How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

These are some lovely kitchens , we will live with ours for a few more years until we can explore a side extension so we can open out onto garden. Hopefully building costs are cheaper by then, small chance I know :)

🙃

Bonbon light shades are chefs kiss.

For sure I think folk are hoping long term it works out and Im sure it will. I just find it mental spending 400k on a place

I dont care how much cash you have, 400k is an enormous amount of money and theyre being taken for an enormous ride.

At my last house, it had some bollocks old lean to make out of bricks. It was really shit and cold. The footings were ok tho so I knocked it down and rebuilt it as a timber framed conservatory. I was pushing my luck calling it a conservatory but the house sold ok in the end.

From knock down to rebuild it only cost 8 grand all in to do it in 2018. I helped the builder out a little but he did 95pc of it.

Id say now it would be 20k at a minimim

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The before shot.

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Stuff is expensive now. 8k? Our secondary glazing cost that!?
We spent 45k on refurbishing a flat which included a fancy bathroom but not the kitchen and that’s with me working like a dog for 4-5 months and being very savvy on where and how the money was spent, having access to better value family/friend trades, my DIY skills and getting lucky with recommendations on plasterer, sparks, plumber and floor guy.
was told it should have been £65k+.
If we had gone to one firm and left them to get on with it then it would probably have been more than that.
The internal insulation went up 20% between speccing it and then realising there was hardly any left in the country when I needed it.
The amount of time I spent researching and sourcing things for the right price was mental, DIY and project managing a small job takes over your life.

I've just done a calculation to replace our Ikea Metod kitchen doors by Plykea like ones with Fenix fronts from Husk (as they have unit prices available) and it works out at £6.5k. Is it just me or that's super expensive? I can get a whole new set of kitchen cabinets from DIY Kitchen and more with that amount.

As much as I want to re-use the cabinets it's not looking likely now... Unless Husk is a lot more expensive than Plykea?

That does seem steep but furniture grade ply is expensive at the moment.

Aye 400k is wild, I’ve just bought another place and it’s not even close to that kinda money 😂😂😂

In many ways if you have wound up in scotland or the north, you've won. You can get an enormous amount of property for your cash, and whilst salaries are lower, the delta is in no way representative of the difference between the cost of living.

I sold a 1 bed bed flat in bow in 2014 for 435k. It had no outside space and no parking. 435k in some parts of scotland would have got me a farm with acreage and 6 bedrooms and a carriage driveway. Its fucking mental.

Interesting! Do you have a photo?

Not a very good one....

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Thank you!

That’s a normal price across all the custom fronts purveyors, even the Poland-based ones aren’t much cheaper. Hipster tax is real.

Even if you go semi-DIY, Fenix is expensive: we were considering doing some of our fronts in Fenix, buying the Fenix sheets direct from manufacturer and getting a friend who has a laminating machine to stick them on. They cost £115+VAT per sheet, so double that as you need to laminate both sides to avoid warping. Plus the cost of an 18mm sheet of ply to go in between, and mates-rates for doing the lamination, and you’re looking at £700 per sheet inc VAT before you’ve even cut it up into cabinet sizes, routed the hinge cutouts/handles, tidied up and oiled the edges, accounted for waste/damage etc…

Yeah it makes sense when you take all that into account for sure. Not sure if I want to stretch to that personally. What did you end up with yourself?

We started looking at custom ply kitchens for our place, then custom doors for IKEA cabinets, and we've finally settled on an IKEA kitchen with a ply/formica worktop because life's too short and kitchens are too expensive.

I couldn't believe how expensive plykea was when I looked recently too.

I'd say owning a flat in Bow, selling and moving to Valencia is the win.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/146544812#/?channel=OVERSEAS

Probably a similar average journey time to London too.

That’s what my little sister did.
Swapped her one bed in Clapton for three places in Valencia, a city flat to rent out, suburbs flat to live and now a spot of land in the hills to build on.

Not. Jealous. At. All.

counterpoint: https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/08/11/valencia-sets-new-heat-record-during-third-spanish-heatwave-of-the-summer

those temps are only gonna be trending in one direction for several decades at best.

Yeah I mean as nice as the north and Scotland are with the cute accents and good bantz the SE is already depressing enough climate-wise.

Idk why it gets idealised over living somewhere genuinely pleasurable.

A mate is in the process of moving to Normandy, to be semi-self sufficient and rent out gites. Not for me full time, but I'm envious of the space and lifestyle.

True.

Chris' sister will probably be on a dingy in the channel before long. Then who'll* have the last laugh!?

*Not him when the ice caps melt and London is under water.

it's sad because the flats in valencia look lovely and communal areas like those are genuinely rare here in the UK

"At night, we put on the air conditioning or the fan. During the day, we try to leave as late as possible (...) and we go to the beach", says Roberto Giménez, another resident.

Can't help but feel Roberto isn't making the strong argument he things he is.