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Ground floor renovation and extension advice wanted
I am starting to get my ducks in a row in terms of costing up the renovation of our entire ground floor.
This will be making open plan and adding 6m extension for new kitchen.
Its not for another 18 months however im not new to the renovating rodeo and know there are ALWAYS added costs!
Please hit me with all of yours that were unexpected or overlooked
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6 Replies
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I love the fact you have given yourself tonnes of planning time, I really believe at least 70% should be spent planning and 30% doing. I think the answer to your question is also maybe too huge for anyone to know where to start. As an overall start, I would say look at the building materials you use, think about indoor air quality as a measure of the type of home you want, ventilation. We assume the materials builders spec are right but are they right for you and even for your builder to be using. I think the trades typically stick with what they know. Use non petrochemical paints like Graphenstone that reduce the CO2 in the air not cause more.
Have visual floor plans ready in each room as a tool for communication so there isnt any doubts in conversation about where things go and what gets put in. Make sure your building regs are done and your drain surveys and party walls done properly by a surveyor to really mitigate risk of where the costly things that will then hold up work could happen.
Hope that helps as a start and our of interest is there anything that feels different in this project to the one you did last.
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Expect all of the costs to be at least 40% more than 2-3 years ago.
Labour and materials
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Getting the floor level between existing and new, joist end treatments, joist extensions if you are getting rid of chimney breasts
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May not be relevant as you said you’re doinstairs. But, stairs. I didn’t realise how very limited we’d be with what the builders offer – ie a basic kit (seems obvious now that I’m living the reality but you live and learn!). I wish I’d spent some time beforehand checking what options were available, even without going fully bespoke we’d have had some many more – and in my opinion better – options if I’d started working out a plan and pricing it up way before the build started.
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Our electrician costs came in quite a lot higher than we had initially planned – we thought we’d been detailed enough with our initial lighting/socket plan but obviously there are moving parts along the way during the build so defo worth trying to be super detailed with this from the outset (exactly how many downlights in each area, exact locations of single/double plug sockets and also accounting for any existing ones that will be lost in the build and have they been factored into the plan/cost to replace if needed).
Sure you have this covered, we thought we did too (), so just sharing in case helpful!
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We did a double extension, but extra costs were all due to us choosing to extra stuff.
1- all new upstairs windows and render to make everything match.
2- new lead work on chimney as it needed doing when new roof parts went on.
3- new landscaping outside
4- a lot of extra electrics and nice fittings )new consumer unit.
5- a new boiler and moved stop tap.
6- had posh rads rather than basic
7- flooring and fitting is more expensive than I realised!
Tbh our builder was great at keeping in budget and doing things to budget.
Our kitchen came in on budget (DIY kitchens). and bathroom we sourced everything ourselves so saved over 1.3K just on materials than buying from a kitchen place.
Good Luck! I reckon we added easily 20K on top to complete finish.
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