Your New Mid-Range Remodel

I was bombarded with averages on Sunday. First the Tribune. Then the January Realtor magazine. A new year must make us itch for numbers to compare and contrast, and these two publications felt like scratching. The topic of the day that required much deliberation and number crunching was the tired discussion over remodeling costs and the “return” on such an investment. Thousands of trees have been needlessly slaughtered, and untold amounts of bandwidth wasted on this pointless exercise. Why is it pointless? For several reasons, but the first one will be plenty to prove how futile this academic procedure really is.

You’ve seen these cost estimates before, even if you didn’t endure yesterday’s Tribune or the January edition of Realtor magazine (it’s a bore), you know the sort of figures I’m talking about. The remodeling cost figures, much like the fictionalized figures they dream up on HGTV’s remodeling shows, just don’t make much sense in the real world. According to the survey by some organization called “Hometech”, the average cost of a front steel entry door per the study is $1169. Not bad, but I have a quick word of advice for anyone pondering the replacement of an entry door. Don’t buy a steel one. Buy a solid wood one from Home Depot or your local lumber yard. It’ll be made out of Fir, and it will take a stain beautifully. It will weather, sure, but it will look classic and cool all at the same time. The cost for a 36″ Fir door with nine individual window panes? $214. Or $169, depending on where you shop. Either way, it’s a far cry from $1169, and your door will look better too. Particularly if the door leads guests into your Lake Geneva vacation home.

Consider the cost of a midrange kitchen remodeling project in Chicago according to Remodeling magazine (and featured on the front page of the Tribune real estate section) is $67,332. Really. I outlined how much my REO kitchen remodel cost last year, and for new kitchen cabinets (painted maple), Bosch appliances (a far cry from high end, but not exactly Hot Point), granite counters, and hardwood floors, I spent around $14,000. My mother just finished a glorious remodel of her very large lakefront kitchen, and she spent quite a bit. $17k on cabinets. $15k on Viking professional appliances $5k on granite counters, $1500 on beautiful lights and hardware from Restoration Hardware, three $450 Kohler faucets, and paint. The grand total for this kitchen remodel? Right around $42,000, including labor. But the genius pencil pushers at Remodeling magazine would have you know that my kitchen and my mothers are both woefully below average, even though both of the kitchens turned out quite fabulous for their respective budgets.

The misplaced numbers don’t stop with outrageous over-estimates for kitchens, as bathrooms are classic money wasters in these studies as well. HGTV, ever hellbent on destroying the real estate profession (courtesy of Ms. Rinomato), aired a show on Sunday where a goofy designer guy reviews bathroom remodeling projects and arbitrarily decides how much of the bathroom’s cost the homeowners will recoup once they sell. Bathrooms were costing $50,000 and $60,000, and these weren’t overtly fancy baths by any stretch of the imagination. The fictional return on their very real investments were roughly $10k below their actual costs, which makes even less sense to me. I’m pretty confident in saying if anyone puts $55k into a bathroom remodel, the home darn well better be worth in excess of $750k or there’s going to be very little in terms of capital recovery. I realize bathrooms can eat up huge amounts of money, but remember we’re talking about “normal” renovations here, not North Shore mansion renovations.

I can’t even get into the other numbers, or I very well might explode from an uncomfortable mix of anger and disbelief. According to the folks at Hometech, the average roof replacement for an average house in the US is $19,731. Where are all these people with these roofs? Is the entire country housed in 5,000 square foot ranch homes? A little practical application on the roofing numbers… I have bids to replace the roof on my REO house that range from $5500 to $7800, and this house is quite average by most standards, and the roof would be a dimensional shingle, not a three tab apartment style one. To further put the ethereal number into context, the cost to do the cedar shake roof at my last house, with copper flashing and valleys, was around $19k. The house was 3200 square feet with a tricky 12/12 roof that was rife with gables and chimneys. Are all these average homes putting cedar shake roofs on?

If you want one renovation tip from this renovation savvy Realtor, just remember this. Kitchen cabinets are the biggest waste of money in any kitchen remodel. I encourage people to put quality counters into any renovation they do, whether it’s a $150k cottage or a $2MM lakefront house, but kitchen cabinets can be the biggest unnecessary drain on a renovation budget. I’m a huge fan of very high end kitchen cabinets, and lines like Wood Mode and Plato are indeed warranted in kitchens for very expensive homes. Even as I write that, I have this feeling that I don’t really mean it. Omega cabinetry has several lines that are high end and come in at a fraction of the price of the other two lines, yet still provide a quality option for those looking for a name brand impact. Lesser known cabinet lines, like the kind supplied by Lowes, Home Depot, and your neighborhood lumber yard, can be had at prices that might be as low as $5k for a typical 10×10 kitchen, up to a robust, but still cheap, $15k for the same kitchen. Either way, if cabinet costs are kept down, more can be spent on counters, and even more spent on the greatest use of money in any kitchen, the appliances. I’d rather see someone put in $5k Home Depot cabinetry and a $5k Viking range, than I would see someone spend $10k on fancier cabinetry and $2k on a Kenmore range. Nothing against Sears, just some practical advice.

Speaking of remodeling, if you’ve never remodeled an old cottage at Lake Geneva, you just don’t know what you’re missing. The lavish finishes that you might consider in your primary home need not make the trip north with you. A nice fir door for around $200, some refinished floors, and a white painted kitchen with carrera marble tops is cottage perfection. Throw in a higher end range and refrigerator, and no one will ever notice that you simply painted the old cabinets and made a trip to the Restoration Hardware outlet for some cabinet pulls. Cottage style is universal, and fortunately, a new roof on your Lake Geneva cottage won’t run you $19k, no matter what Hometech says.