I had to write the first big cheque last week (well, the first one since the one I wrote for buying the place, which was a whopper!), so I thought it was probably time to put my cards on the table and share my budget.
There are really two parts to the budget: what’s needed to get it to the point where it could be sold or rented and what’s needed to furnish it to turn it into a holiday let. Here are our figures.
| Item | Estimate |
| Roof & stonework | £16,000.00 |
| Electrics | £4,655.00 |
| Heating & burner install | £7,000.00 |
| Joinery | £5,000.00 |
| Kitchen units | £3,000.00 |
| Downstairs flooring | £1,600.00 |
| Carpets | £750.00 |
| Plasterboard & insulation | £2,000.00 |
| Skirting boards | £200.00 |
| Kitchen appliances | £2,000.00 |
| Switches, sockets, light fittings | £500.00 |
| Interior paint | £500.00 |
| Exterior paint | £1,000.00 |
| Shower tray & screen | £700.00 |
| Shower | £400.00 |
| Woodburner & kit | £1,500.00 |
| Windows and door | £5,000.00 |
| Door stripping | £400.00 |
| Miscellaneous tools | £2,500.00 |
| Bathroom tiles | £250.00 |
| Garden/fencing | £2,000.00 |
| Interest, council tax, electricity | £3,500.00 |
Total: £60,455 *gulp* And we’re actually already £2,720 over the roof budget because of the extra work to the stone. On the plus side, the house and surrounding fields were valued at £77,500 on the home report (the rest of the value being assigned to the other croft) and should be worth in the region of £150-160,000 once we’re done, so we’re still just about in profit.
On the furnishings side..
| Beds x 4 | £750.00 |
| Mattresses x 4 | £1,300.00 |
| Sofas x 2 | £1,100.00 |
| Kitchen table & chairs | £800.00 |
| Coffee table | £200.00 |
| TV unit | £200.00 |
| TV | £300.00 |
| Wardrobes x 3 | £750.00 |
| Drawers x 2 | £500.00 |
| Bedside tables x 4 | £500.00 |
| Pots, pans & crockery etc | £600.00 |
| Cushions, pictures etc. | £500.00 |
Total: £7,500. I’ve priced up for mostly new, but am hoping I can save some money by buying good-quality second hand – browsing the local Facebook for sale group, I’ve already seen a really nice oak single bed frame that would be perfect for the small bedroom for £45. A friend of mine recently furnished an entire rental property from the weekly furniture auctions at Dingwall and has a teenage niece who’s got the long summer holidays coming up who is very, very talented at smartening up bargain buys, so I’m hoping she might be employable for a few days! The one thing I refuse to buy second-hand are mattresses.
We’ve also agreed a £5,000 contingency, bringing the overall grand total potential spend to an absolutely eye-watering £72,955. We have enough cash, from savings and 0% offers, to get us to the house being more or less finished, but not the garden – so I need to crack on with the decrofting application for the house site to make sure that as soon as there’s a working kitchen and bathroom in place, I can get on with a mortgage application to release money to pay back the 0% deals as they expire and put the final touches to it so it can start earning its keep.