Refurbishing a House

[Second Summer]

I'm curious how much it costs to fix up the interior of a house. E.g. a new kitchen including appliances, plus new carpets, maybe getting a laminate floor for a previously carpeted room.

A colleague said he spent £20k for a job like that, but that was for the whole house, and he had hired a work manager to deal with all the sub-contractors doing the actual work.

 

[Andy_T]

I guess you can also spend £200k on that, without major problems ;-)

 

[Second Summer]

I guess you can also spend £200k on that, without major problems ;-)

Well, I was interested in people's experiences and ideas for doing this frugally. This is in the Frugality forum, after all!

 

[Moll Flanders]

You could easily spend £20k or more doing up a house but it's cheaper if you can do some of the DIY work yourself.

We didn't get our kitchen done properly but we just kept the old units and got someone in to replace the doors and handles with new ones. A new kitchen would probably be about £5k or more but it depends on the size of the room and what quality you wanted. I've read you can buy the kitchen online and then get someone to install it, I think I've read that the installation is the most costly aspect?

New carpets and laminate flooring isn't that expensive in comparison to major bits of work. I think when we got new flooring it was about £300-400 a room.

We haven't bothered to get central heating yet (we have crappy storage heaters instead) but we got a quote for central heating and it would have cost £5k and the man said we would have to rip up the upstairs flooring to get it done, so we just put up with the old heaters.

 

[Second Summer]

New carpets and laminate flooring isn't that expensive in comparison to major bits of work. I think when we got new flooring it was about £300-400 a room.

Yes, that makes sense. And the work was included in that figure? (Sorry, I'm completely clueless ...)

 

[Moll Flanders]

Yes, that makes sense. And the work was included in that figure? (Sorry, I'm completely clueless ...)

Yes, I found a local company and they came round and showed us samples and then gave us a quote for the price of the flooring and the fitting. They usually take the old flooring with them for free or for a small extra cost. I didn't think of this at the time but it's much easier to get the flooring done when you first move in because you don't have to lug around all the furniture. When we got our dogs they ruined the carpets upstairs and so we had to get laminate flooring down instead. It was a total pain having to move all of our stuff out of the upstairs rooms so they could fit the new floors.

 

[Andy_T]

Kitchen including appliances - check online or go to Ikea for special offers. I personally am a fan of free-standing kitchen cabinets, as you can easily move them to another house and they tend not to be that expensive.

Check whether you need new wallpaper or if painting over the existing one will suffice...

 

[AeryFairy]

The in-laws recently redid their entire kitchen: flooring, counters, cupboards, appliances, the lot. They did almost all of it with things from IKEA, but fitted the entire thing themselves (the father-in-law is very handy). Cost around £3,000 I think (would have been about double that if they'd hired people to install it).

Several places (like IKEA) have online tools for designing and costing refurbishments.

 

[RascalsMom]

Yes, I found a local company and they came round and showed us samples and then gave us a quote for the price of the flooring and the fitting. They usually take the old flooring with them for free or for a small extra cost. I didn't think of this at the time but it's much easier to get the flooring done when you first move in because you don't have to lug around all the furniture. When we got our dogs they ruined the carpets upstairs and so we had to get laminate flooring down instead. It was a total pain having to move all of our stuff out of the upstairs rooms so they could fit the new floors.

I ripped the carpets out and put down flooring before I moved into my house for this reason. I knew my dogs would ruin them so it was easier to do it from the start.

 

[das_nut]

"Refurbishing a house" is so vague that you can't really pin a cost on it.

We're refurbishing an small old house - nothing major, just a restoration and fixing neglect. All work done by ourselves. It's probably chewed up a few grand of our budget so far.

It really depends on how much work you want to do yourself, what materials you are using, what needs to be done, and how big the changes are.

 

[shyvas]

I'm hooked on TV programmes that refurbish homes ; Hommes Under the Hammer, Love the Place You're In etc.

Looking at the 'before' and 'after' images is like magic !!!!

lovehome.co.uk: TV shows on Home

 

[SuicideBlonde]

We have to refurbish the house we live in. The roof is leaking, the interior is old, it needs paint and I really want to take up the carpet in the house. My partner is pretty handy and has done construction work for money with the neighbor. I just don't want to put too much work into it yet, in case the bank does take it.

 

[Poppy]

It's amazing what a coat of paint will do to freshen up a house.

 

[shyvas]

It's amazing what a coat of paint will do to freshen up a house.

I totally agree. I'm hooked on all the TV programmes ; Hommes under the Hammer, Love the Place you live in as the before and after shots are unbelievable.

Decluttering also works wonders. A messy, untidy place always looks smaller than a tidy home.

 

[ledboots]

It's amazing what a coat of paint will do to freshen up a house.

I love to paint, too! It is such fun to transform a room, watching it as you go. I love when one wall is a different color than the others as an accent wall.

 

[KLS52]

I love to paint, too! It is such fun to transform a room, watching it as you go. I love when one wall is a different color than the others as an accent wall.

So, how soon can you be here? [emoji12]

 

[ledboots]

So, how soon can you be here? [emoji12]

Lol! I used to always paint with my dad, as he liked to change up the colors, so I got really fast at doing trim (he liked to use the rollers.) Years ago my husband and I bought an old victorian (1888) and the paint colors were so awful. Huge living room kelly green, bedroom Barbie pink, etc. It took 5 coats to cover the pink. [emoji33]

 

[Mr Crunchy]

Well, I was interested in people's experiences and ideas for doing this frugally. This is in the Frugality forum, after all!

As das_nut points out, how much are you willing to do yourselves? My first house was a fixer-upper and we did much of the work ourselves. New flooring, baseboards and paint. We were able to borrow a miter saw for the baseboard project. Also, I removed a deck, part of a patio and some landscaping and installed grass and vegetable gardens. I don't remember exactly but I think materials for all that was about $2000 US. We had some carpet installed for us and that was probably another couple thousand. So, all-in-all, probably under $5000 or thereabouts. That was over 20 years ago, so probably double that in today's currency. It can be lots of fun, too, if you have the time and energy.

The only things I refused to do were indoor plumbing and electrical. Things where a mistake could end up costing more than I'm saving or killing me.

 

[ledboots]

As das_nut points out, how much are you willing to do yourselves? My first house was a fixer-upper and we did much of the work ourselves. New flooring, baseboards and paint. We were able to borrow a miter saw for the baseboard project. Also, I removed a deck, part of a patio and some landscaping and installed grass and vegetable gardens. I don't remember exactly but I think materials for all that was about $2000 US. We had some carpet installed for us and that was probably another couple thousand. So, all-in-all, probably under $5000 or thereabouts. That was over 20 years ago, so probably double that in today's currency. It can be lots of fun, too, if you have the time and energy.

The only things I refused to do were indoor plumbing and electrical. Things where a mistake could end up costing more than I'm saving or killing me.

Yes we did a lot of work ourselves, too, aside from electric. My husband could do some easy plumbing things. We sanded and finished the old wood floors, and big stuff like drywalling because we split the house into a duplex and redid the attic into livable space. It was fun, really, most of it.

 

[SuicideBlonde]

I bought a "new to us" dryer from Habitat For Humanity and unbeknownst to us it had a different plug then what ours has. My partner fixed it by taking the plug off our old one and splicing it into the new one. It seems to be working fine. He is super handy.