The Home Improvement Thread

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
881

Our 25 year old front door deadbolt lock wasn’t working (when you turned the key, sometimes you took several turns to get the deadbolt to extend or retract, or didn’t do at all from the inside; the outside worked better). Door is metal and time/hassle/money to get a locksmith. H looked on youtube and found how to take it off and take it apart (H is handy). He fixed it! He said it took over an hour tinkering with it but he could see what was wrong. Happy to not spend the money there and can spend it on other things!

@consolation I do like the tile look tiles. I think they will hold up better than other option, and save time too. Not too much money. Good luck with the walls/products to have that look better.

882

Good for your husband, SOS. YouTube is a treasure trove of DIY videos. How else would Bob the electrician get his bazillion likes? :slight_smile:

883

Got a first pass of an estimate from my builder.

Holy crap, we are coming in at $300+/sq ft of renovated space. Granted, this includes a kitchen and two bathrooms, but geez. It’s not like we were planning on using top of the line product everywhere, either.

I think we are going to have to take a closer look at some of the things we want to do. Daaang.

884

^^^ So that includes a lot of plumbing stuff?? Kitchens and bathrooms are much pricier than just throwing up some drywall and painting. That price might not be out of line.

885

It’s not all just kitchen and baths, and I know those are way more expensive than regular finished space. But we blew right through our budget in a major way, and I thought our budget was reasonable.

I guess not. :-B

886

Wow, that is a very steep price per foot! Any idea what component of the remodel is the major cost overrun culprit?

Remodeling is becoming more expensive. The last year’s tariffs on lumber sent the price of all lumber products, even most competing ones, soaring, at least here in my neck of the woods. We paid more for the Hardi siding phase 2 (garage) unit of materials than phase 1 that happened 10 months ago.

887

He did provide a breakdown, the largest categories were

Framing and demo - $25K
Building material - $22K
Electric - $17.5K
Finish labor - $10K
Sheetrock and plaster - $6.8K

We are roofing over the atrium and moving/removing some walls, but $25K for framing seems like a lot.

Building materials seems high, but there are several new large windows, a new front door with sidelights, a staircase, and a ton of lumber and moldings and whatnot. Doesn’t include paint. Not sure if it includes railings for the balcony or not, which need to be replaced.

$17.5K for electric really seems excessive, AFAIK that includes no fixtures at all. I’ve completely rewired buildings twice this size for half this amount. I may ask him to let me bring in my own electrician, and get some other estimates for that part.

I’m not sure what “finish labor” even means, since painting isn’t included and sheetrock and plastering is a separate line item. Installing windows and doors and moldings?

I’m hoping a lot of these numbers are “worst case”, and will come in under that.

The kitchen place we went to came in at $26K for kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, and kitchen and bath countertops, which is actually not horrible. But I can knock at least $10K off of that at least by going with RTA cabinets and lower-grade vanities from wayfair or even HD, and going directly to a stone place for countertops, and cut out the middleman.

Haven’t gotten the plumbing or HVAC estimate yet. I’m a little worried…

I can cut my flooring budget in half by using different materials. I wanted to use a cushioned floating LVT, but I can switch to a thinner glue-down product for much cheaper. Some other things will likely get delayed for a while, like replacing the garage doors or doing something with the chimney.

888

Electric part does look very expensive! At $100/hour inclusive of materials, that’s 175 hours - almost a month worth of full time work! :slight_smile: Certainly it does not take that long to wire a few bedrooms and a couple of baths. :slight_smile:

889

I’m just choking looking at those estimates. I wish I could help you but I don’t even know where to start in your geographic area. Finish labor is about the only thing that looks reasonable. You wouldn’t believe how many weeks of details there are after the major stuff gets installed.

My last clients paid for kitchen cabinets and full install to save time so my crew could focus on everything else. Full price, not including appliances and appliance install was $17k

I would recommend that you take all lighting , fixtures, appliances, etc out of the quote. Make sure you just state “installation” of customer items. Then source everything yourself to save money. But then you might show up with some fancy refrigerator that is a complicated install!!

Staircase builds are expensive

890

See? Come to the Cape to do my project, you’ll make a ton. :wink:

Or maybe you should be charging more. :smiley:

The kitchen place estimated about $20K for cabinets, quartz countertop, and install. It’s a fair amount of cabinets, about 40 linear feet of lowers and half of that in uppers, and about 70 sq ft of counter. It’s the one part that is half-way reasonable I think.

Yes, that is our plan.

This one is about as simple as possible, it’s a completely straight run, no landings or turns. He didn’t break out a separate price for it though. I’ll have to ask him when we meet this weekend.

891

Does your staircase have walls on both sides? So you only need a handrail bolted to the walls? We are learning on Dfins project that an open side with balusters and posts and rail is a labor intensive build. Other type is a lot less expensive

892

Search for prefab granite places. You can get your countertops for a reasonable cost. Just have to find someone to cut them and install

893

One side of the stairs is open and will need rails. My wife wants to do something in metal. but that’s probably $$. I’d consider a solid half-wall on the stairs if it saved a lot of money.

894

@notrichenough: I apologize that I don’t remember how far you are in this project, but if I were you, and I still could, I’d get different estimates from different people. All of those costs feel excessive to me.

895

I don’t know - I just did a 5’x8’ bathroom and a teeny powder room and just those were $42K. Total spent on renovating over last 12 years has been $200K. My kitchen alone was $50k 10 years ago. Just the truss needed when we took out load bearing was $20K to do fam room addition - which is why I don’t have a fireplace in it (I do have one in living room so not really a big deal.)

I think people watch too much HGTV and think what they spend on renovating is the norm.

896

Emily - you are doing top of the line finishes which adds to the costs. Plus, the basics like wiring etc. for a small bath can cost almost as much to redo as for a larger one. The costs quoted to NRE are on a very high end as they are just the basic stuff without any fixtures, cabinets, floors, paints, etc.

897

I added in his cost for fixtures and I just don’t think it’s unusally high at all. Unless you are DIYers the most expensive cost is labor - especially on the east coast. And all the things that no one sees because they are behind walls, floors, etc, are way more expensive than fixtures.

Sourcing oneself seems silly to me, too. A contractor can purchase from wherever you want them to and get the items at the contractors price. I didn’t pay retail for fixtures, cabinets, floors, windows, etc, etc, etc.

Notrichenough’s project is pretty big. He needs a general contractor, IMO, who does everything from soup to nuts.

898

I am waiting right now for the contractors to show up to install my new kitchen counters. When I bought the house years ago, it had off-white laminate, which had some stains. Instead of shelling out a lot for new counters, I used a kit where you kind of sponge paint the counters to look like faux granite, and it actually came out looking pretty good.

But now it’s starting to peel off, so I bit the bullet and am buying granite. My kitchen is pretty small, so I was able to get a remnant piece of a more expensive granite for less than the usual price. Of course, with an hour to go before installation I’m questioning if I bought the right color. And the granite place has pushed back the time twice that they are supposed to show up today. And no one speaks English there very well. But I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

899

@emilybee is correct that the majority of the cost goes behind the walls and there’s really nothing to show for it

However, the plumbing and electrical costs are the same whether you have the SubZero refrigerator or the Frigidaire. But I did learn on my last project that a Subzero refrigerator takes a lot of extra plumbing and electrical and cabinetry costs than you could possibly imagine. For some reason, all the plumbing and electrical connections have to be moved to the very bottom of the wall, right above the floor. This is not standard and would have to be carefully mapped out for the sub contractors.

900

True built in fridges… Are Subzero fridges still hardwired? We inherited one with the house, and it is hardwired. Here comes one dilemma. I love the fridge, but it almost 18 years old. I need to reface the cabinets but I am thinking that I will probably postpone refacing until the fridge kicks the bucket as I have a feeling the replacement will not be the exact same size. OTOH, it does not have cabinetry on one side, so it would not be that hard to adjust… hmm…