What should I expect to pay for a home remodel in Berkeley?

Hi there, 

I know this is a very broad question but i'd love to hear what one could expect to pay for a home renovation. 2500 sq ft. Not a full gut, but we are updating most of the home.

Taking down a couple interior walls, new staircase, new floors throughout, finishing basement (it's already partially finished), a couple new windows, 4 bathrooms all being updated (even slightly), and new counters in kitchen. Seems huge in scope now that I write that all out, and I have my ideas of what this will cost, but would love to hear from you. Already working with a great architect, but would also love rec's for GCs and interior designers you have loved as well. Thank you! 

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My guess is this will be ~$400K-$500K - but this could be off by 50% depending on the details which can greatly impact the cost (so between $200-$800K.) A great architect should be able to refer you to contractors and work with your budget. We are doing a home remodel now - and as you can expect, it is more expensive and will take more time that you anticipate at the beginning (and the pandemic has made that worse). Plan on exceeding the initial quote from your GC by ~20%.

As a homeowner that's done full gut renos, it's very hard to say without knowing a LOT more. You really need to get a few GC's to come in and give you estimates. For what it's worth, I used Home Healing Renovations as our GC (https://www.homehealingrenovations.com/). I wouldn't say they were cheap, but they were good quality and not the most expensive.

As a very rough ballpark, I would expect well above a hundred thousand, likely multiple hundreds of thousands. So much depends on existing conditions and scope of work.

Expect to spend $100k to $200k for a no frills remodel.  More depending on what you have in mind for the kitchens.  There is an enormous crafts labor shortage right now...  Best of luck finding someone with the skills and availability   And since you are in Berkeley and have a basement you plan on finishing it will affect your property taxes.  The city is very creative when calculating taxes for attics and basements.

I think you could be looking at anywhere from 200-400k. 

Are the walls structural? Is their a current staircase? 

Bathrooms and kitchens are notoriously expensive due to possibly touching electrical and water, demolition, fixtures, toilet, bath, tile, and maybe needing to deal with asbestos abatement and mold. 

Based on a bunch of work we did 1-2 years ago, and given that the costs of labor and wood have gone up considerably since then, I'd say you're probably looking at $100 to $200k, though probably on the higher end of that range. Just think about the number of trades involved: carpenter, painter, electrician, hardwood floor folks, dry wallers, tilers for bathroom, plumbers for bathroom, potentially a specialist to install windows. Interested to hear what your actual costs end up being. : )

Haha yes, broad question indeed!  I hate answering without enough details but I'll try anyways since it might be helpful:

 First, inflation is real - remodeling / construction is in HIGH demand right now and with that type of competition (from the client population side) comes inflated prices.  Couple that with supply chain issues due to COVID and what not, I'd say you can expect to pay a 20% premium easily.  For lumber last year, it was a 300-400% premium (I know, ouch!).

  1. Permits will easily cost you $2-3K for the main permit, and then a percentage of the whole remodeling project cost (prepare to pay $10k for a permit for a $200K remodeling project)
  2. Demo easily can cost $10-15k for the whole project - you also need to pay about $8k in dumping costs for proper disposal of demo material.
  3. Make sure if you're demo-ing walls, they are not load bearing!!! if you do, you just added ~$5k or more to your project (depending on situation).  Also, hope that your electrical is already up to date because if it isn't and you open a wall and discover it doesn't comply to code, well you just added that cost to your project (in the range of thousands of dollars) - as they say, finders keepers.  You will need to pass inspection and inspectors won't pass you otherwise.
  4. New staircases easily can cost $15-20k (folks hate doing this cause it's super labor intensive), not including the hardwood / flooring on top of each step.
  5. Flooring - this cost runs wide, are you doing hardwood floors?  Luxury vinyl plank?  Laminate?  Labor would be prob around a couple thousand max if you are doing the whole house....but the materials can vary....$6 per sq ft hard wood easily turns into $15k....and that's just the materials....
  6. Can't speak to finishing a basement - sorry
  7. Windows - yikes, are you looking for good ones (Milgard, maybe $10-15k) or stellar ones (marvin special ones, double hung)?  high end ones easily can cost $50k...are you looking for sliders (cheapest), casement (more expensive), double hung (even more expensive)?  this you will need to be more specific on.
  8. 4 bathrooms (!!!) - hahah you're big balling here with 4 bathrooms, your finishes will dictate most of your cost.  Do you have expensive tastes?  are you the $1 sq ft for tile type of person or $5 sq ft type of customer?  High end designer cabinets ($$$ ding ding), are you ok with $50 bathroom faucets?  Or are your tastes more along the lines of $500 black trendy faucets.  If you are looking for a more frugal bathroom remodel (nice looking and functional but doesn't produce "oooos and ahhhs") then typically you can get away with probably $20-25k per bathroom, $15k if you really pinch costs and do all 4 bathrooms with the same materials.  This assumes you don't need to replumb anything.
  9. New countertops in kitchen - unless you're looking for Italian marble or something exotic, quartz is really popular right now. Depends on size of your kitchen and if you have an island, the material cost could be $5-10k, depending on if you skip tile backsplash for a full sheet of quartz or not.  Tiling is laborious, so full sheet of quartz as a backsplash saves on labor costs.  But tiles backsplash is much cheaper material cost wise.

ran out of space - pm me for more if you're interested!  We just finished a large project so happy to share learnings.

For rooms where all you are doing is replacing flooring and repainting, I would budget ~$20 per square foot.

Anywhere where you’re doing more than that outside of a bathroom or kitchen, budget $250 per square foot.

For any bathroom or kitchen work beyond replacing plumbing fixtures and painting, budget $250 per square foot plus materials (tile, countertops, plumbing fixtures, appliances, cabinets, etc). The materials cost varies so much, that it’s hard to say what that will be.

If you use the above price per square foot in each area of the home, that will be the floor - likely the lowest price you can get it done for. It’s easy to spend more.

You’re probably easily in the $300k+ range unless your plans are more minimal than the description sounds.