Owning your own home

Enfield?

Tring, we're not really tied to London but can still get in on the train or A41 if needs be.

Whereabouts? Mrs G's from Herts

I need to highly highly recommend Reclaimed UK in Sewardstone/Chingford if anyone needs wood flooring or cladding.

Their prices are good, their products are ace but their customer service is the best I've had since we started our refurbishment.

Our builders told us at 6pm yesterday that they'd seriously underestimated how many replacement boards we needed, so we needed double what we'd ordered to be delivered at 10:30am today. I emailed the company at 19:30, and got a reply at 6:57 this morning saying they'd make our job the first, cut and plane the boards to size and still delivered twice the original amount at 10:30am this morning - telling me I could pay the balance 'when I've got time to pop down'.

West Ham fans, but nobody's perfect.

Ok so we've established that I was correct and that warner flat was shit and needed a shed load of cash spending on it.

Just out of interest - on what basis are you advising that ' a bit of money' will sort such a place out? Have you properly refurbished a decent bathroom or kitchen in london?

In terms of my experience:

I've done my kitchen- costed and project managed the trades myself - it cost 14,670 ( to date) - a mid end spec mostly.

My bathroom is 6 month old - I've seen the receipts from the labour and the suite - again, it's mid to top end in parts but I have the paperwork to explain away what it cost (£10,750)

I'll post pictures of both shortly. I hope it'll be helpful.

Forgive me though, I'm intrigued- you're giving out advice saying things won't cost much to sort, which is great for those intrepid house hunters who optimistically view shit tips like that place in walthamstow - but your advice is based on what experience exactly?

I think it's great to give advice - but it's only helpful or relevant when it's actually based on some experience.

Done one kitchen and have receipts for a bathroom and you think you are an expert?

I think it's the condescending tone that makes him an expert.

Just had a quote on the bathroom, £3k, stick that up yer dojo!

Sorry @mustardbeak- please quote me where I have said I am an expert. The exact post please.

@AirTime appears to be shooting from the hip by advising that a property is no problem, go and buy it, even though it's fucked and riddled with damp, but no problem you can get a bathroom and kitchen for tuppence etc - when I, and a number of other posters have said that it is an unrealistic approach to take. It's not helpful and give people and unrealistic expectation as to what can be achieved.

Expensive home improvements are expensive. End of.

I repeat my invitation for @AirTimeto tell us all his credentials which enable him to rubbish my comments on how much it costs to do a decent job. some pictures of his recently completed bathroom and kitchen projects would be nice too.

A bath and a toilet seat? Or back to bricks and start from scratch?

Yet again, Another pointless and unhelpful comment- what exactly does your 3k buy you?

Hi mands

we've not met so I hope you don't mind me jumping in...

back in 2006 we were in a similar position to you. Our valuation come back 25K under offer. We'd been searching in the same area for 4-5 months and seen the 2 bed terraces go from 225K in the spring to 235K+ in the autumn so we felt the valuation was unrealistic.

I told the estate agent (who works for the seller, not you - she is only on your side as long as she thinks you are the best bet for a completed sale, and even then will push you as high as possible without losing the sale) ... I told the estate agent "hey, you did a great job of convincing us this place is worth X, help me convince the valuer". I also put together my own comparables. To increase these, if a place was close but not directly comparable I looked at the historic ratio between my house and that one and extrapolated sale price for ours based on that. I didn't go back to the agent to renegotiate down because (1) we'd got the sale agreed before the house went on the open market and I didn't want to lose that, and (2) I knew the market had moved since these houses were selling at £225K

The valuer (not Halifax, sorry) changed his valuation to our offer. So, it certainly is (or was) possible to get a valuation changed. But

• this was before the credit crunch
  
• I'd been looking for a place in that area all summer and lost out on a few houses on the same street at the valuation price so I was very confident in our offer
  
• I've always assumed the valuer thought "well if she'd that keen to overpay then sod her"
  
  

I guess my advice is that the valuer is protecting you as well as the vendor. They can be persuaded to change, but unless you are massively confident the valuation is genuinely unrealistically low I would try and reduce the price rather than up the valuation.

I have seen over 3 episodes of Property Ladder. A mid end spec mostly kitchen costs 6,420, not 14,670. Princeperch is wrong.

Suite, ceiling, tiles, light plumbing and electrics plus labour. It's a medium sized job but more representative of the kind of work most people here (and in general) will be doing. We're buying bendy Victorian flats, £20k bathrooms and kitchens will never be reflected in the resale price.

I think our kitchen will end up around the 15k mark, and that's with some fairly lucky purchases (range cooker was an eBay bargain, for example).

Bathrooms will be probably 3K for both of them though, due to me doing all the work, and being lucky on eBay for the parts (steel shower tray with an RRP of £1,200 for £65 etc).

The electrics would be the big expense. Assuming they're done and the boiler's ok you could fit a very nice kitchen and bathroom for sucks teeth £6k. If you disagree I will fight you.

So not all carved from a solid piece of quartz by a ninety year old Tibetan monk? You must learn to be more spendy.

3k sounds about right. When we were searching we got quotes for the standard refurb jobs so we could price properties based on their condition. 3-5k for the bathroom, 5-8k for the kitchen and up to 2k per room depending on if floors need doing as well as walls and ceilings.

If you disagree I will fight you.

MMC #rep etc

haha i'm trying to not laugh and imagine @princeperch furiously stamping away at his keyboard and yelling to anyone who will listen 'no one will believe me that you can't get a new kitchen for less than 15k!'

if a kitchen costs less than what you deem to be an acceptable figure it does not mean it's automatically shit, it means its what they can afford and suitable to them. good for you that you can spend 15k on a new kitchen. just because you can doesn't mean everyone else has to. your warped view on all this is quite funny to be honest.

Keeping up with the Joneses thread >>>>>

Guys, given that this is the Internet, everyone is an expert....

People are quoting prices, but neglecting to even point out what size of kitchen or bathroom we are talking about here... If your kitchen is double the size then you could well have double the cost of units, for example.

You can do anything on a budget, but having seen so many budget installations, including the badly fitted crap in my own house, I'm inclined to try to do things properly. I've generally found that getting tradesmen who are decent aren't cheap, and neither are quality fittings.

@princeperch is Jeez aicmfp

Thanks Betty, very helpful.

I would try and reduce the price rather than up the valuation.

Yeah I'm going for this. £40K is a significant amount and I don't think persuading the valuer around to that figure is going to happen. Additionally, I don't want to pay £40K over value, naturally.
I guess this low(er) valuation is great, give me something to knock the price down with, but exposing me to the risk of the vendor putting the place back on to market, for someone else to discover that the asking price is £50K over valued.
And if I do have to walk away, they're potential saving me £x000,000 as my next place could be way less.

don't spose any of you kitchen semi-pros are off-loading any ovens? ours packed in last night.

I'm with @princeperch here.
I think you'd be lucky to to have a complete bathroom done with it all stripped back to brick, plumbing moved around and re jigged, suite fitted, new carpentry, plastering, tiling and decorating for less than £10k for a high end job. Mine, which i posted photos of a while back, was £11k all in (but it was almost completely tiled, which would have added a good £1.5k compared to half tiled.).

it's one thing replacing a suite and doing some tiling/decorating, but a complete do over is a different kettle of fish all together. Unless you did as @dammit has done, and do all the labour yourself. but then you have to deal with living in a building site for a years, instead of weeks....

It's all imaginary money anyway.