Need help
We’re close to buying a brownstone (and have been looking for a LOONG time) – the place we like is 4000 sq ft and needs alot of work – new electricity, plumbing, new kitchen, the floors have to be fixed up. Most of our money will go into the downpayment of the house. Anyone have…
We’re close to buying a brownstone (and have been looking for a LOONG time) – the place we like is 4000 sq ft and needs alot of work – new electricity, plumbing, new kitchen, the floors have to be fixed up. Most of our money will go into the downpayment of the house. Anyone have any idea as to how to estimate the cost of renovation. We’ve heard from a low of 200K to 800K – we’re looking for nice but not spectacular.
listen newbrook my name is Dan and I am a licensed contractor I have been doing this for over 20 years if you like give me a call and we can dicuss it further I can be reached at 718-919-7794 or 646-726-0475.
Most of the square foot prices quoted here are for gut renovations. You may not need a gut renovation. Just because a place is old does not mean it needs to be gutted. Just because it may need a new kitchen does not mean the whole place has to be gutted. In fact, if it is old and the look of the place appeals to you, you may not want to gut it.
Depending on the skill of those you hire, gutting a place may make it end up looking like a poor quality new construction condo. Also, it’s just not necessary unless the plaster all crumbles to bits when you touch it or the place is soaked in water damage from no roof for years.
If you want to completely remake a house and you want to gut something, you may want to look into buying a shell.
As was stated above, there are a lot of postings on this topic in the archives. For our decent but not fancy renovation we have found the $100-150/sq ft figure to be a good rough guide.
Good luck.
You can completely rewire a three story house plus basement to code for $15,000 plus $2,000 for the plastering. I just had it done by WCK, who I highly recommend. Took three weeks. The idea that you need to gut the house and re-sheetrock all the walls is completely ridiculous.
As for the plumbing, what exactly needs to be done? If it ain’t leaking and ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Also the floors — do you mean they are hardwood and need to be refinished? Depending on the condition, figure $1 to $2 per square foot to refinish.
Is there a lot of junk you need to rip out? Demo and trash removal costs.
Re new kitchen, I have heard anything from $7,000 (small Ikea you install yourself) to $30,000 or $50,000 (large, granite, semi-custom cabinets) to sky is the limit.
I budget jobs all the time.
Develop a detailed Scope of Work.
Provide line item numbers for everything on that Scope.
Create a subtotal.
Add 21% to cover General Conditions, Profit, and Overhead.
Include Professional fees.
Add everthing together and multiply by 1.2 to allow for a 20% contingency.
Call me if you would like help. Ed Kopel Architects, PC
All of my numbers are based on personal experience from renovations on either my building or one of the others my family owns.
As I mentioned, $5k is for a basic kitchen with generic cabinets and appliances and no floor/plumbing/electrical/wall work to be done. I did say a kitchen can be $50k (hell, I’ve seen the bills for a $250k kitchen).
I renovated my kitchen of $5k. I can be done.
I was trying to throw out low end numbers, to prove that even at the lowest end $200k goes quick. Personally I would probably budget closer to $500k for a true gut of a 4,000 sqf building.
Hell, the facade could be $100k (or more) alone and I wouldn’t be surprised if it needed major work too.
We recently went through the same thing in trying to figure out a budget for a brownstone redo of a similar size. There are a lot of threads covering this topic in the Forum. Based on conversations with several architects on our deal, I would say that the 150k per floor number that seems to be a standard response was in the ballpark. That assumed a third party did everything, but a couple of the firms thought that would be a very basic renovation for that price.
$300K minimum, and count on finding one or two expensive surprises that need addressing. Some of Christopher’s numbers are way low ($5K for a kitchen? Seriously?)
If you plan to do a lot of finishing work like painting yourself, you can save here and there, but the basic electric, plumbing, carpentry, tile work, etc. is best left to the pros. Also, you should get a lot of quotes, and are likely better off not going with the low bid, especially if it is an outlier.
That is very useful. Thanks for the information.