Fitting Out a New House

myshirt

I can see there are a lot on here who are buying new builds but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of guidance around fit out.

Let's share ideas around how you should sequence the fit out (floors, decorating, new lighting points, alarm installation, joinery and carpentry, etc), costs, and ideas. Hopefully there will be no advocates of painting the whole place magnolia and just putting down some lino

handlemaster

You first

theguzman

Will you live there yourself or plan to use it as an investment property to rent out? If you are renting then there is no point spending a fortune because you could get scumbag tenants who'd wreck the place.

myshirt

theguzman wrote: »

Will you live there yourself or plan to use it as an investment property to rent out? If you are renting then there is no point spending a fortune because you could get scumbag tenants who'd wreck the place.

Bargaintown all the way for the investment property.

myshirt

handlemaster wrote: »

You first

myshirt wrote: »

I can see there are a lot on here who are buying new builds but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of guidance around fit out.

Let's share ideas around how you should sequence the fit out (floors, decorating, new lighting points, alarm installation, joinery and carpentry, etc), costs, and ideas. Hopefully there will be no advocates of painting the whole place magnolia and just putting down some lino

For me, add a zero to the square footage and multiply it by 1 and a half for the budget. So 1,400sq feet is 21k.

I'd do the floors and lighting points first. Organise the lighting points above each area you'd use. New homes are only coming with basic lighting points these days. I wouldn't use magnolia for the decoration. For each room I'd go with a key investment piece. A couch, a bed, a table, some wainscoting, and then after that I'd get stuff as needed. A lot of young people are eager to fill the place up with sh't as soon as they get the house, and I think that's a mistake. Go with the key investment pieces first and then play it by ear thereafter.

Now Handlemaster, go ahead son.

Cyrus

Any painting leave until everyone else is done, floors just before that , invest in quality , avoid fads

Rubberchikken

good floors.
good lighting.
ive given up on the different colour paint in each room so im at the white everywhere stage but i do understand that a lot of people love different shades in different areas.

Klonker

We kitted out a 3 bed 110 sq m for about 15-20k. Main things are deciding the big things: what kind of flooring? I'm a fab of downstairs laminate, upstairs/landing nice quality carpet. Then your on to the beds, mattresses, kitchen table etc. I always think the couch and tv stand/unit/wall mount is most important as basically defines your living room and I know it's where I spend most of my waking time at home. Then need to think about storage space: bed locker, show stand, coat hanger, book shelfs etc.

I wouldn't paint for a year or 2 at least. For one you might get scuffs when still moving furniture and as well as that gives you time to have a think what colours might work where.

Sleepy

Klonker wrote: »

I wouldn't paint for a year or 2 at least. For one you might get scuffs when still moving furniture and as well as that gives you time to have a think what colours might work where.

On the flip-side to that, it's a much quicker and easier job to paint empty rooms than it is to move / store / mask off all the stuff in a room...

GingerLily

You are not advised to paint a new build, if it is timber framed, for at least a year, so the walls settle, otherwise you'll get cracks in your new paint.

Paint if you want, but it's generally not advised

Wabbit Ears

IMHO it all doesn't really matter because absolutely everything you buy now you'll replace soon enough, even the 'buy quality buy once' stuff.

Sequence of events in my opinion is:

Base paint something you can live with fore a while
Floors
Furniture

After a little while you'll have figured out how you use your home, where you actually like to sit, which parts of the kitchen do you use etc. Basically your life and work flow in your home. Then you can do stuff like additional light points and whatnot. So many people put in lights they never use or are just pointless because they're in the wrong place. Like for example my dad has down lighting on his kitchen cupboards but the light switch is in the corner of the kitchen that's used for storage. it would have been way better to have placed the switch in a much more user friendly position but when it was put in it seemed as good a place as any to put the switch as it was convenient for the wiring.