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help me plan a renovation budget
We are thinking of starting to plan on redoing our basement. I found a cheap and in great condition sectional couch that is prompting us to do this.
We will not need any new furniture, just carpet, paint, and new drywall. the biggest project is going to be to take down the fake brick panels aka "the frick" and put in regular walls. We will do some built in shelving along one wall (ikea shelves!)
i have a lot of ballparlk figures in my head but i don't even know where to begin in all of this. we tend to get grand plans of things, figure out we can't really afford it and step away from said plans (this is an ongoing theme with us).
most of this will be DIY, as DH is super handy and can plan/build things...but i am guessing if we want to move lights or install lights we might need an electrician.
curious how you brilliant nestie that have done renovations have tackled this.
(bonus is that 30 of you have been to my house)
Re: help me plan a renovation budget
It's not that big, and if W can do a lot of it himself - you'll save a ton there.
I don't have an itemized list of how much all this will cost - but for a ballpark figure, i'm going to go with $7,000. lol
We make the rockin' world go 'round.
ha...$7K is what everything seems to cost!
i think i am going to try to break this down into chunks (carpet, lighting, "walls) and go from there....those a are the big ticket items, everything else can be done at a slower place.
We have a completely unfinished area in our basement that is probably 2/3 the size of your basement - cement floors, studs, etc. DH seems to think that we can put up drywall on the walls/ceiling, lay a subfloor, and have someone come in and do the carpet and an overhead light/a couple of outlets, and a door, for about $2500-3000.
Of course we thought that the project that we just completed would cost about $400, and we have almost doubled that #, so don't take advice from me....
I was going to guess $2500-3000 if you're just putting up drywall, painting it, and putting in carpet. This is assuming that's all DIY.
I think I'd just start with an itemized spread sheet and start shopping the real costs.
Like, Carpet : $XX, Drywall and supplies: $XX.
Probably sit in your basement and look around and just start writing down everything you want to do and then look up prices.
This is coming from someone that has never actually "budgeted" a renovation, though! When we've done it ourselves we just do whatever as inexpensively as we can. If we hire out, we just assume the cost of the contract plus $300 or so for extras (paint, decor).
I have seen DIY bloggers do similar projects in the $3000 range. To give you some insight into the electrician cost, we had an electrician come out and install three ceiling fans and ti was about $800 (there were no ceiling light fixtures in each of the bedrooms).
Is your basement fully dry? If it isn't I would tile and then buy an large area rug. More than one friend has had issues with wall to wall carpeting in their townhouse basement....
We did a room in our basement (so not a full basement), but it included:
drywall - paid a contractor about $1200-$1500 to do it and he also did a couple of other small things (installed ceiling fans upstairs). It took about two days. DH could have DIYed it, but I was 7 months pregnant and insisted that we just get it done.
electric - we installed 3 new outlets, two overhead lights, and then another overhead outlet in the main part of the basement. I believe it was about $250 for the visit, but don't remember exactly.
engineered bamboo flooring - $600-$800 or so for the flooring and supplies (Lowes) and then lots and lots of our time to lay it. I will say that I love the floor so much and having helped install it makes it even better.
paint - $25
furniture - Ikea desks - $100 and then everything else we already owned.
I know we did it all for under $3000 total, and I want to say it was even under $2500, so my numbers might be off a bit. This is just one room - about 10x12 - though.
Pictures are on facebook of the before and after, I believe.
yeah we didn't budget the kitchen bench project....just DIY'ed it and started buying supplies.. that has been our only real project to as our house was in tip-top shape when we bought it. so i am hoping to do this one a little better.
very useful!!! Thanks
and to PP....we have had zero water issues in the basement and we are hoping for no surprises when we pick up the carpet of random water stains. it is colder down there so we are leaning toward carpet for some insulation b/c i think we tile it woudl just be too cold.
We were worried that the bamboo would be too cold, but it's actually fine. We did a double layer of the underlayment, I think. And we have an area rug on top of it that we repurposed from our old office. It's actually one of my favorite rooms in the house.
I forgot one other project - we needed to create a cover for the fuse box, so we made a framed chalkboard using plywood, chalkboard paint and molding. That probably added about $25 to the reno :-)
We are actually just finishing up a basement renovation at our house. It is approx 22x17 of finished space. My husband is in the construction business, so we bought all of our own construction materials from building suppliers. But we hired contractors to do all of the work so it would only take 2 weeks instead of 2 years.
We also had a lot of water issues that we solved, which increased some other costs because we had to do a few more things that we weren't planning to do after we put our french drain system in.
Here are approx of our supply costs:
Carpet - a cheap, off the roll loop carpet from HD - $1000 installed - includes 13 steps
Building supplies - drywall, all new studs, joint compound, other drywall supplies, new ceiling grid and ceiling tiles (it's a drop ceiling), new baseboard and door trim - $1800
Paint - including primer, wall paint, trim/door paint, ceiling paint (for a small area with drywall) - $150
Lighting - 16 5" recessed lights with the typical trim - $250.
Our labor costs are not typical, so I won't share those... My husband did say that typically an electrician will charge around $100 per recessed light for install (including the light).