Things That Will Cause You To Go Over Budget When Renovating

We’re almost three months into our house renovation project and the end is almost in sight. We’re hoping to be moved in by Mid-August and I’m keeping everything crossed that the dates don’t slide (again). While I followed a bunch of renovation accounts on Instagram I didn’t know anyone who had done a project like ours. I know people who have done decorating or a new kitchen/ bathroom. But not on the scale we were of gutting everything. One of my worries was going over budget when renovating. Even though I guard our budgeting spreadsheets like one would a firstborn.

I’ll be doing a whole post once we’re finished about how to budget for a renovation. And how we made it work on a pretty modest budget considering the work we’ve done. But I’ve learnt an awful lot already so I thought I’d let you know the things that will cause you to go over budget when renovating. So hopefully you can up those budgets and make sure you account for them.

Skips/ clearing costs

I had no real idea how much a skip cost to hire and how many we’d need. As there was no furniture or stuff to get rid of I set a very modest £300 budget for this area. In my mind, this should be enough for a very large skip or two smaller ones. But my was I wrong. Each skip cost us about £300 alone and we’ve had two already. And we’ve paid about £150 for someone to come out and manually pick up a lot of stuff from our house. And we know we’ll need more.

Rubbish and clearing costs will cause you to go over budget when renovating. While skips are big they are easy to fill. It’s not just the obvious things like a kitchen or bathroom that take up space. But flooring, carpets, tiles, doors etc all pile up.

If you’re doing a full renovation I’d suggest allocating £1,000 to skips and clearing costs.

You’ll go over budget when renovating on tools

If you’re planning on doing some (or all) of the work yourself you’ll need a budget for tools. Most tools won’t be bought for one thing alone to attribute the cost too. And we didn’t set out any budget for tools as I assumed we had everything we needed. So we instantly went over budget when renovating with just the first purchase.

Whether you hire/ rent or buy the tools you’ll need a budget for this. We’ve spent about £300 on tools and that’s considering Luke has a lot of things himself. So it’s worth having some money set aside for this of anywhere from £200 to £600.

Doors and floors

When you price up things to get an idea of budget, just remember all of the extra bits which go with them. For example, we priced up doors, but I didn’t consider the fixings like handles and locks. When it came to our wooden flooring I didn’t consider the cork edging, the underlay or the latex we’d need to do. If you’ve got a budget for a particular thing as you know what carpet, tiles etc you’re getting add some extra in for the additional bits you’ll need.

I thought we’d got everything we needed for our bathroom but didn’t realise you needed tile underlay for the floor. And I forgot to account for adhesive and groat.

Have a misc fund or you will go over budget when renovating

There are some things you’ll need to buy which just won’t feet neatly into a category in your budget. Our misc spending is about £350 and that’s even when I’m super strict allocating our spend. Every time we spend I scrutinize what that part of the Selco order was for. But some things will just be needed that don’t neatly fit anywhere.

Ensure you don’t go over budget when renovating by setting aside some misc money. Depending on how strict you’re managing costs I’d suggest £500-£1000 for this.

Have you ever renovated your home?

Pin It