For comparison: we also live in a >100 year old home. In the last 6 months we renovated 2 bathrooms ourselves. We demolished everything down to the studs and replaced all electrical and plumbing back to the entry into the house. We used high end finishes and fixtures. Our out of pocket cost for materials was $28K. We are lucky in that both DH and I have design degrees and DH grew up building houses so we did not need to higher anyone for the projects. The trade off is that the projects took up all of our free time for 6 months and at times progress was very slow. |
I'm also in Arlington and really want to add a front porch to our house! This seems like a great price to me. How was it dealing with the county? I'm a little concerned about our setbacks (we are on a corner lot). |
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Since the start of the pandemic:
Installed quartz countertops in kitchen 9k Redid our masterbath ourselves- 7k in materials Replaced all cabinet doors with solid cherry slab door - 7k Replaced wood stair balusters with solid wrought iron ones and refinished the stairs ourselves - 1k Repainted whole house (no trims) two coats, three floors, total 4000 sqft- 9400 Installed new fans throughout the house - 1 k Ordered some new furniture pieces for master bedroom and living room 9k |
We are doing a whole house renovation and addition to a 1930s colonial in NW. $950K
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what size addition,how many floors, etc? |
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Thank you for this thread. It's made me feel better about the cost of my improvements. I'm in PG County
Spring-summer 2020 - painted living, dining, kitchen, upstairs common area and 3 bedrooms. Cost was a few hundred for paint and supplies. I think the labor I put into this helped me cope a bit with COVID shutdowns. Summer 2021 - Converted a small (10x20) detached garage into a gym. This cost about almost $9,000 for labor and materials and that included the cost of bringing electricity (lots of digging) into the space, getting the walls and ceiling insulated and drywalled. I waterproofed the concrete foundation and patched up the concrete floor just enough to put rubber mats on top and I also painted. As someone who works out religiously, it was absolutely worth it. Currently - I'm having the main bathroom renovated (slightly bigger than standard size and with high ceilings). It's a complete gut. Labor is $15,000, building materials is prob going to be about $4000 by the end. Tile and fixtures were about $5000 (kind of high end). This included demo, reframing of the floor (to fix a crappy previous job), relocating all fixtures, and replacing old rusty main drain pipe. My next project is the basement, which I'll probably have to do piecemeal or do a lot of the finishing work myself to get within budget. |
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We have done a TON of home improvements since the beginning of COVID:
1) Turned small dining room into a pretty good size office for DH who was working from home 100% and now working from home 2-3 days a week. Put in full desk plus lots of cabinets and built two custom bookshelves - total cost $8000 2) Turned old formal living room into a large dining room with built in custom cabinets, marble serving top and a large built in wine fridge. Total cost around $10,000 plus a new $5000 dining room table 3) Redoing our master bathroom - total gut job down to the studs. Large bathroom 14' x 12' space. Total cost $45,000 |
| How long do you suggest waiting? I am looking to get new kitchen cabinets and our humid basement figured out. |
Digging out new basement space, expanding on first and second floor including new kitchen, fanmily room and mudroom, new hardwood through the whole house, master suite, rip and replace existing 2.5 bathrooms, and adding bathroom in attic. Major project but we just decided to do everything at once. |
| $10k for a new bluestone walkway and 10x20 patio |
| Just got our old wooden windows repaired in a rowhouse in an historic district. $175 a pop for 6 windows. Haven't paid him yet, but the thing is I can't open any of them. Which is sort of the reason I wanted them repaired? Sigh. |
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80 foot, 2 tier retaining wall with drainage and regrading 16k
Built in book shelves 2500 |
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25x23 sports court with basketball hoop - $18k
Replacement walkway and front steps - $15k Hoping for costs to come down for other projects on the next few months. |
This seems like a great price. Where are you and who did the work? |
| Getting estimates right now for full deck replacement with Trex or similar. ~500 square feet. Estimates are 40,000 to 52,000 so far. If we’d followed through two years ago, could have had it done for half that. |