How much is it going to cost to renovate my house?

So often people ask me “how much is this kitchen/bathroom/addition/renovation going to cost me?”

I hate to say it, and I am usually very blunt, but on this I am purposefully very vague, though I will always say three things.

1. Renovations typically cost more than new construction.  So when you see new homes at $80 a square foot that is not the case with renovation.  First, it has to be taken apart, then it has to get put back together.  Obviously this adds to the cost.  Also, there are going to be unforeseen conditions.  Until the walls are opened up or the finishes removed, we cannot cover all the potential issues.  And if you decide to by a new house that only cost $80/square foot to build, call me. We need figure out how that happened.
2. Square footage isn’t going to set the overall price.  The more trades (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, finishes, cabinetry) involved the more it’s going to cost.  If you are building a bathroom, all of the trades will be involved, versus a bedroom where we wouldn’t necessarily have plumbing or cabinetry.  At the same time cutting down on a little square footage doesn’t equate to equal amounts saved.  You will still have the same trades involved and it is more about labor and trips to the job site than the price of the material there.
3. The price of plywood or copper fluctuates, or anything else for that matter, sometimes daily.  As the price of oil goes up, so do shingles.  If there is a wildfire in California or a tsunami in Indonesia, the price of lumber is likely to rise.  Construction is an international market and sometimes it will impact the price of tea in China or the price of plywood in South Carolina.

The reason I never get specific is because that truly is the general contractor’s job.  It is up to them to take the drawings and specifications to the suppliers and subcontractors to obtain pricing.  I can usually give a ballpark or determine whether the budget is somewhere close to real.  However, I do not procure materials everyday, nor do I manage subcontractors daily.  So even if I did a very similar project six months ago, I cannot guarantee the ballpark.  It really will all come down to what the construction market is doing at the time that the final numbers come.

What can you do to help?  You should always be honest about what your real budget is at the very beginning of the job.  No one wants you to out-price your home for the market.  While I can give you a Taj Mahal, I’d rather you be happy at the end of our work and not leave you with just a set of really nice drawings of your dream.  If I don’t know the budget there is no way we will get close enough.  Then, you should always have a contingency fund in place.  A safe bet with a full set of construction documents is going to be between 5-10%.  During preliminary budgeting it would be best to allow for 15%, because you will in all likelihood think that you can live without the nicer tile, or the decorative knobs but you will change your mind about something.  We all like to think that we don’t really need that much or that we aren’t that picky, but in truth we usually want something just a little nicer.