Remodeling Cost for Small Apartment With Pics (Example)
I've gotten a lot of questions lately about rehab and renovation costs. I think it's very tough for new people to understand the real cost of renovating an apartment, house or building. I also see a lot of posts from wholesalers where there rehab cost is way underestimated (of course). I just finished a quick rehab of an apartment in one of my buildings and I thought it would be of interest to see my actual costs.
A few things to note:
- I had two of my own employees who know construction do the work. I pay each one $27/hour. If you hire a handyman in the bay area you will probably pay $35-50/hr depending on skill level and the trade involved.
- This work was done in Richmond, CA. I think the pricing should be approximately the same around the rest of the Bay Area. Perhaps it would be a little higher in the South Bay or Peninsula.
- I wasn't aiming for a high-end look, but I also feel that if I'm already putting in the effort then I might as well put in decent materials and invest in doing it right.
- This apartment is pretty small, 500 square feet. It was a 1-bedroom apartment with a weird living room space that didn't feel functional. I turned it into a 2-bedroom apartment that now does not have a living room.
- This renovation took 2.5 weeks for two guys
Scope of Work
- Demo and gut entire kitchen, gut one bedroom, and partial gut of bathroom
- Build new closet and frame out a wall to create a bedroom
- Install new laminate flooring in two bedrooms
- Install new subpanel and new electrical for entire apartment
- New (and some reused) cabinets
- New quartz countertop
- New (but bought used) 24" range
- New microwave and fridge (new fridge not shown in photos)
- New toilet, medicine cabinet and vanity light in bathroom
- New built-in kitchen table and chairs
Cost of Work (approximately)
- Labor $6,500
- Cabinets $2,000 - I bought some nice, used Ikea cabinets from Craigslist for a previous job and I had some left over. I decided to use the left-over cabinets for this job. They are higher-end then necessary for this apartment. The extra cabinets I needed in order to complete the design ended up costing $2,000. I would say this was the biggest splurge for this project. It was a pain in the arse to run to Ikea and figure out how to piece together
- New Laminate wood flooring - $.089/square foot.$300
- Used 24” oven and apartment size fridge.$900
- Microwave, Sink, faucet, sink hardware $600
- Quartz Countertop (one 10 foot slab)$300
- Electrical Materials: wire, receptacles, lights, etc..$400
- Baseboard (had it left over from another job so $0, but would have cost around $100)
- New interior door, wood studs, drywall, mud $300
- Paint $100
- Dump Fees $500
- Misc stuff I’m probably forgetting $500
TOTAL COST $12,500
Rehab cost per square foot = $25