Renovation costs

Molina

Hi all,

I know there's no definitive answer to this question, but I'd really appreciate some guideline prices.

We're looking to buy a house in Dublin. Within our price bracket everything we like needs renovating. In general we keep seeing houses with the following features:
* 1960s semi-d
* c110sqm
* BER E-G
* Usually need to knock a wall between the kitchen & breakfast room or kitchen & dining room.
* Probably need rewiring and plumbing, new windows and doors, insulating.
* All need new kitchen, bathroom, wardrobes, flooring and plastering.
* Garden usually needs a patio

We'd like to bid on one, but are worried that we wouldn't be able to afford the refurb costs.

Would everything need to be done straight away or are some of the jobs listed above ones that could be put off for a few years? (obviously will depend on surveyors report, but advice in general appreciated!) Knocking the wall, new kitchen, bathroom, flooring & plastering definitely need to be done now.

We've heard that it might cost €100,000 to €150,000. Is that really the case?
We'd be hoping to spend around €50,000 - €75,000 now and do the rest at a later date.

Has anyone taken on a similar project recently? Anyone willing to share how much it's likely to cost?

Edited to add: We're not looking at expensive kitchens & bathrooms. We'd be happy to live with IKEA etc

Huzzah!

Molina wrote: »

Hi all,

I know there's no definitive answer to this question, but I'd really appreciate some guideline prices.

We're looking to buy a house in Dublin. Within our price bracket everything we like needs renovating. In general we keep seeing houses with the following features:
* 1960s semi-d
* c110sqm
* BER E-G
* Usually need to knock a wall between the kitchen & breakfast room or kitchen & dining room.
* Probably need rewiring and plumbing, new windows and doors, insulating.
* All need new kitchen, bathroom, wardrobes, flooring and plastering.
* Garden usually needs a patio

We'd like to bid on one, but are worried that we wouldn't be able to afford the refurb costs.

Would everything need to be done straight away or are some of the jobs listed above ones that could be put off for a few years? (obviously will depend on surveyors report, but advice in general appreciated!) Knocking the wall, new kitchen, bathroom, flooring & plastering definitely need to be done now.

We've heard that it might cost €100,000 to €150,000. Is that really the case?
We'd be hoping to spend around €50,000 - €75,000 now and do the rest at a later date.

Has anyone taken on a similar project recently? Anyone willing to share how much it's likely to cost?

Edited to add: We're not looking at expensive kitchens & bathrooms. We'd be happy to live with IKEA etc

In terms of timings, these are the jobs that you want to do:

* Usually need to knock a wall between the kitchen & breakfast room or kitchen & dining room.
* Probably need rewiring and plumbing, new windows and doors, insulating.
* All need new kitchen, bathroom, wardrobes, flooring and plastering.
* Garden usually needs a patio.

And then you say the priorities are:

"Knocking the wall, new kitchen, bathroom, flooring & plastering definitely need to be done now."

I would just flag that if you're planning on re-plastering and putting down new flooring, then it would seem to me that you'd also have to prioritise re-wiring and new heating. You don't want to freshly plaster walls and put down new flooring only to have to re-do it in a few years when you've the money to re-wire etc.

This would also apply to insulation, depending on how you approach it.

houseyhouse

I can't help with costs but I think it's worth doing as little as possible when you first buy. It sounds like these houses are inhabited and livable but out of date. We bought something in similar condition last year. We're hoping to extend and renovate properly in a couple of years so we wanted to make it ok for now but not spend money that would be better kept for doing the extension/renovation. That means we have only one single socket in our bedroom and same in our living room, our bathroom is horrible (but clean!), the windows are ugly and not fully functional, it's energy inefficient etc. but we're living with it.

We did rip out the filthy old carpets, paint all walls, paint bare wood floors/stairs (condition was too bad to varnish), and rewire the kitchen and replace units with IKEA units (kept some of the appliances, replaced others cheaply). We did the kitchen fitting & plumbing ourselves and the whole thing was under 4k (including wiring) and we accepted that money was spent was just to have a nicer kitchen in the short term but we hope to reuse some of the units in our utility room in the future. Strictly speaking none of these jobs 'needed' to be done but we wanted to do them.

Once you get into knocking walls, you potentially have to change plumbing and wiring, re-do floors if the levels are off, etc. You might find after you've lived there for a while that a different layout all together would suit you better. I've heard the advice 'don't do anything for a year' on the basis that light, view, garden etc. can change dramatically with the seasons.

Anyway, most people don't want to live in houses that are a work in progress anymore but it used to be quite normal. I think buying a house that has the potential to be what you want/need in the long term, even if you can't finance the work in short term is a great way to go about it. With the caveat that you need to be willing to live in it mostly as is for a couple of years while you wait.

Bawnmore

We're essentially doing this right now. I could have written above about a year ago

Out of your list, we broke it up big jobs as follows.

Before moving in:
- Ran radiators to all rooms.
- Redid floors in most rooms (ripped up awful carpet and put down cheapish laminate - will be redoing over time but made a big difference).
- Few coats of white paint to cover lots of beige (easy, but again big difference).

Since moving in:
- New front and back door (windows are 10 year old double glazed).
- New condensing boiler, zoned etc
- New gravel all over driveway
- There's a digger outside right now levelling garden
- There's a well being drilled this month.
- Lots of bits we could do ourselves.

Right now, we have:
- Ridiculously outdated kitchen (planning to install Ikea kitchen ourselves this year)
- Ridiculously outdated bathroom (no current plans - it works but it's ugly - I tiled it to make it less ugly)
- Pretty bad storage in all rooms (Ikea Pax ordered for our room last week as a start).


If we left it until all of the above was done, we probably still wouldn't be here. For the kitchen in particular, we've changed out minds so much that our original idea of what we wanted to do would have made no sense to how we actually use it. That's a long way of saying it's not for everyone, but doing it this way suited our situation to the ground.

MicktheMan

Bawnmore wrote: »

For the kitchen in particular, we've changed out minds so much that our original idea of what we wanted to do would have made no sense to how we actually use it. That's a long way of saying it's not for everyone, but doing it this way suited our situation to the ground.

I'm a firm believer in living in the house for at least all 4 seasons before embarking on any major remodelling / renovation.