.
However the total of adding all those few hundred poundses up would be abou t £15k.
Rewiring about £3k? New boiler / rads / CH plumbing £5-6k?
Owain
You need a Spon's estimating guide for small works. A good reference library should have the guides.
and the essentially trivial methods of mitigating it...
Jim K
£60-£150/sq ft. To take a shell and refinish it to a basic(60) ->luxury ditz (150) standard.
That is carpets curtains wallpaper and walls, rewire, replumb etc etc.
'Interior decoration and fittings' And all the other stiff lijke kicjhens, TVs, computer cabling etc etc.
If its of that age, it will also have some movement. I know one couple who did a modern decoration job on one of those and they filled cracks and stuff and then ended up with new cracks in about two years as things shifted. I really don't know what all the desirability is for such properties, huge high ceilings lots of work needed and full of draughts and dodgy windows. Brian
Not sure if it helps, but maybe:
I used to flip 1-2 such properties a year for several years until around
7 years ago. All were Victorian tenement flats, all 1-2 bedrooms, all in bad to very bad condition.Work generally involved:
- Emptying and disposing of whatever was in them.
- Installing new kitchen and bathroom (of reasonable quality)
- Tiling kitchens and bathrooms (materials only - I did the work myself)
- Installing new CH (combi boiler).
- Some plumbing work - kitchen, bathroom, CH
- Plastering most/all walls and ceilings
- Building work (not much - sometimes involved removing a wall perhaps)
- Joinery work (minor repairs to wooden floors, erecting 1-2 Stud walls, etc).
- Electrical work - usually minor (I used to do a lot myself), but I always replaced ageing consumer units.
- Sanding floors (only tool hire - I used to do the work myself) or cheapish carpeting.
- Decoration/painting (materials only)
I had a team of tradesmen that I regularly used (not employed) and they were paid a fair price for the work.
I used to keep a very close eye on the numbers (and laugh at the completely unrealistic and often misleading ones on programmes such as "The Beeny Show"), and I had never spent more than £15k on a flat (inc materials, labour (and council tax for a 2-3 months that it took to do up).
These were all in the city centre of a major city in Scotland.
A point to note is that such properties can spring many unexpected surprises. If you are not familiar with them then try and take someone who is with you to have a look.
For example:
- if you have sash and case windows that you later discover that are rotten under the paint, and you are in a conservation area, so cannot replace with cheap PVC ones, then you will easily spend several £'000 to replace/repair them.
It depends on how much work/planning/supervision they are going to do themselves. If it's a total DIY project, such work can be very profitable and tax free. (Look into VAT/free grants etc)
If you get an architect/builders/other trades in the job can cost three or four times as much as DIY
So the question is a "how long is a piece of string" one.
Yep. All sound advice. Roofs/timber floors can spring some surprises too. Also old chimneys.
Victorian houses almost always have rot in them somewhere.
We have bought and renovated a couple of two bedroom flats in West London i n the last few years. Re-wire, re-plumb, new kitchen and bathroom, carpets, decorate etc, all fairly budget range stuff. Apart from the gas and electr ic we did everything ourselves, not that it works out cheaper because you h ave to pay yourself for your own time. We paid ourselves £10-£15 per ho ur and the total cost ended up being about £25k for each of them. Also, i t takes a very long time if you don't have a team of builders in there. One of them took nearly a year - don't laugh.
Yes - and it's not helped by using modern plaster on an old house. The original lime stuff can accommodate more movement. Especially if the house had no central heating - if you then install that at the same time as new plaster etc, the wood will also move a lot and crack things like the joints between boards on the ceiling and stud walls.
But using a flexible filler like decorator's caulk (you'll need several goes to get it flush as it shrinks) will usually be ok with some movement.
I wouldn't.
I'm hoping to do a room a year in this place, and that's with nothing structural.
Owain
Only if some is an imperceptibly small amount, IME
NT
That's about the speed we managed on average, with full electrical and plumbing stripout.
Hoping to get the last 3 items on the Building Notice done this year so we can get the certificate. That also means barring trivia like redecoration, we are pretty much 100% new inside.
Want to go outside and play with the garden and build a workshop 9as in actually *build* it. To be honest, I prefer outdoor work - you can make a huge mess and just lay down tools. No real clearing up. No cramped working and no having to move stuff all the time.
I'm going to say *never again* but I also know we'll have a low maintenance house that should be expecting nothing serious to go wrong in the next few decades.
But still - *never again*.
Doesn't matter if you DIY or contract out - contracting out means you have to spend a lot of time find good people - and staying on top of the work as it is done. DIY of course just takes time.
It works fine on this Victorian house which is mainly plasterboard. Polyfilla etc simply cracked days later.
But you do need to rake out the crack. And it takes several goes to get a flat surface. So quite a bit of time including drying time.
Found toolsatans `no shrink` decorators filler did what it said on the tube, worth the extra 75p
No, its a function of 'how big is my caulk fillet'
It seems to cope with a 5% movement so to get 5mm movement you need
100mm of caulk:-)
It would be if it was. But is it still as flexible? I'll give it a try next time I need some. Now they are in Wicks close to here. ;-)
2 or 3 months? Have you never seen 60 minute makeover?
It can be a PITA doing up an old property if you are still living in it.
If still living in a house/flat that you are renovating make sure you have the minimum of furniture or you will find that you will be spending too much time moving it room to room.
I would recommend always having a working bathroom - at least you can get clean.
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