Halving Your Renovation Costs: The Details

Low costs do not have to equal low-quality finishes when it comes to renovating old properties — there are many ways to keep a lid on your budget. Here, Natasha Brinsmead reveals how she and her husband, Bill, kept down costs during their Victorian house renovation.

The Floors
Acting as the main backdrop for the rest of your interiors, the floor is one area you don’t want to get wrong.

Your choice of flooring has a huge impact on the finished look of a house and as such deserves plenty of attention. Perhaps the most popular option for many at present is wooden floors, particularly in period houses. You have several options when it comes to a wooden floor — some more costly than others.

You might be lucky enough to find that your home has original wooden floorboards, hidden under old carpet, that are in good enough condition to be worth saving. How much this is likely to cost will depend on the type of flooring you have, and the condition which it is in. Some old cottages have impressive hardwood floors which can look beautiful when restored. However, hand sanding as opposed to machine sanding is recommended for this type of floor, where the boards are often bowed and irregular, and this can work out to be fairly costly — or very time consuming if you intend to do it yourself.

Lift the carpet in many Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses and you will find pitch pine floorboards which, although not originally intended to be on show, can look fantastic when sanded, stained, sealed and polished — or even painted or whitewashed. In this case it should be fine to get the boards machine sanded — at a cost of around £16- 20/m2. Bear in mind, however, that damaged or missing boards will need to be replaced and there is a strong possibility of gaps in the floorboards which will need filling, adding to costs.

In terms of new flooring, solid wooden planks and parquet tend to be the most expensive option, with prices reaching over £100/m2, although cheaper versions are available. Pre-finished tongue-and-groove planks are quicker and, therefore, cheaper to lay than planed boards, which require fiddly nailing and gluing. Buying reclaimed versions rarely proves any cheaper than buying from new.

A cheaper and usually more cost-effective option – and one which it is simple to lay on a DIY basis, therefore cutting out labour costs – is engineered boards. Made up of a top layer of solid wood glued to several softwood layers and with a tongue-and-groove edge, this flooring gives the beauty of a solid floor without the price tag. Prices vary depending on the wood and quality of the boards, but start at around £25/m2. Engineered flooring tends to give a uniform finish, and for those wishing to recreate an authentic period feel this can be a negative. However, there are now a number of products with an aged finish, although expect to pay upwards of £45/m2 for these. We initially wondered whether we had done the right thing in opting for engineered flooring which had a very ‘new’ look, but have found that in the course of just a year, the timber has begun to wear and now has a much warmer, rustic appeal.

At the lowest end of the price scale lies laminate. Not actually wood, but usually mdf overlaid with a photograph of real woodgrain, laminate starts at around £10/m2. The cheapest laminates are bouncy and unrealistic, but some of the more expensive versions can look something like the real thing — in truth, though, laminate rarely fools anyone.

FLOORING left to right: £20/m2 for machine sanding, whilst hand sanding can cost double this; Solid Antique Oak flooring from Floorell costs £39.99/m2, less than half the cost of many solid hardwood floors at £100/m2 (01727 800313); £78/m2 for Kahr's engineered Oak Heritage Stuart flooring (02392 453045)

The Kitchen
Adding a new kitchen can be the most expensive part of a renovation, but quality doesn’t have to cost a fortune

A new kitchen can cost as much as £50,000, but at the other end of the scale, as little as £1,500. The trick is in knowing how to stick within your budget and still get the look you want.

If you are trying to save money, you can either opt for standard off-the-shelf unit carcasses and dress them up with slightly more expensive doors and cabinet handles, choose a complete off-the-shelf kitchen and then opt for a high-quality worktop, or, as many people featured in this magazine are doing, go for a bespoke kitchen made by a local company supplied unpainted, ready for you to finish yourself.

KITCHENS from left to right: £1,500 is the starting price for an unpainted kitchen from Pineland such as this (01299 271143); £2,839.39 is the cost of IKEA’s Bravad free-standing kitchen (www.ikea.com); £5000 is the approximate price for this cherry wood kitchen from B&Q (www.diy.com)

The Windows
More than any other external feature, it is the windows that have the biggest impact on the appearance of a house.

It is vital not to compromise on quality when it comes to this aspect of your renovation, but as many renovators are acutely aware, replacing windows can swallow up an enormous portion of your budget. There are several ways in which you can keep costs down without ruining the façade of your house. In some, but not all, cases, it can be cheaper to repair existing period windows as opposed to buying replacements — this will be determined by the extent of any damage. Peeling paintwork, a stuck sliding sash or the odd cracked pane of glass may look unsightly, but will be far cheaper to put right than it would be to get a new window made up. However, in cases of extreme rot and decay, replacement will usually be the most cost-effective option.

The cheapest option is usually white PVCu in a standard size — but when it comes to period houses this is not necessarily the best option. This is partly due to the fact that period houses rarely have standard-size window openings and partly because PVCu can never really look as good as timber replacements for this style of house. However, if you are renovating a more modern, but unfashionable, house such as many of those built during the 1950s to 1970s, then you might want to consider this option.

Be aware that although softwood window frames can be less than PVCu, costs rise once you have had them glazed and painted. However, if you choose some of the better quality PVCu windows, they can easily work out more expensive.

When it comes to a maintenance issue, PVCu windows do require less than timber, but cannot really be repaired.

Our windows had been replaced some time ago with aluminium top-opening versions that looked totally out of place, so we had no option but to replace. We chose softwood as opposed to hardwood as it is the cheaper option, but found that the boxes for our sashes were still in place — check for this as very often they were simply boarded up, and frames and boxes are exposed to less weather damage than the sashes themselves, meaning you will only have to have the sashes themselves made up. Andersen Windows has recently launched a product aimed directly at renovators, the Woodwright® ‘insert window’. Made from a blend of fibre-bonded reclaimed pine wood and a specially formulated thermo plastic polymer, it looks like wood yet there is no need for painting. They cost more than PVCu but less than timber. We ended up paying around £350 for a new set of sashes to fit an internal window opening of 990mm x 1,530mm, not including fitting.  

WINDOWS, from left to right: £200 + VAT, for Andersen Windows’ Woodwright ‘insert window’ (SEE ABOVE); £800 to have the two side sashes and the main sash made

The Bathroom
Whilst the bathroom is not the place to cut corners, there are many ways to get a stylish new suite on a budget

The first rule of keeping costs down in the bathroom is to try, as much as possible, to avoid moving the plumb - ing around. When renovating, you are likely to have an old-fashioned suite, worn-out flooring and poor-quality, rusty, limescale-riddled brassware — and the most common course of action is to rip the whole thing out and start again. However, unless you are relocating or extending the bathroom, you may well find that the original layout of the room makes sense, in which case the plumbing fittings can be left where they are.

Beware trying to save too much money when it comes to buying your sanitaryware. Although there are some impressivesounding deals to be had when it comes to buying complete suites, their quality tends to be questionable. Avoid cheap acrylic baths and shower trays which squeak and bend when any weight is applied. Far better to go for a simple steel bath, which can then be built in with a smart tiled surround. Basically, the old adage applies — if a price sounds too good to be true, then it usually is.

The Doors
Whether you have the originals in place or need to buy new doors, don’t feel you have to spend a fortune

There are many ways in which to save money when it comes to doors. Many renovators find that the existing doors are still in place, albeit covered with layers of paint in shades not to their taste, or boarded over with chipboard to provide a flush rather than panelled look – as was the fashion during the 1950s and 1960s – in which case restoring them is usually a cheaper and easier option that buying new ones. In our case, our doors were both boarded over and covered in layers of green and pink paint. We chose to have ours acid-dipped as opposed to sandblasted as this technique tends to be gentler on old timber. To get an internal door acid-dipped cost us just £14 per door and left us free to wax, stain or paint our doors as we wished.

Of course, you might not be lucky enough to find yourself with the original doors still in place. In this case think about whether you will want to paint your doors or maintain a natural finish. If painting doors, consider buying inexpensive pine doors off-the-shelf from a DIY warehouse such as B&Q or Wickes, or a timber merchant such as Magnet Trade. These can cost from around £25 per door, can be hung on a DIY basis and, though they may not have the weight and substance of a traditional period door, will look pretty good once painted — just remember to apply a knotting solution and to use a good-quality undercoat before painting to ensure they keep on looking good.

Buying doors from a reclamation yard is another option. You will often find that salvage yards stock hundreds of different doors, but more often than not, the doors will be in no particular order of size or style, so be prepared to search through lots of doors to find the one you are looking for. You might find that the salvage yard has some period doors that have already been glazed and reconditioned, but these are often very expensive and it usually works out far cheaper to have the doors stripped and reglazed yourself — you should also find it pretty easy to hang new doors on a DIY basis.

DOORS from left to right: £24.99 for a Premium Knotty Pine Victorian Door from Wickes (www.wickes.co.uk); £150 French doors from eBay, glazing cost another £80

The Details
Details matter when it comes to creating a luxury feel, but they need not blow your budget

Clockwise from top left: £19.99 IKEA’s Pronomen beech worktop, measuring 124 x 38 x 2.8cm; £9.99 for a five-pack of Screwfix Romana Crack Ceramic and Pewter Knobs (0500 414141); £34.99 Wickes’ Constance basin tap pair in chrome (0845 279 9898); £195 for this porcelain enamelled steel bath from B&Q (www.diy.com)

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