Sorry, this is BS.
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I think the cost of all remodeling has gone up exponentially since Covid. Like weddings, what you could do before Covid and what you can do after has changed.
I guess I could look at it as a percentage of your home.
If I live in a $400,000 house, itâs not prudent to put in a $100,000 kitchen or a $40,000 primary bath.
If my house is worth $1.5 mil or more, a $150,000 kitchen is 10% of the worth of the house. Easier to justify and probably will be expected in a house of that cost.
We got estimates for cabinets for our primary bath for our house in a LCOL area. Decided I wanted to go on an European vacation instead. It was about the same cost. For the price of the total remodel, I might have done a trip to Australia.
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Iâve hear a kitchen budget often 10-20% cost of houseâŠâŠ I might have heard that from someone trying to sell me a new kitchen though
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First itâs all based on where you live. Second itâs on what you can get and who gets it for you. What profit are they making off of you. Do you want to be hands on with decisions or hands off. All will make a difference of pricing. As an example we went to the quarry factory to pick out our granite for our kitchen. Their installers were so much cheaper then the contractors. We bought all our lighting from a major electrical warehouse type store where the electricians go to. We were given their discounts. I still get plumbing discounts at some places I currently go to.
Most donât want to go this far but it can save you a lot of money. Same goes with cabinets. Then all you need is someone to install.
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We learned quickly that the only way to control costs was to create a design which did not move walls, water lines, etc. You can get a pretty solid budget in front of you if youâre costing out âstuffâ- plus installation- cabinets, appliances, etc. You will get a TON of âthis is just an estimateâ once you are dealing with demo, construction, labor variables. I got the kitchen I needed (cabinets were literally falling off the walls, and H is very handy so handled regular repairs as they were needed) but not the âkitchen of my dreamsâ- but it came in at budget, not over.
The horror stories you hear about the escalating costs are usually around âwe moved the waste line and discovered XâŠâ (whatever X might be) or âwe knocked down a wall but then had to reinforce the foundationâ or god knows what.
Keep it simple- replace whatâs falling apart, upgrade the surfaces, invest in proper lighting so you arenât slicing tomatoes in the shadows, buy really nice drawer handles- youâll know what it will cost you before you sign any contracts. My two cents.
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UggggâŠthe thing is weâve got skills. DH and i have completely remodeled both of our first two houses. Every inchâŠincluding the roofs and the dirt. Back then we had no money but a whole lot of enthusiasm. Now I have some money, but not much enthusiasm. 
Iâve thought about not having a general contractor but we live in a small town and Iâm afraid that finding and coordinating subs on our own might be a nightmare. We havenât completely ruled out that option though.
The lower half of our house is a MIL apartment so if we did decide to skip a GC, we wouldnât be under the gun to get things done quickly since we can move down there while work is going on.
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I think it depends on how much your house is worth.
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Do you want a referral? My sister in West Seattle just had her kitchen remodeled. I donât think she paid nearly it that much.
Iâm in the Midwest, and our remodel was closer to 50k.
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I would welcome referrals but we are just under 2 hours north of thereâŠand thatâs with no Seattle traffic.
Glad to hear what your sister paid though!
I did a kitchen remodeling in a house with new appliances, new cabinets, etc. 12 years ago. It was 125k. I did put in a Viking chef stove, drawer refrigerator, but I didnât move windows, gas line or water pipe. In speaking with friends, 100k+ for kitchen remodeling is not out of whack.
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PLEASE tell me your appliances and cabinet pulls were gold plated!
If thatâs not the case, how big was that kitchen?
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We are midway through the kitchen planning process on the other side of the country. We have a wild range of known remodel costs from friends and colleagues. Absolutely, the sky is the limit and appliances and expanding the kitchen footprint into adjoining rooms adds up, but no way should you hit that average in a 9x15 galley kitchen.
It sounds like you have some appliances. We are in the same boat. Our dishwasher was replaced during CovidâŠtook over 7 months to get the Bosch unit we wanted. We had a stove die in 2022 when supply issues were still bizarre, so I started digging in on suppliers to find what I wanted in stock and at a deal. Mid to high end appliances like induction ranges have more room for negotiation. Figure out which features you want and start looking at prices. I ended up ordering from some place 7 states away that had the stove I wanted and happened to have a matching fridge that they gave me a deal on as a pair. My local big box and smaller appliance store were going to be $1500 to $2000 more on the two appliances and did not have them in stock and could not give me a delivery date.
Make sure to inspect everything that shows up or gets completed with in the timeframe - some are less that 48 hours in the fine print. The stove had a few small pin size spots where paint had not adhered. They first sent me a bottle of paint - like fingernail paint, but I looked up the part number and had them send me the front of the stove door. They would have installed it, but I told the repair man we would take care of it. We have honestly not installed it yet, we are waiting until after the remodel.
Some of the hidden costs include structural issues or unknown leaks. The weird one that caused me to stick a pin in this process last year was flooring. I had people coming to give me quotes for flooring and cabinets and did not plan on using a general contractor. The flooring became an issue for Lumber liquidator installers and similar install operations - they do not want to touch any flooring with layers older than mid 80s and then they also have issues with sub flooring - they said if they start demo and the subflooring does not meet their requirements they stop work. It was bizarre. We will need a general contractor for the flooring and the house has settled a little, so there is a range of unknowns we are dealing with there that could be $1,500 to $10,000, but will not know fully until we are into it more. I could not deal with that on top of work last year, we are just now coming back.
Good luck!
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Yes, thatâs roughly what we spent ~20 years ago in Silicon Valley with a relatively cheap contractor but high end materials that have lasted very well:
Oven/fridge-freezer/range/hood/dishwasher/trash compactor/sink/wine fridge (all stainless steel) were about $20K
Custom maple cabinets about $25K
Granite countertops (cut from slab) about $12K
Oak floors about $8K
Then labor, tile, painting, lighting, etc about $30K
I imagine all those costs have gone up 50-100% since then (fridge-freezer list price alone is now over $12K, so we will hopefully never need to replace it).
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I donât think $150k is average.
We spent a lot in our 2021 kitchen remodel though. We have a 1960s California ranch and the original owners remodeled âŠin the early 1990s. Do I need to say more? We would have preferred the original wood cabinets.
Cooking is DHâs hobby. So we got a 36 inch range. I got a skylight, quartz countertops, a counter-depth fridge, moved a few walls, a door, added a sidebar area with a drink fridge and extra storage and added a pantry. #WorthIt.
The place we went cheap on is the floors. We got heavy duty tile from Home Depot for a few buck a square foot. It is beautiful, was inexpensive, and I donât die when the dog comes trotting in or DH wears his shoes on it.
If people really cook, I can see spending the money. The thing I donât get is when people make their kitchen beautiful and donât cook. Our kitchen is pretty, but it is also a workhorse.
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Prices have skyrocketed since covid. Weâve done major renovations on our house over the last five years and material and labor costs are crazy more expensive now than when we started.
If you are gutting a decent sized kitchen and starting from scratch, I think that price sounds about right. If you are working with an already good floor plan and just doing cosmetics (new cabinets/counters/backsplash/appliances) it will be much lower.
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I hate to say - in my neighborhood (not super fancy) in northeast, about $150k is what several neighbors paid to completely remodel their kitchens (involved taking out walls tho)âŠ
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I canât remember but our footprint and yard are small, just have a porch now so need everything.
We just signed a contract to refresh our kitchen. Keeping the floor and basic footprint, moving but keeping the lights. New cabinets, sink, counter, island, backsplash,paint. They had a few neat ideas that got axed when the estimate was more than we were comfortable spending; after three tries we settled on work that will be about $34K (which feels depressingly high to me) , depending on the cabinets we choose (not custom).
I wanted wallpaper but that will have to be something we do ourselves, ditto replacing a window and the hood. We saved up for most of this so I need to stay within budget since that cash is what we have to spend, period.
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We did that swap during COVID and are super happy with the decision. We are into cooking so my husband, in particular, was hesitant, but no regrets.
