Tips For Calculating The Cost Of A Remodel Or Addition

By Author: Jason Delmar
Total Articles: 335
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One of the biggest mistakes that homeowners make when they are getting ready to do a remodel, renovation, or addition is under estimate the cost. Most people don't know exactly how to calculate the cost, so their estimates are usually nowhere close to what they end up spending.

The overall cost of your project will come down to several factors- materials used, who is doing the work, scale and scope of the project, and how much sweat equity you are willing to invest. If you choose to hire someone to manage the entire project and you decide to not put in any sweat equity, then you can easily spend four times as much as a homeowner who gets a little dirty, tolerates some inconveniences that are a part of a remodeling project, and does some of the work.

Most people try to calculate their anticipated costs by using a cost per square foot pricing model. There are several industry sources that will provide ranges of cost for each aspect of the project. This is the most common way to do a quick estimate. It simply assigns a cost per square foot of area that will be remodeled. To calculate your own estimate, determine ...
... the square footage of the area that will be built new or that will be substantially changed and multiple that by the industry benchmark, which can vary from $100 to $700 per square foot.

For example, if you want to add a 150-square-foot bedroom at the end of a hall by building an addition into the backyard and substantially remodel an existing 150-square-foot bedroom and a 50-square-foot bathroom, the total area would be 350 (150+150+50) square feet. Then take 350 and multiply it by the range of possible costs per square foot, $100 to $700, and you get an estimate for this remodel of between $35,000 and $245,000. As you start trying to calculate the cost a large addition, this wide variance in cost can leave a huge window of what you could expect to spend. While $700 per square foot is unusual and it is unlikely you could spend that, $100 per square foot is unrealistically low unless you make great efforts to minimize the cost.

With a general idea of the rooms that you want to remodel as noted above, you should be able to get an estimate of cost from a contractor or an architect. They will likely use a cost per square foot to calculate an estimate, but they will not use a range as broad as $100 to $700. Instead, these professionals should estimate using an average that is based on their experience from similar projects in the area where you live and your requirements on the type and quality of materials to be used. To ensure the quote from the contractor is accurate you need to give the complete information about your project. And when you get the quote you need to compare it to other quotes from other contractors.

While this estimate will be much more accurate than an estimate strictly based on the square footage, you will not have the ability to change your preferences and get a new estimate very easily from a contractor or architect. When drawing up an agreement with the contractor, it is important to put wording in there that allows for changes and spells out what the cost would be for any changes.
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