R.P.McMurphy wrote:
My partner and I are in the process of buying a house. its an
ex-student house but in really good condition because the father bought
it for his son.

although we plan to do a lot of the work on it ourselves what we really
need are ballpark figures for certain things.

so

very small bathroom - total refurb, old for new basically + tiling
plumbing etc, this is assuming a bathroom suite cost of around £500

total redecoration - 2 downstairs rooms, hall, stairs, landing, 2
medium sized bedrooms and 1 tiny box room. This is assuming a modest
budget for carpets and painting

we're ignoring the kitchen as its quite usable at the moment, we'll
save up for that.

this isnt some sort of renovation job. we're buying this house to live
in so there's not rush with anything.

our overall budget is about £5000.

I know its probably impossible to say without more info but is this
realistic?

We renovated a flat over 2 years.

New bathroom, except for the bath which we touched up with a repair kit
New kitchen, inc floor, plumbing, appliances etc.
Painted the bedroom, living room, and boxroom and all the doors.
New boiler (not diy-ed)
A couple of new rads, and changing the valves on all of them. That was
my apprenticeship in plumbing...
New kitchen - inc appliances
New carpets
A reasonable collection of tools

We didn't need to touch any ceilings, beyond cleaning, filling, and
painting. No probs with windows either. But you said it was in good
condition, so I guess you won't be touching these either.

I can't remember exactly what we spent but it was less than 9K,
including everything except petrol - I put *everything* we spent in a
spreadsheet. It also excludes a LOT of time spent window shopping and
thinking.

So given that 5,000 excludes the kitchen, and a boiler, it's plenty, and
you shouldn't need to cut corners. But stick to a budget, and leave a
good contingency for random things, and mistakes.

Ben