Benchmarking renovation costs

Looking for some benchmarks / insights into pricing for refurbishment work.

Bought a 100-year old house in south Dublin eighteen months ago. It's a beautiful house with lots of period features and is in reasonable nick (has been perfectly liveable) but needs updating and we want to extend kitchen to include a sunroom.

Our primary needs are:

Insulation - house has absolutely zilch it seems, so we would be looking at drylining exterior walls, insulating between floorboards and insulating the roof.
Bathrooms need to be totally replaced - some building work involved to replace main bathroom, two en-suites and downstairs cloakroom. Some plumbing work necessary also as we are moving one ensuite to different location in bedroom. Ditto re electrics.
Front door needs to be replaced by equivalent wooden double-doors with glass panels
Repair leak in bay window roof
Replace hot water tank and boiler
Replace 2 x fireplaces
Convert existing utility room to home office (some building work required, including roofing a small area (3 sq m)

In an ideal world we would also replace some floors (very uneven), some of the doors and skirting (very dinged) and windows (currently pvc - perfectly adequate but look terrible in context of period house). We would also like to re-plaster as much of the house as we could, as the walls are currently lined, and repair some of the original coving (some of this will be necessary if we are dry-lining walls I would have thought). None of this is vital however.

Existing house is 2,350 square feet including attic and architect's initial pricing (un-tendered) for refurb cost is 300k excl VAT and architect's fees.

Extension will be 500 sq ft but is quite high spec and includes a lot of glazing. Price for it is 125k excl VAT and fees.

So altogether we are looking at approx. 500k incl. VAT, fees and contingency. Our budget is approx. 300k so if the pricing above pans out we will either have to forego the extension for the time being and do refurb only, or do extension and refurb bit by bit. My own preference would be to get as much of the building / dirty work out of the way as possible in one go.

We could scale the kitchen extension back but would see it as a suboptimal solution and would prefer to wait to get what we want in a few years' time rather than build something now and regret it.

Our instincts are that architect has budgeted for refurb and replacement of everything in the house (new windows, doors etc) but we have not yet discussed in detail. We would welcome any thoughts from others who have been down this route before on a) whether the pricing suggested is at market and b) what may actually be feasible within our budget.

Many thanks.

Seems an extraordinarily high figure. I have just refurbed my 50 year old bungalow, 2400 sq feet, new windows and sills, leveled and new floors skirting and doors, replumbed heating, rewired, 2 new bathrooms incl moving toilets, drylined ext walls, insulated under floor spaces and attic every thing except the kitchen and painting and decorating was included. Cost €120000 ie Building Labour €35,395Plumbing/bathrooms€15,413Windows€13,771Building Material€13,331beds/robes/furnishings€7,900Electrical€8,150Wood floor & doors€7,250Tiling€6,329Carpets & curtains€3,449Services & rent€4,430Fireplaces€2,750Decoration€1,250estimate
Rent is in as a cost as obviously had to move out for 4.5 months. Services include valuation and stage cert for mortgage. Perhaps you have a much wider scope but I feel my house was almost gutted and refinished. No extension though and the garden and drive are a mess and paths need to be done and new entrance and a sunroom but thats all for when the world comes to its senses. hope my costings are of use. My builder was by far the lowest cost and I took a punt on him cause I know of work he did on friends houses, ie recommended. Next nearest builder was 47k. Yes I arranged all the trades myself and did not hire an architect, only engineer to cert 2 stage payments.

its difficult to say without more detail on the property and its condition etc

but i would say the architect is basing costs on a susbstantial refurbishment......and at this early stage its wise to budget realistically as renovations of period properties can be very expensive

if it is more than you feel is required it would be wise to detail as much as you can now for pricing purposes and have your architect or another professional look at the scope of works again

the extension figure is probably ok for a budget cost if its going to be top spec.

you will obviously be going for planning etc and will have to move out during works so that is a cost to be considered also

its best to set your target figure at say 300k at the start then take out vat and fees and end up with a figure of say 250k therefore if you are going to spend 125k on the extension you only have 125k to spend on refurb therefore you are going to have to cut your cloth to suit.

as beaky says there is more than one way to go about this that could end up being cheaper

however in period properties its unlikely to be able to partially replace wiring or plumbing or heating systems

also there is no point insulating everywhere but keeping draughty windows etc so you have to look at the big picture

i usually look at a renovation budget of between €500 and €1000 per sqm at the low end but costs can be much higher for older properties or those in poor condition. anyway these type of quoted figures are only for discussion purposes, you wont get a hard figure until all the work is scoped out and priced.

m

Hi, just wonder where abouts you are?