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.
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.