£150-200 per sq ft to 'do it up'
Building a house from scratch in 2008 the cost per square foot was £90 and for a top end luxury house it was only £140
£150 to £200 per square foot to renovate is ridiculous unless you are going for top end luxury building products and even then I doubt I could spend that much. Ours only cost £25 per sq foot and would have only cost £50 if I had done nothing myself.
I have renovated my last two houses which were both totally gut jobs including new wiring, plumbing, plaster, central heating, new windows and doors all round, damp proofing and the last one even included a new roof.
(it had large holes in it and the floor in the spare bedroom had rotted away.
The current one I am living in which included a new roof (cost £10k alone) came in at £45k and its a 4 bedroom, two reception room, 3 bathroom house with stables and workshop.
However, I have done as much of the work as I could and only used the following external trades:
1 Roofer
2. Plasterer
3. Electrician
4. A self employed builder to rebuild one wall of the house (collapsing), repoint the entire house and help me out occasionally on jobs like new window openings.
I can give the following advice:
1. Pay for a proper suveyors full report, its worth the money. In our case it even came with a total estimated cost of renovation of £90k if you were using outside contractors for everything. It gives you a nice long list of all the things you need to do.
2. For any work you not doing yourself, get at least 3 quotes preferably from recommended contractors. Don't always choose the cheapest as there may be good reason why they are cheap.
3. Supply materials yourself where you can as the contractor will only put mark up on.
4. Do as much of it yourself as you can. It saves a fortune even if you are slow. For example all the concrete floors needed digging up in our house and replacing to current building regs. That is just basic labouring but a building firm would still charge you £25 per hour for the work. Over 12 weekends I was done after removing 100m3 of concrete, rubble and soil and replacing with hardcore, damp proof membrane, insulation and new concrete.
5. Get as much building stuff that you need from the likes of Ebay, local papers, auctions etc. This works better the longer time you have to find the stuff. For example the wall and loft insulation cost £10 per roll from ebay but £27 from the builders merchant (120 rolls required in our build so £2000 saved). The travertine mosaic tiles used in the wetroom bathroom cost only £20 per sq m, yet cost a minimum of £90 per sq m from tiling shops. The designer shower head was £120 compared to £499 from bathroom outlets etc.
5. Once you price everything up add 20% to your budget. Trust me there will always be things which go wrong/unexpected and adds to the budget.
Its hard work but you will look back when its finished with satisfaction and enjoy your house more.
