We have not even lived in this house for a year, and we have already done a lot! Yet we are far from done with renovating and the ideas in my head are piling up. But what are the costs involved in refurbishing a house. We try to do as much as possible ourselves to limit the costs, but unfortunately we cannot do everything ourselves. For us it is therefore a nice mix of professionals who work in our house, and the work that we do ourselves. I would like to give you an insight into the renovations we have done so far and the costs we have incurred in refurbishing our house.
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Of course you understand that the costs for refurbishing a house depend on what you are going to do in the house and how you are going to do it. That is why it is quite difficult to specify all costs for renovations. But what I can do is that I can tell you what the costs are for the renovations that we have done. This will give you an idea of the costs involved in refurbishing your home. And of course I will also tell you what we have done ourselves and how we have saved on our expenses.
We all did the demolition of the existing walls (not load-bearing), the tiling that was there, the old kitchen unit and the old ceiling. The cost of hiring someone to redecorate does not outweigh doing this demolition work in your home yourself. Especially not if it's easy to do yourself. It does make you very dirty, though!
We did all the electrics in this part ourselves. I milled all the pipes in the walls and fixed all the wall sockets, and Frank did the wiring and such himself. With this we have certainly saved € 500.00 – € 1000.00 on costs.
We also needed a number of craftsmen to convert our garage into an office. To start with, we engaged a construction company to break through a load-bearing wall and install an iron lintel. Costs for a breakthrough of 2.5 meters wide x 2.30 meters high are approximately € 800.00.
As mentioned, we have made conscious choices. One of those choices is that we outsource the stucco work. I don't believe that I can get it finished as neatly as a professional. Although it was not that bad with refurbishing the windowsills, I am not going to venture into the walls and ceiling. For €2000.00 the ceiling and the walls (about 80 m² together) are plastered and everything is neatly tight.
Painting is always a thing for me. Of course I prefer to leave it to the professional, but this is one of the things I do myself to save money. Because most of the money is spent in the work, in the hours. Purchasing good paint (and auxiliary materials) does cost a bit, but it is still affordable compared to outsourcing it. The costs for refurbishing the paintwork on your house are mainly in man hours. For example, I have a very good primer (the Sikkens Rubbol Primer Extra) and ditto exterior paint (Sikkens Rubbol XD High Gloss) for only € 95.00 per 2.5 liter can and I can do my whole house with that! For less than € 200.00 I painted all my windows and doors.
Admittedly, it's a lot of work. Yes, but it is also a great way to save money. I have already painted a number of frames and I think they have been refurbished very well! So I'd rather spend that money on another project that I'm not sure I can do myself.
This one was also obvious to outsource. Although we had doubts about maybe doing this ourselves, we gave in. A roof not only stands for the rest of our lives (if all goes well), but it is also a huge eye-catcher. Would be a shame to compromise on that. We contributed a little to it ourselves because the design and materials were devised by ourselves 😉 . This 36 m² roof cost us € 14,000. We requested various quotes, but our local contractor (Heijmans) was attractive in terms of price and we were able to work with him very well. Also important.
Where you see the roll of insulation in between (silver colour) there is also a lintel placed because we would like to break through the wall of the shed there at a later time to make a bar. The price is without ceiling finish because we don't know how we want this yet. Plastering and painting or finishing with wood? We're not done yet.
As far as I'm concerned, the terraces are also part of refurbishing your house, so we will also discuss those costs here. We have outsourced the paving of our terraces. I don't see myself dragging with Schellevis concrete tiles of 1.00x1.00 and then adding… you have to be a bit of a craftsman to lay a terrace nicely straight and yet draining. We paid € 4600.00 for a terrace of 36 m² and an associated planter and concrete stairs.
We had this done by a gardener. He also made our garden plan at the time, which we will work on 'in pieces'. In retrospect I regret this a bit because we now have a local road worker who works a lot cheaper with another part that can still be paved (an edge at the front of the house and around the pond). The gardener knows how to put down his prices better, so to speak. It's nicely made though, I won't say anything about that.
We do part of the rest of the garden ourselves, and we outsource parts. There are a number of large conifers in it that I wouldn't know how to take down myself. With a tap that is so easy and you do not have to break your back on it. Furthermore, the front garden is a large weed area that we will work with, which is also done mechanically.
We just moved into the house like that, because there was no time left to get started in advance and because we also wanted to pass the broker as financially as possible. That also means that we still have to redecorate the normal rooms in our house. I can't share the costs of refurbishing with you completely, but it will involve some demolition of the ceilings in the house and painting the walls. We do the demolition and painting ourselves. This brings us to a 'temporarily acceptable state' until we have saved enough for the major renovation downstairs.
We would like to add the space of the existing roof to the house. For this, the existing roof will be demolished and a new one will be placed, similar to what we have now had new. We will also outsource this. That will be about 25 m² of roof, whereby I focus on the same costs that we also incurred for the other roof. Then there are the sliding doors that we want to have over a width of approximately 11 meters at the rear (also count € 15,000 for that) and foundation, breaking through the walls, placing construction beams and the like.
I think we will soon reach € 50,000 in costs for refurbishing that part of the house. We need to save some more before we can outsource that.
And I would almost forget that we were the first to completely insulated our house (saving on gas), those costs are also part of refurbishing your house of course. Double glazing throughout, new hinges and locks and placing 2 large frames and a new front door (€ 25,000). And installing insulation in the cavity walls came to about € 4500.00. Fortunately, we were able to receive about € 2800.00 in subsidy for these costs. Of course we also quickly had solar panels installed (€ 10,000) so that we at least no longer have to incur costs for the use of the electricity. That's our first win!
