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Makeover mad
If
you’re planning to do a bit more to your new home than put
up some shelves and sand down the banisters, there’s a lot
to consider,
according to Kathleen Hennessy
Changing
Rooms, House Doctor, Homefront – if the proliferation of property
makeover shows on TV is anything to go by, Britons are property-obsessed.
And whether their homes need a complete makeover or just a fresh
lick of paint, they’re not afraid to spend money on renovation,
either – a Halifax survey last year found that of the 43 per
cent of homeowners who were planning home improvements in the next
12 months, more than half were willing to spend at least £1,000.
That’s a fair bit of paint.
Of course, if you’re planning to do a bit more than put up
some shelves and sand down the banisters, there’s a lot more
to consider – and homeowners are not shy when it comes to
more major home works. The 2003 Halifax Home Improvement Survey
found 51 per cent of homeowners had installed new flooring, 47 per
cent had done up their garden, and more than 30 per cent had fitted
a new kitchen or bathroom over the previous 12 months.
But before you lever off that paint-tin lid and get your chisels
out, it’s time to get your thinking cap on.
What should you do?
If you’ve just bought a wreck and you want to make
it liveable, start with the spaces you can’t comfortably live
without – bedroom and bathroom. You can live off takeaways
for a while, but you need somewhere to wash and sleep.
If your home is basically liveable, your options are much wider.
You can add more space by converting a loft or garage, or by adding
an extension or conservatory. You can change the style and look
of a room or rooms just by decorating or adding new fixtures and
fittings. Or you can extend the use of your home by landscaping
your garden.
What can you do?
The key to successful renovation is being realistic. Whatever
project you take on has to be affordable and achievable within a
certain timeframe. It should also be in keeping with the existing
style of your home.
“It’s important to remember the resaleability factor
when considering any work to be undertaken on your home,”
says Patrick Sawdon, chief valuer at Halifax. “The key is
to ensure any alterations are in sympathy with the surroundings.”
So if you live in a thatched cottage with stone floors, for example,
a stainless steel fitted kitchen just won’t look right. Nor
will stone-cladding a brick-faced terraced house.
Although it’s tempting to keep costs down by indulging your
passion for DIY, you also need to be realistic about how much of
your project you can manage yourself, according to builder Stephen
Palmer. “People think ‘Oh, he would say that –
his work depends on people not doing it themselves,’”
he says. “But it often costs more to have a botched DIY job
put right than to have the whole thing done by a qualified professional
in the first place.”
So start by being honest with yourself: are your carpentry, plumbing
or bricklaying skills up to scratch? Can you tell a wrench from
a ratchet? If not, get someone with the right skills to do the job
for you. And remember, there are certain jobs you are legally barred
from doing yourself, no matter how skilful you are. A gas-fired
central heating system, for example, by law has to be connected
to the gas mains by a Corgi-registered plumber – though you
could install the rest of the system (radiators, pipes and boiler)
yourself.
If you’re concerned about getting stuck with a cowboy builder,
get a recommendation or use someone from one of the many building
trade associations, such as the Federation of Master Builders.
“If you get a recommendation from a friend or relative, there’s
the added bonus of being able to inspect the builder’s previous
work,” says Palmer. “You’ll also be able to get
a very frank evaluation of how easy he was to work with –
did he leave a huge mess behind? Was he polite? These things make
a difference.”
If you can’t get a personal recommendation, ask your chosen
builder for examples of his previous work and go and talk to previous
clients – a reputable builder should have no objection to
you doing this.
What can you afford to do?
The old saying about project costs is “Think of
a number – then double it.” This isn’t necessarily
true, says Palmer, though it’s easy to underestimate costs.
“If you’re doing the job yourself, you just need to
add up the costs of materials and add on, say, a 10–20 per
cent contingency sum for any unexpected expenses,” he explains.
“But if you have someone working for you and you’re
paying by the day, then any unexpected delays will push up the overall
cost.”
And delays can be caused by all sorts of things – you can’t
lay bricks in heavy rain, for example, because the rain washes away
the mortar. Deliveries of new kitchens or bathrooms may arrive with
bits missing that then have to be chased up. If you have several
people working on a project – an electrician, plumber and
kitchen-fitter, for example – work will need to be carried
out in a certain order to avoid people getting in each other’s
way.
Obviously, you can’t do much about the weather, but you can
offset some delays by doing as much research as possible before
starting your project. Know which materials you want to use and
have a reasonably good idea of what you want done – builders
and architects are not psychics. They can work with your ideas,
but vaguely waving at your living room and saying you’d like
it to be more Egyptian is not going to help.
Order kitchen and bathroom fittings well in advance – deliveries
can take anything from two to twelve weeks, and you need to be sure
your materials will be there at the same time as your builder. Otherwise,
you’ll be paying him just to stand around.
And beware of changing your mind part-way through a project. “Anything
you change or decide to add on will increase the amount of time
the job takes – and so could push up the costs,” says
Palmer. And the increase could be significant if you need to re-order
materials that are difficult to get hold of, for example.
You can finance home improvements with an unsecured personal loan,
with a specific home improvement loan, or by remortgaging. Unsecured
personal loans start from as little as 5.9 per cent with Marbles
and Northern Rock for loans of £5,000–25,000.
If you’re renovating your home in order to sell it on, the
other important cost consideration is not to spend more on the work
than the value it will add. “If you carry out a £25,000
kitchen improvement on a house worth £100,000, you won’t
get your money back on it,” says Sawdon. “It’s
all about keeping things in proportion.”
What are you allowed to do?
As a general rule of thumb, anything you do inside your
property does not require planning permission, so you can break
out the paint rollers without first consulting your local council.
However, you would still require building-regulation approval for
any structural work, such as moving or knocking through a wall.
Building regulations ensure that any new construction or alterations
to an existing structure are safe and made from the appropriate
materials – because badly constructed work can collapse and
hurt people.
Conservatories and single-storey extensions of less than 50–70
cubic metres in size (or 10–15 per cent of the volume of your
house, whichever is greater) don’t usually require planning
permission, though individual councils have individual rules, so
always check. You will still need building-regulation approval,
though.
Converting any part of your home to change its purpose for commercial
use – such as turning a garage into an office – will
need planning permission. Other conversions, such as lofts into
bedrooms, need permission if they increase the volume of your home
by more than 40–50 cubic metres or raise the height of your
roof.
The more externally visible your alterations are, the more they
will have to fit with the style of your existing property and the
area your home is in. And there will be additional planning hurdles
if your property is listed or you live in a conservation area –
check your conveyancing documents for details.
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