What a home renovation really costs before any work begins
9 min
The best thing about this
A measured survey and an opening-up survey together cost a fraction of one per cent of a renovation, and they are the only reliable way to learn what you have actually bought. Every project we have watched go badly over budget skipped one of the two, usually to save a fortnight.
Creating Lasting Value
Structure is where the surprises live. Undersized joists, a chimney breast removed without support, foundations that stop half a metre down. None of it is visible and all of it is expensive, so we budget a structural contingency separately from the general one — mixing them hides the problem until it is too late to act.
Designed for Your Lifestyle and Chances
Services quietly eat the budget. Rewiring, replumbing, a new consumer unit, drainage re-laid to fall. On a full renovation this is routinely a quarter of the cost and it produces nothing anyone can see, which makes it the hardest line to defend and the worst possible one to cut.
Built Around Lifestyle and Opportunity
On a typical whole-house renovation the split is roughly twenty per cent structure, twenty-five services, twenty envelope, twenty-five finishes and ten fees. The kitchen and bathrooms everyone worries about sit inside that last quarter, and they are almost never the reason a project overruns.
Project Summary
The number to ask for is not a price per square metre but a cost plan split by those five headings with a named contingency against each. If a builder will not give you that, they have not priced the work — they have guessed at it.
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