Browse Forums Renovation + Home Improvement 1 Feb 11, 2012 4:09 pm Hi there I am a massive newbie to renos. My husband and I are looking at buiying a potential house and thinking about renovating it. We haven't done any research yet so thought I would go to the forum for advice. This house is quite old and needs a huge makeover. We were thinking of trying to gut the bottom floor and starting from scratch to make it open plan and a nice entertaining area. ANy ideas on cost? This is the floor plan - thanks in advance http://www.realestate.com.au/property-t ... -109376506 Re: Renovation help 2Feb 11, 2012 4:40 pm What do you mean by "gut". As in take out all the walls? You could only do the kitchen, lounge, dining I'm assuming because of the upstairs on the rest. You'd have to get an engineer to check that. Not sure about how that would look. Do you want the kitchen, loungeroom in one? Maybe the kitchen, dining- yes. Depending on whether walls are load bearing as to feasibility and cost. Re: Renovation help 3Feb 11, 2012 6:58 pm Yes knock down all walls and make the living / kitchen area one. Ideally I would like to re-arrange the floor plan so the living area / kitchen is back at the house but think that would be a massive job. Any thoughts? Re: Renovation help 4Feb 12, 2012 8:20 am I'm guessing that internal wall separating kitchen and living are supporting walls... but you'll have to check it. And If you're going to switch the kitchen/living area to the back then you may aswell just demolish the place and start from scratch. The decor inside certainly needs a huge update. Best of luck. Re: Renovation help 6Feb 13, 2012 10:49 am I definately think you should be looking at moving Kitchen and living area facing rear yard as this wll then be facing north rather than south. I could look at this plan and quickly sketch up some options that would keep as much of structure as possible 2night if you like to give you a helping hand. Have 7 years experience in architecture and happy to direct you in the right way. are you planning on doing reno's yourself? what budget are you looking at. this will determine how far you could go with the re-config. Also whats the crawl space like under your house? or is it slab. just getting a feel for cost of re-config plumbing etc. Re: Renovation help 7Feb 13, 2012 12:59 pm Thank you so much! We are trying to get a feel for budget, I am guessing it would exceed over a 100K to move the kitchen and living areas? No we are planning on getting tradies in. I think its slab, it's a brick house. Re: Renovation help 8Feb 13, 2012 1:34 pm Just knocking down kitchen living wall and opening up that area supporting load bearing walls and re-configuring new kitchen and bathroom would set you over $100k at my guess. Especially if your getting permits plans and getting builder in and not doing owner builder. That would give you a new middle end kitchen, new flooring to open plan area and new bathroom fitout. To give you an idea, i did a similar renovation and basically opened up all living kitchen and dining area new flooring new relocated kitchen few new windows and that set me back $50k without cost of permits and plans, doing the majority myself and basically only paying material cost for carpentry as family member is a builder. Definately helps if you know someone in each trade and tackle the admin side of things yourself by going owner builder rather than paying a builder 20% margin. do it right and you can really save on costly things like flooring, fittings and fixtures etc aswell. Re: Renovation help 9Feb 13, 2012 1:36 pm so its not really about establishing a budget perhaps but getting from you what you are comfortable spending and then working from there. with your budget in mind as well as if you are planning on getting permits and a builder in to complete works, i can then give you a rough indication on what reno's you could get for that price Re: Renovation help 10Feb 13, 2012 3:15 pm Thanks blacky! So if we re-arranged the floor plan to have the living areas north facing, do you think that would be sustancially higher than the 100K figure? We really don't want to spend more then that as it will potentially overcapitalise on the value of the house as its on a subdivided block. We don't know any tradies and are not very handy so we will be relying on tradies for nearly 100% of the job. Appreciate your advice and expertise. So again are you basing the 100K on just taking out the walls where it is or a complete refit ie moving the living area and kitchen to north facing and re-aligning bedroom and bathroom etc to south facing? Re: Renovation help 11Feb 14, 2012 1:20 am d@n I'm guessing that internal wall separating kitchen and living are supporting walls... but you'll have to check it I agree and think you are 'putting the cart before the horse' before checking IF it can be done Arfur 1 1923 This is a very tight fit, I'm not sure if you'll be able to achieve what you've described. Would you consider accessing the separate toilet from the laundry? If so maybe… 1 11252 we need accurate dimensions as well as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms needed etc to make specific suggestions but, based on estimated rooms sizes, it could be… 1 555 |