Coming close to buying a largish Victorian house in need of quite a lot of work. Given the scale of the project, I'll need to get some work done by others as it'll be years before it's in any useful state if I'm doing all the work. Right now, I'm trying to plan what I should do and what I should pay for.
One job is replacement of a suspended wooden floor in a 17 x 14 ft room. It's pretty clear that the original joists rotted many years ago and the thing is held up by brick piers and wedges in the cellar, and it all looks a bit of a bodge. Simple answer would be complete replacement and the one quote I have so far is getting on for £5k. At a rough guess, the materials would leave plenty of change out of £1k, so that sounds like £4k for labour.
Now I find it difficult to see that much work in the job: I've never replaced a floor but I have built a deck, which is much the same principle. I would see it as running a ledger board along each long side, joists across and floorboards on top of that, skirting back on, job done. Doing that and 'paying myself' £4k sounds like a good use of my time.
So, am I missing something here or is it simply that this quote is over-priced? I can't really start getting competitive quotes until I have the place, and this was from a timber and damp survey that was done while assessing the place. ( I suspect these 'free surveys' have the benefit of bringing in a certain amount of work with a high mark- up and, if challenged, the firm would say that they were helping the purchaser to justify a price reduction. )
Any views on this, experiences or gotchas, chaps?