What have you renovated and how much did it end up costing?

[fryjack2]

What renovation did you undertake and how on budget were you?

[mrsukyankee]

I'll give mine though I'm in England/London so it won't really help others (unless they live in England).

House 1 - knock out a wall, new kitchen, underfloor heating in kitchen/dining room/living room (converted from 3 small rooms into an L-shape, a new downstairs powder room, painting of all the rooms, new bathroom with underfloor heating. Total cost approximately £60,000.  Within budget.

House 1 a bit more work - loft renovation - add a small shower room to the loft and push out loft so that it's a large bedroom. New stairs to loft. Total cost approximately £35,000. Within budget.

House 2: full renovation, down to studs in entire house, lots of new pipes and wiring, removal of several walls, and adding other walls to make an open-plan kitchen-diner, adding a shower room to the loft, new roofing, new wall insulation and exterior resurfacing, replacement of kitchen & bathroom, underfloor heating in entire ground floor. Total cost approximately £110,000. A bit over-budget.

[simpsongal]

We added a 20x22 screened porch w/mahogany floors, including some masonry to add an exterior door to the porch. Cost about $40K, HCOL (everything was w/in budget).

We also sheetrocked the drop ceiling in our basement and added recessed lighting throughout - that was about $7K.

When we first moved in we moved laundry upstairs and took down a nonloadbearing wall. I think that was about $8K.

[fryjack2]

Nov 29, 2018 7:39:22 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

We added a 20x22 screened porch w/mahogany floors, including some masonry to add an exterior door to the porch. Cost about $40K, HCOL (everything was w/in budget).

We also sheetrocked the drop ceiling in our basement and added recessed lighting throughout - that was about $7K.

When we first moved in we moved laundry upstairs and took down a nonloadbearing wall. I think that was about $8K.

Tell me more about this.  Our finished basement has ceiling tiles from what I'm going o assume is the 1950s that are falling apart and recessed lights that are not flush anymore.  Its driving me insane and is one of the next projects on our list.  I don't know where to start.  We had an electrician out a couple weeks ago for other stuff and he told us to call him back when we had replaced the ceiling and he would do the lighting. 

[simpsongal]

fryjack2 , We had a general contractor handle the whole project. It took like 2-3 days. We've put recessed lights in other rooms, they're usually about $200/light. They put the lights on several different switches, which is nice.

They also had to even out the ceiling in one area, like build it up so it would be level since there was a pipe running across the ceiling. The walls were already sheetrocked, that didn't need work. They also painted the ceiling.

We're in a 1971 colonial, the basement is probably 800-1000 sq ft? We also tested the ceiling tiles for asbestos before proceeding (they were fine). You can usually send a sample to a lab for under $200.

It was 100% worth it - we spend so much time down there now w/the kids. It used to look like a haunted dentist office.

[dr.girlfriend]

We knocked down the wall between our kitchen and dining room and redid our kitchen entirely. Goal was $20k, in the end it was probably about $25k. I posted budget details on here in the past if you need more info.

Latest endeavor is potentially a $185k master bedroom/bathroom/laundry addition where our current garage is, and potentially another $30k to add solar to all the rear roofs.  Stay tuned to see if we go over.

[candreco]

Gutted our kitchen down to studs and subfloor, took out part of a wall and replaced with a peninsula, moved some plumbing to an adjacent wall, and replaced all appliances except the dishwasher. Goal was $40K, ended up at $42K. Our contractor was awesome, on his budget except for some additional necessary electrical and drywall work, and did it in the three weeks he told us at the beginning, plus two days for the extra electrical they found.

[Susie]

This spring we had a compact full bathroom gutted and reno'ed, including some layout changes.  We budgeted $15k and ended up spending more like $18k.

[Velar Fricative]

So far the biggest renovation we've done in our house is finished the basement (~700 sq. ft.). It cost about $15k which is what we budgeted. VHCOL, but a friend of a friend was our contractor so we got a good rate. It was just one big open space before. Here's what was included:

-Insulation and drywall all around
-Painting
-Recessed lighting
-Added a large family/TV room
-Added a full bathroom
-Kept a small area unfinished for storage/laundry
-Added doors/closet spaces
-Total cost included all furniture for the family room and all supplies for the bathroom, plus we bought a second fridge for the storage area

Our next renovation will be our backyard next year. It's a small yard since we live in a rowhouse, so the yard is 18 feet wide and around 45 feet long from the house to the back fence. Right now it is almost entirely made up of pavers but the job the previous owner did was terrible and we need to redo everything. We will remove these crappy pavers and redo the job with pavers all over the yard so we don't have to maintain grass. Our quotes when we started researching this year came out to $10k-$12k, but that did not include the small deck that we also want to replace, but we haven't quoted that since we're still not entirely sure if we want to keep it the size it is now (only room for stairs and a deck box before you go down the stairs), or if we want to expand the deck a bit, in which case we may not choose to pave the entire yard if we can get away with leaving dirt underneath the deck area.

[lolalolalola]

We spent about $60K on all new ikea kitchen, new lighting throughout the house, closing off a storage room in the basement, repainting all main floor and upper level, including trim, closing off a dining room and turning it into an office, removing fireplace matle and tv niche and replacing with tile surround to the ceiling, extending hardwood throughout the main floor, and re-finishing all existing main floor hardwood.  It was on budget. 

[k3am]

House 1:
Hall bath - budgeted $18k, spent $18k. Ripped down to studs, replaced everything in it, but kept everything in the same locations.
Kitchen - budgeted $40, spent $45. Tore down a massive sunroom, restuccoed exterior walls, removed and poured a new slab patio, reduced window sizes, new exterior door, everything down to studs and replaced with minor relocation of appliances and plumbing. Kept our old appliances
Master bath / whole house floor refinishing / fireplace reno: I honestly can't remember our budget or how much we spent, but I think it was in the ~$30k range.

House 2: still dreaming.. I want to do a major kitchen reno, but it's the most updated thing in the house and still fine - my guess is we'd be looking at at least $80-100k, so that's on hold until we win the lottery. First on the list will likely be our master bath when time and money permit. It's really poorly designed, a weird shape, has a damaged vanity and floor tiles and needs to go. I'd still rather do the kitchen first, since I spend so much more time there.

[hbomdiggity]

We moved the master bathroom, laundry, and closet to another room. Hard to describe but it completely reworked the layout on the back of the house. We didn’t really take out any walls but closed in doorways (including an exterior door) and built new ones.

We hired a few subs (electrical, plumbing, and drywall) but otherwise DYI. I think we budgeted $40k and may have ended up at $47.

[ssmjlm]

The only big thing we've done in this house is the paver patio. It was $25k in the end. We ended up going a bit over our initial budget due to slope in the yard, we had to add a step with a light on one side.

We did do LVP in our laundry and add cabinets, that was maybe $1500? We did Ikea cabinets, amazon faucet and sink, small backsplash.

[fryjack2]

We didn't really renovate but had projects we did before we moved in and some after. Didn't have a budget but wanted to keep cost as low as possible. Lots more on the list but here are a few:

-We refinished about 1000sq feet of hardwood, and replaced another 2500 sq feet with new hardwood. Total was about $15k

-repainted the entire interior of the house. 3500sq feet. We got an insane deal from a friend of a friend and paid about $3k plus paint that we go for 40% off.

-removing a fire pit and weird bushes and some landscaping $3k

-some electrical stuff we needed done $2500

-new HVAC and hot water heater. not really a reno but was budgeted into our home improvements upon move in--$17k

Still need:

-replace all the windows and slider in the sunroom. Quotes are looking like it will be around $20k. We haven't pulled the trigger because we now may want to do a bigger project that includes bumping out a living room wall or making the windows in that room into a huge wall of accordion glass doors leading to a deck. The sun room and living room are kind of an L shape so the sunroom and living room would open to that deck. We haven't decided yet.

-putting up a fence in the backyard (currently random fencing in random spots) no quote yet but emails out to 2 companies.

-fence or bushes in the front yard

-removing 2 trees- $1500

-potential kitchen remodel with a bump out- haven't done much for that

-better insulation in the guest room and office-havens done anything for that either

[sandandsea]

VHCOL
First house 1 story 1120 sq ft

Kitchen $5k. We restrained the wood cabinets ourselves which totally sucked. Replaced backsplash and put in new quartz countertops.

Baseboards and crown molding throughout and paint DIY so maybe $500 in supplies

Laminate in LR DIY so $500ish

New fence around 2/3 of backyard $1100

Painted exterior $5k

Added AC. $5k


New house 2 story 2500 sq ft

Hired painting everything interior $7500

Added drain and sump pump and water barrier to crawl space $12k

Hired painting exterior $7000

Hardwood floors throughout $30k (tile in laundry room, carpet on stairs and one bedroom)

Master bathroom $50k (hoped for budget was $40)

Everything was as budgeted except the master bathroom

We need to redo our landscaping and backyard but are expecting another $50k plus for that so it’s on hold for a bit.

[dr.girlfriend]

Nov 29, 2018 9:25:39 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

 It used to look like a haunted dentist office.

[bhnumbers]

We are currently doing a major addition that adds:

-an attached garage (somewhat rare in this neighborhood)
-new master suite
-upstairs laundry room and linen closet
-reconfigure 2 bedrooms for the kids
-new great room and office on main level
-screen porch and patio off of great room
-reconfigure old mudroom/laundry room to just a mudroom, but part of it turned around into a pantry for kitchen
-expand basement
-add full bath and bedroom to basement

We live in a HCOL area, I won't go into specifics about cost, but it's more than we thought we'd spend. But we feel good about it because the home value (once we're finally done) is normal for our area. 

The only thing we really went much over budget on was the roof. Our contractor priced out the shingles in our contract for the new portion of the roof to be the same exact type on the existing roof. However, between when he priced them and when he actually had to order them, the manufacturer quite making those shingles because there had been a class action lawsuit over the fact that our shingles had failed on many, many homes. Fun. So rather than having 2 different looking roofs AND having those older shingles end up failing for us, too. We went ahead and paid an extra $5K to have them redo the old when they put on the new ones. It really sucks because the "old" part of the roof was actually only about 8 or 9 years old. But at least we won't have to worry about the roof for a long while now. Other than that we've done pretty well. There are a few allowances for fixtures and tiles where I went over what they suggested I spend, but I saved a ton in other areas, so that evened out for the most part. 

[rondonalddo]

More a repair than a reno, but still.

Replaced sill plate, added French drain, excavated crawlspace, replaced a whole lot of beams and piers. Total was around $36-38k when all was said and done. It was over budget because...it wasn't budgeted. A skunk dug into the rotted sill plate and revealed a ton of damage that hadn't been able to be identified in our inspection because of the narrowness of the crawlspace (our house is about 115 years old and has 2 separate crawlspaces connected by a cellar). Insurance wouldn't cover it, and why, yes I'm still bitter.

[dr.girlfriend]

Dec 1, 2018 11:05:23 GMT -5 rondonalddo said:

More a repair than a reno, but still.

Replaced sill plate, added French drain, excavated crawlspace, replaced a whole lot of beams and piers. Total was around $36-38k when all was said and done. It was over budget because...it wasn't budgeted. A skunk dug into the rotted sill plate and revealed a ton of damage that hadn't been able to be identified in our inspection because of the narrowness of the crawlspace (our house is about 115 years old and has 2 separate crawlspaces connected by a cellar). Insurance wouldn't cover it, and why, yes I'm still bitter.

OUCH!!  This hurts in so many ways.  Such an unglamorous way to spend so much money.  I hope you have some really good luck coming your way to make up for this!

[lightbulbsun]

In our first house we did a lot of smaller renos, and a lot of DIY. The work was spread over the seven years we lived there, and I would say we spent about $50k total. Biggest single ticket items were wood floor refinishing ($4k), improved insulation and crawl space sealing ($6k), new backspash and counters in the kitchen ($5k).

So far the biggest thing we've done in the new house is get a fence installed. Just under $10k, but my dogs love it. We also had the hardwood floors refinished throughout, which was $3.5k. We our planning to move the laundry from the kitchen to the breezeway, gut the kitchen, tear down a wall between the kitchen and living room, and gut the bathroom. We will do a mix of DIY and professional and hopefully come in around $60k for everything.

[rachachella]

We did a full house renovation last year.
- built an 18 x 24 heated shop
- basement - moved water softener, water heater, washer/dryer to opposite side and added 2 bedrooms
- main floor - took out a couple walls, got rid of sunken living room, entire kitchen (new cabinets/appliances), stucco ceiling gone
- added a closet in one of the bedrooms upstairs
- new windows
- flooring throughout entire house
- added central air for cooling
This cost us about $60,000 and I'm in Ontario, Canada. Also, my H is an electrician and did all of the electrical himself and called in some favours for gas lines, concrete, etc.

[simpsongal]

lightbulbsun, your post reminded me of the paradox of hardwood floors (ok maybe paradox is strong....) - but on home shows they're like "YAASSSS" there are hardwoods under the carpet! But in my experience, it's not much cheaper to refinish existing hardwoods as opposed to installing new hardwoods and then finishing. I mean, there's some savings but I wouldn't call it exponential.

[lightbulbsun]

Dec 6, 2018 9:29:22 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

lightbulbsun , your post reminded me of the paradox of hardwood floors (ok maybe paradox is strong....) - but on home shows they're like "YAASSSS" there are hardwoods under the carpet! But in my experience, it's not much cheaper to refinish existing hardwoods as opposed to installing new hardwoods and then finishing. I mean, there's some savings but I wouldn't call it exponential.

I think it was about half the cost to have them refinished vs. having new floors installed (we had about 1100sf done in the new house).  Plus, the environmental cost of refinishing is much lower. 


But yes, if you're looking at two houses and one has all carpet over plywood and one has wood floors that need to be refinished, having to install new wood floors shouldn't be a dealbreaker, financially.