Originally Posted by
Alembic
I just finished building our house here in Vermont, from a hole in the ground. Over the years I've remodeled two rental properties, a total of 5 bathrooms and 4 kitchens, some down to the studs, others just to the drywall. I was also real estate broker for 15 years in Colorado. I do the demo, rough interior carpentry, drywall and painting, I pay people to do the skilled work correctly.
In general, for long term value and resale, spend the most money in your kitchen, then the bathrooms, buy good plumbing fixtures. You will use your kitchen faucet over 3,000 time a year. I would buy name brand plumbing fixtures and avoid Home Depot/Lowes branded fixtures, and appliances. In the future a plumber or appliance repair man will not be able to get parts for the Home Depot stuff. For the kitchen, the "Kraft Made" cabinets and other mid range brands Home Depot sells seem to be pretty good quality, for half the price of a custom cabinet maker. We passed on the crown moulding and undercabinet light rail and saved $1,000 on the package. I do think under cabinet lights are functional addition and add value to your kitchen. For countertops in the kitchen, I prefer a solid surface synthetic over laminate or stone. Granite, soapstone etc are crazy expensive. On a budget, laminate counters are just fine, and 30% the cost of solid surface. For solid, HiMac, over Corian. Same material, just cheaper. The Home Depot HiMac is a cheaper finished product than HiMac from Cabinet/Kitchen store, but very functional and nice.
If you like hard surface flooring over carpet, do as much real wood flooring as you can. It's cheaper than tile and is more forgiving with an old subfloor, esp if you do tongue and groove board. I'm not a fan of laminate, it wears badly and even expensive stuff looks cheap in just a few years. The factory finished real wood products are OK, but expensive, and still look, well factory finished. IMO they never have the character of a real sand and finished floor. Hickory is awesome, Maple is cheap in the north east. Pine is dirt cheap. Sure it's soft, but it ages well. Someone can come along and refinish it if they want, but most buyers will prefer the patina. If you want a harder wood, which will be more expensive, just go with a narrower board. 2 inch oak is cheap and hard as a rock. We just did 1,200 square feet of 12 inch wide boards, the whole house, except the two bathrooms for $1,700. in materials and another $2,500 to the finisher, who did two runs with the sander, stained, and two coats of poly. You could rent a sander and finish it yourself. Some may think pine goes yellow, but you just need to use a brown tint stain. Anyway $3,700 for a natural wood floor. If you ever need to sell, it will make the sale. Carpet would have been like $2,500, and, well... we have two German Shepards, 3 cats and one muddy kid. The carpet would have been trashed in 2 years and never been as cool.
Tile can be pretty affordable if you pick out the $0.48 per foot stuff. Of course laminate is still 70% less after the install. I would not do tile in the kitchen if you are doing a laminate or wood floor elsewhere, just run it in the kitchen and call it good, water is not a problem. Save some money with affordable carpet in the bedrooms, stairs and halls.
If you are getting into the walls, rip out any walls you can to open up the floor plan. Nothing worst than a dated floor plan. If you are opening up some walls, try to do some insulation. New studies show fiberglass to be a pretty bad insulator. The easiest, most effective insulation trick is to stop air flow and drafts. Try to can foam every window, door frame, electric outlet and light fixture. For walls and between joists, look at rockwool, brand name "Roxul". A bit more expensive than Fiberglass, but easy to work with, better R-value per squ foot/dollar and way better sound insulation. Insulation for interior walls is nice for sound and will help with air flow and the heating bill. If you are opening exterior walls, look into blown foam insulation. It will give you R-30 2x6 walls, great sound insulation and make the house more rigid. It's not cheap to have installed. For attic insulation, just blow cellulose, 2 feet thick will give you R-40. Cheap and easy to blow in yourself. Our HD rents the machine for free when you buy the cellulose.
Trim is expensive. Depending on the part of the country, some prefer painted trim, some prefer stained trim. Either way, I'd just go with cheap, simple pine. 1x4 boards can look nice without being fancy.
On the electrical end, I assume you'll have an electrician on site for the kitchen. Most building code calls for an outlet every two feet these days, so if you have the walls open, add some outlets, everywhere you can. I can't remember if you said how old your place is, but if you can bring it into the 21st century, it will help your resale value and time on the market. Even if you never plan to sell, this is your best opportunity to make the house functional. Can lighting is an easy addition, even if you are not opening up the ceiling. Cans are seen as much nicer than simple overhead fixtures. You can run their wiring to an existing switch site with power to create lighting over a desk area, dining room table or breakfast area. Lighting can really add value to a home.
To save money there is no reason you can G.C. they whole project and manage the subs. Do all the demo yourself. Do as much rough carpentry as you can then bid each job and ask for a breakdown of time, materials and their margin on each. You can get in trouble buying materials, better to let them buy the right materials, maybe at wholesale prices. Still ask to see material invoices. Know how much they charge per hour for labor and ask how long they think each job will take. You should be happy to pay someone to do a job you can't do, you just want to know where they are making their money.
Good luck. Don't stress the details, nothing turns out exactly as planned when you create. Enjoy the project.
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