Utility Renovation: Completion, Timeline and Costings

It’s been a labour of love/hatred, with lots of blood, sweat and tears - no joke! - but the utility room and downstairs cloakroom are so almost finally done. Before I finally share the finished room reveal of the bathroom, I wanted to go through all the steps it took to get to this point. It's been a long and lengthy journey but we made it. It was originally suppose to be done in September, then October, then December. I had a few things done prior to the main work but the plumbing finally got started properly in January, expecting to take 2 weeks from start to finish. Well, it took almost a full 3 months in the end with tradesmen stopping and starting, as well as doing some of the work myself and here's what happened along the way. 



As you can probably see, it's been a process and there is a lot more involved then I ever anticipated. I thought I would also share the cost associated with this project and bare in mind, on average simply adding a downstairs ground floor toilet it suppose to add £5,000 to the house value. 

  • Units from Wren: £1,210
  • Electricity: £560 
  • Moving electrical supply: £1,095
  • First fit: £435 
  • Stud wall (materials and fitting): £0 - it was a Christmas present from my dad and he built it
  • Plastering: £400 
  • Paint and supplies: £73 (I also used leftover paint from painting the house last year) 
  • Doors (5 doors, with handles, hinges, latches, architrave and bathroom lock, plus fitting): £760 
  • Tiling and final fit: £200 (I used tiles leftover from the bathroom upstairs) 
  • Toilet, sink and accessories: £305 (I got these from PlumbWorld myself but going through a tradesman would have probably been cheaper) 
  • Decorations: £339 
  • Boiler cupboard: £270 

This brings the total cost to £5,647, but this is bearing in mind that it also includes doors for the cupboard, kitchen, lounge and hallway which weren't necessarily required but more for aesthetics and functionality. If you took away the cost of these and just included the door work for the cloakroom door it would cost just £220. Plus, I probably wouldn't have bought Wren units if it wasn't for the fact that I wanted the integrated fridge freezer in the kitchen and so my being these units, it actually brought the total cost down, making them realistically free. It's also important to note that the RCD board needed to be replaced as a safety measure so this was £400 of the cost, regardless of whether I did the complete renovation or not. So in a way it could be seen as being much less, but I've just included everything in this costing.  

I feel that overall this is more than I had originally anticipated, but I now have a beautiful, much more suitable space and I can safely say the project will make the money back long-term if and when it comes to selling. 

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