Construction/General Contractor Folks

My wife and I are wanting to remodel our kitchen. However, I am wanting to gauge if it is a good time to do this with the costs of everything up. Currently, are contractors marking up / pricing bids super high due to the economy? Would it be smarter if we waited another 18-20 months before we move forward?

It will be paid all cash so we're not worried about any loan interest rates.

Adower said:

My wife and I are wanting to remodel our kitchen. However, I am wanting to gauge if it is a good time to do this with the costs of everything up. Currently, are contractors marking up / pricing bids super high due to the economy? Would it be smarter if we waited another 18-20 months before we move forward?

It will be paid all cash so we're not worried about any loan interest rates.

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My neighbor upgraded his kitchen just before Covid broke out and it cost him a little over $45k. One wall between the dining room and kitchen was opened up a bit and the kitchen layout rearranged. Along with upgrading to granite. Not sure if the wall was loadbearing or not and required header work. It seemed a bit pricey to me based on the amount of work that was done.

All material costs are jacked up right now and I would imagine contractors raising their rates to adjust for inflation. And there is no way of knowing if prices come down in the next 18-20 months.

Unless you are friends with a known good contractor, or have trusted friends of a known good contractor, put together a scope and get bids from several highly reviewed contractors in your area. No way of telling what will happen in 2 years from now but you'll be able to get a feel for what prices are now and decide if it's worth it.

We're trying to absorb some the costs but everything is out of hand right now.
Cedar is up 400% in the last 2 years.
I just received a 15% increase on insulation and another 15% is coming in 30 days.
I've had 6 increases on concrete in the last year.
20% on windows year over year.
I could go on but everything has drastically increased for varying reasons.

It's not the labor that's going up. We're all working harder for less money. Last week I drove around 8 hours chasing 7 sheets of blue board and the base and top coat.

Just today I had to update a proposal for a client from Feb. 2021. It went from $174k to $202k and I cut $10k on my end, the rest was just material. That's $35k YOY.

My advice, set a budget and stick to it. It probably isn't going to get cheaper anytime soon.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Sheet of 3/4” plywood.
8’ 2x8 is $8 used to be $2.
Some types of roofing material have a 6-8 months lead time.


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We redid our kitchen about 5 or 6 years ago, I did a lot of the bull work. We refaced the cabinets rather than replacing them, with new appliances new flooring and new countertops it was roughly 35k

Bullitt1448 said:

We redid our kitchen about 5 or 6 years ago, I did a lot of the bull work. We refaced the cabinets rather than replacing them, with new appliances new flooring and new countertops it was roughly 35k

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Our budget is 100K. Obviously not wanting to spend it all. Thankfully its a basic remodel. Just moving some plumbing/electrical, breaking down a pony wall to extend the kitchen another 300sq ft.

The appliances are what is going to kill me. My wife wants a wolf appliances or thermador (basically putting my foot down and saying no to those) and terrazzo flooring.

Either of those brands will put a very large dent in your budget. We just replaced all our appliances in the new house with Kitchenaide Pro series stuff so far so good. If you want the best, I would go with Thermidor, it was just too far out of our budget.

Bullitt1448 said:

Either of those brands will put a very large dent in your budget. We just replaced all our appliances in the new house with Kitchenaide Pro series stuff so far so good. If you want the best, I would go with Thermidor, it was just too far out of our budget.

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Tell me about it. I think its overkill. It's not like we are professional cooks or anything. I actually did look at some kitchenaid pro series stuff.

If the rest of the house is up to or going to be up to the standard of the the Termador stuff then it is worth the spend but if the rest of the house is average, I don’t see the the need for the top end appliances but your money, your house, happy wife, happy life. We just couldn’t justify the added expense.

Adower said:

Our budget is 100K. Obviously not wanting to spend it all. Thankfully its a basic remodel. Just moving some plumbing/electrical, breaking down a pony wall to extend the kitchen another 300sq ft.

The appliances are what is going to kill me. My wife wants a wolf appliances or thermador (basically putting my foot down and saying no to those) and terrazzo flooring.

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It sounds like you are going to be a a little tight with the appliances. I updated 5 kitchens last year and the cheapest one with Samsung appliances came in at 100k. The house I'm working on now came in at $110k with appliances, but it is for my realesate agent. I'm not making my usual markup on it, but him and his wife host a ton of parties so it will be great advertising for the next few years. Anything with middle of the line Kitchenaid or Ge Cafe appliances will cost another $15-20k. Just beware that appliances might take 6 months to a year to get in. Ge Cafe has ****ed me on my last 3 jobs. I ended up buying a temporary gas range at Christmas so my clients could host their Christmas dinner, when I had finished everything else in August.

I'd remodel now, I don't see things getting better in the next two years. The supply issues are not getting better and no one is doing anything to fix the problem. Labor also just keeps going up. I don't see things getting cheaper. As long as Biden's handlers are controlling things, we won't see anything go down in price. Would you rather wait 4 years to maybe save $20-30k, or would you just spend the money and improve your quality of life for that time period?

There are some nice options for terrazzo tile that won't break the bank.

When you say "remodel" what are you thinking? Right before COVID hit, I redid our kitchen by painting the cabinets and installing the backsplash myself. I paid someone to install the granite and the whole thing costed me $3500 IIRC, with the granite being the biggest expense.

black92 said:

When you say "remodel" what are you thinking? Right before COVID hit, I redid our kitchen by painting the cabinets and installing the backsplash myself. I paid someone to install the granite and the whole thing costed me $3500 IIRC, with the granite being the biggest expense.

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Tearing down a pony wall which will give the kitchen more of an open layout. Its currently my kids second toy room but she's going to be 7 this year and doesnt really need the space anymore. Should open another 300sq ft or so., New cabinets, recessed lighting, moving some plumbing/electrical around, changing layout of appliances, new range hood, installing french door, terrazzo flooring, new island with second sink, new appliances, granite counters, etc.

We did $175K worth of renovations in the last 7 years, finished up our last one which was the master bath in April when Covid started. Man did we luck out...

All that said, if you can wait a bit, I would.