Now that we’ve stepped up our efforts in looking for a new home, we’re keen to get an idea of costings for typical improvements, e.g.

– block paved driveway
– conservatory (prob Victorian with dwarf walls, pref with some method of heating/cooling if necessary)
– single storey extension
– double storey extension
– second storey extension
– brick built workshop
– garage

Surrey prices FTR.

There seem to be a fair few sites with calculators but the values/info etc doesn’t always match up. Hence any recent real world ideas would be much appreciated.

Houses seem to have started shifting more quickly round here so any heads-up on figures is going to be handy.

Cheers all

dwarf walls

This seems unecessarily cruel to small people.

bar the drive way I reckon you’d be looking at £20k plus for the cheapest of them upto £lots for a two story extension.

I found £1000/m2 a good place to start for estimates for the 2 extensions I’ve had.

you don’t specify sizes of work in square metres. For my extension a couple of years ago, i factored about £1k per sqm for a single storey extension.

I think at the time, double storey ws about £1.4k to £1.7k per square metre … as a very rough guestimate to get you started.

That came out about right. Builder wise, it was less than that, where the builder got the project to the plastered wall stage, and I did the bulk of the finishing.

I’d have thought the range of possible costs is going to be very wide for such brief descriptions and on your preference for quality.
We are currently having our bathrooms done and the labour quotes alone differ by 100%.
Choice of materials and finish can alter the costs dramatically as well so your real world may be totally different to other peoples.

We spent ages researching all the changes we’ve had done and ended up doing half as much as we were going to to get the best/reliable tradesmen and decent materials.

I should have stated that we’re not looking to do all these on one particular house. It’s more a case of knowing roughly what each individual project would cost so we can guestimate when on new viewings, e.g. house A needs a driveway and conservatory, house B needs a 2 storey extension blah blah.

Hence not mentioning specific dims.

Cheers

£1-1.5k is probably what I expected for a single story extension. I guess a second story would be roughly half that?

Too many variables to give you anything helpful.
The cost of our rear extension (which we are due to start in about 6 weeks) is considerably higher than it could have been as we’ve got a sewer running under it which needs to be bridged. (this involves digging out 3 grab lorries worth of earth, and putting 18 cubic metres of concrete back in.

however the quotes above of £1500 per square metre aren’t too far out.

The Building Sheriff site may help

That Building Sheriff site is pretty funny:

Job 3
If you want to convert your front garden to look like that one up the road. You know, great sweeping swathes of top quality paviours, all edged and lovely, with his and her BMW’s and a ridiculous lamp post on the inside of the bend.

Firstly you will have to be made redundant like he was, then you will have to either swallow your pride and just be a copycat or go just that bit further and have a pond and a concrete heron squeezed in just in front of a nice rockery full of highland ferns……..lovely!

The “beamers” will be about £40,000, the lamp post you can shove where the sum doesn’t shine but the driveway will cost about …………

Price: £6,000.00 😀

Cheers

I bet it would be a heck of a lot cheaper and a thousand times less hassle to buy a house with all that stuff done rather than starting all that lot when you’ve just moved.

I bet it would be a heck of a lot cheaper and a thousand times less hassle to buy a house with all that stuff done rather than starting all that lot when you’ve just moved.

Not necessarily and if you do that, then you could end up wanting to change things to your own preference anyway.

– block paved driveway
– conservatory (prob Victorian with dwarf walls, pref with some method of heating/cooling if necessary)
– single storey extension
– double storey extension
– second storey extension
– brick built workshop
– garage

It would depend exactly on what is required – would the workshop require heating and water? Would the garage? What would be required in the extensions – a bathroom costs much more to fit than a bedroom (due to plumbing and fixtures/fittings costs). I could go on but I am sure you get the idea…

I bet it would be a heck of a lot cheaper and a thousand times less hassle to buy a house with all that stuff done rather than starting all that lot when you’ve just moved.

Finding the right house, i.e one that ticks all the boxes for a 10-15 yr stay is by no means that straightforward. Plenty more homes have scope for improvement.

What would be required in the extensions – a bathroom costs much more to fit than a bedroom (due to plumbing and fixtures/fittings costs).

Agreed. I’m talking more about the bare bones, e.g. a basic brick workshop to which we’ll add heating/lighting/power … or say two another 2 bedrooms at £25k vs 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom @ £30k because of the additional bathroomy bits. That’s probably not much help but that’s cos I haven’t got exact specs to go on yet. Working to ballparks more than anything.