How much am I looking at to remodel an older home?
We lived with my grandfather for a while. It was a nice home and since I’m still living in the area (may even move back) I was thinking of remodeling it.
It’s a medium size house on pillars. It needs to be leveled and secured (not sure what the actual terms are). It has a master bedroom and 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. I living and dining area, a den area, and the kitchen.
It probably has some rotten wood, so that would have to be replaced also, along with probably putting in new flooring and most dry wall. The electricity would need to be rewired also. And the plumbing would have to be redone too. We had thought of putting in central air and heating, but not sure if it’s possible in this house, and not sure how if it would be reasonable.
We could probably do some of the work ourselves, such as the dry wall, wiring the cable, phone, and internet, and painting.
I know doing such a thing online is not going to be accurate. I just want to know if I’m looking at $20k or $60k. It is in kind of an older neighborhood with some rundown houses. I don’t want to put the fancy stuff in, but I do want to do some extensive repairs.
Sorry, located in South Texas. And that sounds like a lot. I guess I can also maybe run the plumbing and electric wires, but I don’t have much experience in plumbing…and I doubt an electrician would want to be called in just to plug in the wires to the box. That one, I don’t think I want to tackle.
Tagged with: Electricity • Flooring • Stuff
Filed under: Decorating & Remodeling
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Labor is the most expensive. The more work you can do yourself, the better. Also, there are “home center” thrift stores in some cities.
You left out the most important thing, where are you located. I would guess you hit the nail on the head, pretty close. 20K plus 60K equal 80, and that is getting in the ball park.
Its hard to say really, I just re-did my 130 year old house and it cost just over 20,000. Now keep in mind I did 90% of the work myself along with my father in law. Between the two of us we had all the tools, and he had a lot of know how. Of that 20,000 about 10,000 of it went to pay contractors for work we didnt do ourselves and that was, brick work, floors, custom entryway door and bay window.Keep in mind my house is historical and the custom windows had to be made of solid wood, they are made of oak, the window alone was 3,000, door was 2,000, floors were 3,000(hardwood for the entire house), and just under 2,000 for the brickwork I needed done inside and out.
I broke it down like that to show you how expensive contractrors are.I spent the same amount hiring 4 contractors to do work that it cost me to do the rest of the house myself. The work we did was replace all drywall, replaced studs where needed, remodeled bathroom, remodeled kitchen, new roof, new skylight, new plumbing, new electrical. I did have an unfair advantage over most, my father in law did refinish/finish wood for a living so I was able to salvage the original wood and all wood has a custom finish on it including the stairs. Now I broke it down and sorry its so long but I just wanted to show that had I not done this work myself it would have cost well over 100,000, maybe even 150,000 to hire contractors to do this work for me, my father in law told me he would have quoted 10,000 alone for the work we did on restoring the stair case, and it would have cost 10,000 to finish the trim. He also finished the custom built doors and window.
Also keep in mind that you must be patient, we figured it would take 3-5 months to complete and it took a year and a half, in those old houses the walls hind a lot of secrets, but you can do it yourself, good luck.
keep in mind that a lot of the work you are talking about will need to be inspected and will require permits. its been my experience that having a pro do a lot of the work (ie electrical and plumbing) will save money and headache in the long run. i am currently renovating (total ground up reno) and old church into my home. didn’t have any structural issues to deal with but in the end it will cost in the neighborhood of 80 grand. the big thing to keep in mind is this. its not the problems you know about that get you, its the ones you don’t. and trust me on this (really), there will be problems that need fixing that are hiding behind those walls.