Try-It-Out Tuesday: Finding the Real Cost of Your Dream Renovation
If you’ve ever tried to search for home decorating ideas, you’ve likely ended up on Houzz.com… and, three hours later, found yourself mulling not just new throw pillows for the sofa but a shinier set of lamps, a rug with a funkier design and a different coat of paint for your most lived-in room. Houzz “Ideabooks” are as addicting as they are photogenic, fodder for everything from our Pinterest boards to our hardware store shopping lists. But now, Houzz has gone beyond pretty pictures: just last week, the site introduced a new tool that can show you what it will actually cost to renovate that drab den into your dream den.
Released last Monday, the Houzz Real Cost Finder is an interactive tool that presents remodeling pricing data by room type and geographic location. A homeowner in Minneapolis interested in redoing a bathroom, for instance, can enter his or her zip code and not only see the average amount people spend on bathroom renovations in that zip code ($10,287), but also the percentage of people who hire a professional to complete the project (71 percent), how much the top five-percent pay for their bathroom remodel ($54,091) and the average household income of the type of homeowner considering a similar project ($120,000).
Liza Hausman, vice president of community for Houzz, said it’s a tool that many homeowners desperately need. In the 2013 Houzz & Home Survey — data which helped shape the Real Cost Finder — 41 percent of the 100,000 respondents said they had gone over budget on their remodeling project, and a whopping 20 percent said they never even had a budget to start with.
“I think there’s not enough information when you start. Until you actually get to work, you can’t get a sense for what your renovation will cost,” Hausman said of the problem people have in budgeting for remodeling projects. She noted that there are many house-specific questions homeowners fail to consider before they start the renovation process — questions that could significantly impact the cost of a project.
“Are you changing the plumbing? Is there a must-have item that makes it hard to stay under budget?” she said. “I think [homeowners] find things along the way that they didn’t know they needed but are ‘must-haves’ as they start exploring.”
Hausman says that the best way to avoid these surprise “must-have” budget busters is to thoroughly research a project before you take it on: look at everything from kitchen countertops to hardware finishes to assess what you like, what you don’t, and what high-end item can be subbed for a low-cost lookalike — and do it all before you even pick up that hammer.
“There’s such a wide range of products,” for any room and any project, she said. “The breadth of those price points can affect the cost of the project.”
As for the other aspects of a remodel that can drive up the total cost? Changing the footprint of the room — knocking down a wall or relocating a sink — is a big one, Hausman said. If you can avoid making any structural changes, you can save significant amounts of money.
Finally, Hausman said that if you’re strapped for cash but insistent on redoing something in your house, you have to prioritize.
“You want to change the thing that you hate the most,” she said, noting that when she first moved into her home in Palo Alto, she couldn’t afford to change much about her 1970’s-style kitchen — yet was able to find cost-effective ways to alter the space. “I changed brass hardware, painted the wood,” she said. “That kept me going for five years.”
