Home Renovations

Status
Not open for further replies.
F

feo

Honorary Master
Joined
Jan 22, 2006
Messages
13,722
Reaction score
109
Location
Pretoria, South Africa
We had major issues at home with a leaking roof and shoddy construction done by the previous owners so we decided to fix it. Called in a builder and eventually ended up completely renovating the room. The zinc roof was taken off, height of the ceiling was raised, new trusses and wooden beams put on, new tiled roof installed, walls were stripped of the old plaster and replastered and repainted, brand new ceiling put in along with the electrical that's still being done.

Over and above that, the house is getting a paint job outside, waterproofing was done all over the place and also the wall were treated with hypercrete to help with the water seepage problem.

I've never really done renovations before ever, so the one thing that got me was the cost of the whole thing! Well over R100k so far..

Have you guys ever done major renovations to your home and if so, what work was done and how much did it set you back in total?
 
I tiled the house the past two weeks. Cost me about 30k. That's just tiling alone. Renovations suck
 
I'm ripping out our carpets as some are old (1985 vintage) and currently don't have the R20K to replace them so we are going to paint the floors instead until we can save up the cash. Going to cost us R50K+ to redo the entire house (140m2).


As much as which I would love to pay people to do things around the house, I'm forced to do it myself to save cash and currently working on the things that cannot be put off. Another problem is finding somebody that does not screw it up. My neighbour was trying to get me to use her painters to do some much needed touch up work on my house. After how I saw they screwed up her garage door (it looks all patchy) I said sod that, bought the needed supplies and started doing it myself.

Some things are also not too hard to do youself. Last month I moved an outside tap and added another one. Cost me less than R200 in supplies (piping, equal joints, tap, etc) and took me 2 hours to do. The labour alone for a plumber would have been R1K.
 
My neighbour got a quote last week to replace his wooden window frames (old, rotting and looking quite poor) with aluminium ones - R48k.

I got a quote today to update my alarm system (more beams around the house after break-in at same neighbour's house) - about 10k.

A quote to replace all the floors in our house with laminate wood (125m2) - 24k, as all the skirtings would need to be replaced as well.

Completely redoing a guest bathroom, excluding tiles, sanitary ware and fittings - 17k.
 
Replaced our roof with corrugated sheeting, waterproofing and painting and that cost about R48k in 2006. Remodeled our bathroom ... moved the bath and basin, all plumbing and retiling entire floor. About R50-R60k (2008)
 
100k to do all that work sounds pretty reasonable...

I'm building a double garage and workshop ATM, and I'm R100k down so far... Will be about R140k when I'm all finished and that's with me doing a fair amount of the finishing myself... I just had builders come in and do the main structure
 
Well the work in my OP is actually R150k to be exact, yes they did quite a bit of work but I think since I've never dropped that much in one go, it feels like quite a lot.
 
I did the entire inside of my house last year. Left two walls untouched, the rest were either demolished or bricked up in some way. Was out of the house for 10 weeks. Massive PITA but now I am super happy with the way it came out. Quotes ranged from just under a million to R600k. Not sure I ever want to do it again...
 
We just did last year....
Two and a half new bathrooms, one outside room added, one new study renovated with wall units, lots of new wall plugs and lights, entire house rewired electrically.

Total was about R350K
 
Our house is a fixer upper. We bought it 2 years ago, LOTS needs to be done and we are doing most of it ourselves where we can, as we cannot afford to have someone to come in and do it. We have only paid for a tree feller to remove 2 trees (5k) and erected a vibracrete wall (8k). We have only got so far as painting the outside, lol, still busy as we paint when we can/have time/etc. I would imagine all the material for the entire outside was about 8k all inc. When we are finally finished we will move to the inside, both bathrooms and kitchen needs redoing and carpets need replacing. Grief, the list is actually endless.
 
DvD said:
...

A quote to replace all the floors in our house with laminate wood (125m2) - 24k, as all the skirtings would need to be replaced as well.

...
Click to expand...

You are aware at that price you will be supplied the cheapest grade available with a very short lifespan. Good laminated flooring is R300-R400 pm2. I did my research on the flooring and not worth going cheap.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
You are aware at that price you will be supplied the cheapest grade available with a very short lifespan. Good laminated flooring is R300-R400 pm2. I did my research on the flooring and not worth going cheap.
Click to expand...

I made an error with the size. Two bathrooms and the kitchen must still be subtracted, so it should work out closer to the R300/m2 mark. That said, the quote was for last year, so it will probably be more expensive now.
 
Anyone else?

I'd specifically like to hear from guys that completely redone an entire room i.e. removed old plaster and re-plaster, redo the floors, repaint, new ceiling and new electrical.

Ball park how much should that cost?

Also, what about repainting the whole outside of a house? In general how much should that sorta thing set you back?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X