Our home is past due for a remodel so one of my goals for this year is to get that process rolling. I did some googling last night and was astonished by estimates for just kitchen remodels in our area (north of Seattle), which indicated $150K for the average kitchen remodel. I am wondering if what I read could really be accurate and curious about your post-Covid remodel costs.
We have a large house at the top of a hill with a great view of the water and Olympic mountains. Right now our plan is to focus primarily on the main floor which is 2000 square feet. Though it’s becoming increasingly clear this is going to be our forever home, we do need to keep in mind the fact that our house could be worth a lot more money if updated with finishes to match the potential of the neighborhood. I might describe the higher end homes here as upscale but not definitely not luxury.
We need a new kitchen (9 x 15 galley style), master bath, flooring, fireplace facade and mantel, six new windows, and new moldings.
What did your recent remodel cost? Am I really going to have to spend north of $100K on my kitchen?
Are you thinking about ripping out the cabinets or can you simply reface them? In our house, all new cabinets would have been 3x the price of refacing.
That seems like a lot - especially for a galley style kitchen. I did mine 10 years ago and it was about $70k - but that was a gut remodel (down to the studs) and involved moving windows, doors and taking out a staircase and chimney. My sister did hers about 2 years ago and it was about $50k - a much smaller kitchen to be sure, but with very nice finishes and GE cafe appliances (which took months to get due to covid). If you keep the same layout it will be cheaper - cabinets are one of the biggest expense items but that is somewhat controllable as they come in all grades. Good luck. I’m in MA so an expensive part of the country.
We cheaper out and had our kitchen cabinets painted. They are solid wood. That really spruced up the kitchen. But ours was actually a good layout to begin with…and we had new counters done already.
I want to redo the two upstairs bathrooms. I think that’s going to be pricey.
All new Miele appliances (D/W, steam oven, regular oven, gas cooktop, warming drawer, and over the cooktop hood): $15k. My husband and I did the installation.
New Cambria Berwyn countertops: $18k (we got a 10% Costco card rebate). We have a large countertop surface…
Cabinet refacing: $22k. Know of a great local co that does work in the greater Seattle area.
There’s such a variation in kitchen remodels. For example, we remodeled three kitchens in rental condos. Did most of the work ourselves. New flooring, some appliances, painted cabinets, backsplash and got quartz countertops installed. I’d guess about 5-7K each condo.
And we entirely remodeled our own kitchen. Subzero refrigerator/freezer, high end range, spent 25K on appliances alone. Knocked down walls, installed new cabinets, flooring and windows, added a fireplace, completely changed everything from two small enclosed rooms into a larger, Italian design kitchen. My husband did much of the work, but I’d say it cost 150K. Reasonable contractor, Seattle suburbs.
So much depends upon what you’re doing. Do you want a 1K range, or a 10K one? New high end cabinets, or repaint what you have?
In our case, I was very unhappy with what we had in the house we bought. The dual ovens were rusted, the cooktop had a crappy downdraft that did not work (but there was a duct for an overhead hood), the countertop was limestone (!!! with red wine stains) that was so porous it would develop stains when you simply looked at it, and the painted cabinets were peeling because the DIY owners used regular house paint on the beautiful cherry - sigh(they must’ve used up the leftover paint from the mouldings, because every piece of millwork and the walls were painted the same color). We did keep the Subzero fridge that survived 3 prior owners.
Ugh, we just got drawings for our kitchen, complete gut including removing the wall between the kitchen and dining room, keeping the current kitchen set up but adding a big custom island and a built in custom seating by the larger bay window. Laters of flooring, probably need Togo over beamed ceiling in dining room so that ceiling is the same house, new wood oak flooring. House is over 100 years old so we need to see what’s behind these walls. I’m hoping for under $100,000 (NJ). Also need a deck, got an estimate for $45,000 for wood, ugh. Planned this a few years ago, then Covid, supply chain, having cash in our bank account can’t be helping our FA.
And if you want the low end, we did ours in 2016. A friend who flips houses let us use his guys. We got everything new except the flooring. We have a sizeable kitchen with 10.5 foot ceiling and double stacked cabinets throughout. It cost $15K.
Our most expensive stainless steel appliance was the refrig. We paid $1000 at Lowe’s. We don’t get the cheapest thing they have, but a couple of steps up. I hadn’t heard of the high end appliances until I came to this board.
But we love it! And it’s in line with what you’d find in houses in our area.
Ours was a new build, not a remodel, but just as another point of reference the walnut cabinets and quartzite counters for the kitchen and bar were approximately $100K. We could have reduced the cost if we’d chosen maple or pecan for the cabinets and granite for the counters.
I refused to use quartz because of the silicosis health risks and didn’t want to worry about H damaging marble as he did in a previous home. We did use a dark leathered Brazilian granite in another area of the house and I’ve been very pleased with how it’s withstood H’s lack of care.
Labor costs may be the biggest shock when you get estimates.
We remodeled our relatively small kitchen 10 years ago. We were able to increase cabinet space and maximize the area within the “u,” but increasing the kitchen area by moving outside of the actual kitchen space would have added more cost than we felt comfortable taking on. All in, I think it was $35,000 (removing/replacing cabinets, new flooring, new appliances, new sink, new Cambria countertops, new cabinet in eating area). The pictures were taken right after the remodel was completed … I put up cellular blinds, it’s been painted a different color in the past couple years and my counters are NEVER this clear.
Redoing bathrooms are $20-30k even for basic remodeling. We did two small bathrooms, and my brother did a lot of the work for us to help us save money.
$150k just for a kitchen remodel seems outrageous - recently completed a remodel of our Ds condo, new appliances (including adding a dishwasher), flooring, new countertops (wood & quartz), backsplash, sink, added a pantry, paint and refacing the cabinets and it was all done under $60k - a gut bathroom - removing tub, new shower, vanity, flooring, paint and all new plumbing, all done under $25k.
The worst part was getting people (contractors) to commit once they learned we insisted on permits (condo rules). Once we finally got our people in place it went pretty smoothly. But that process took over 6 months. The reno itself almost 5 months. Exhausting. For comparison it is in Los Angeles.
