Low Budget Kitchen Remodel

This is going to be one of a three-part series, low, medium, and high kitchen budgets. This gonna be number intensive, so we're gonna break it down line by line. These are all real projects and please remember that there are real clients who've agreed very kindly to share these numbers with us.

So, let's just remember they're real human beings on the other side of social media. Another caveat I want to say is that these projects are all local to Toronto. So you will experience some differences in labor pricing and delivery costs based on where your project is. Of course, these are done in Canadian funds.

Now, every project has its unique foibles. So that you're looking at apples to apples, we're going to consider. In every case that this kitchen was totally gutted and built new. We're going to break the numbers down based on per square foot because kitchens can be of different sizes. You're gonna have an idea of if I'm building a 200-square-foot kitchen and I want it to be low or high budget, how much should I be allowing. Our first kitchen is our low-budget kitchen remodel. It's 130 square feet and it is based in Haliburton Ontario.

The first category we're gonna talk about is appliances. Believe it or not, I'm not memorized the numbers for every project. In this kitchen, they spent $1400 on the fridge, $1200 on the dishwasher, $700 on the stove, and $500 on the hood. So that's a total of $3800 for the appliances.

Our next category is millwork or you may call it cabinetry. For this project, the clients went for simple big box store cabinetry. They had 35.5 linear feet lowers plus uppers and they spent $3761. Meaning they spent roughly $106 per linear foot of cabinetry.

This is an important thing to bear in mind when you're pricing out cabinetry. Just make sure that whoever is giving you a quote is including lowers and uppers in the linear foot calculation given you. It would be a real shame to get to the point of ordering and realize you have to double your millwork budget.

Next categories countertops. They bought their countertops at the same big box store where they bought their cabinetry. They spend $750 and needed 37.5 square feet, meaning that they spent roughly $20 per square foot on the countertops. Now that $20 per square foot number that's very low for a countertop. These are butcher block countertops and they're not being used that frequently because this is a cottage. So, if this is your everyday working countertop, you should be budgeting a fair amount more.

For the backsplash, they went cheap and cheerful with a really simple white subway tile and they needed 42 square feet. Now, when you're dealing with tile and flooring, you need to allow for a little extra what we call overage. Tiles are gonna get cut in half and then you can't reuse the rest of it.

So, there's going to be some waste. So for a simple brick installed something like this, I suggest 10 percent. Meaning that they ended up buying 46.2 square feet. They spent $330 on the backsplash, meaning that they spent roughly $7 per square foot. That's an appropriate amount to spend on a simple white backsplash.

Next, we have our plumbing, a sink, and a faucet. Quite simple, they spent $700 on the sink, it's a nice granite. They spent $445 on the faucet. Meaning they spent $1145 all in for the plumbing.

As for lighting, the only decorative or task lighting other than pot lights. Hot lights will be included in construction costs later. The only thing they have is one surface mount fixture, it cost $130.

Next up we have flooring. Remember the kitchen is 130 square feet but we want to include the overage. So, we're gonna add 10 percent, meaning they bought 143 square feet of flooring for the kitchen. They spent $1714.57. So, they were spending $11.99 per square foot. That's a reasonable price for a good quality hardwood floor.

Now, every project is going to have its unique little moments where people choose to splurge. So, we're going to call those nice to have. In this kitchen, there are a couple of different ones.

The first is applied to the tongue and groove to the ceiling. There are 84 square feet of ceiling that have a tongue and groove on it. But again just like flooring, just like backsplash, we're building in an additional 10 percent. So, they bought 92.4 square feet, and they spent $322.48, meaning they spent about $3.50 per square foot on their tongue and groove. They also bought themselves a new front door for $826 and they bought some decorative shelves for $150. All of that adds up to $2028.44 for their nice to the house.

Last our category is going to be general construction, labor, and supplies. So, labor is the cost of installing your tiles. The supplies are also gonna be like the grout, the pipes that go in the walls, the electrical wires that connect your light switch to your fixture, the drywall, all that kind of stuff.

For our calculations, we also include recessed lighting or pot lighting. So, these prices will be based on per square foot. In this case, the client spent $110 per square foot for 130 square feet which means they spent $14,300 on the construction costs. So, all of those categories added together total $27,959.01.

We're not done yet. I don't care how simple you think your project is. You absolutely must add a contingency fee to the numbers that you add up in those different categories. The contingency fee is going to cover things that you don't know are behind your walls. When you open them up and you find water damage, you're going to need a little bit of extra money.

When you need 32 square feet of tiles but they're only sold in the 6 square feet per box, you're going to need to buy 36 square feet. You're also probably gonna have to pay somebody to deliver those to you. That's where your contingency fee comes in. So for this project, we did 10 percent meaning that we set aside roughly an additional $2800. That brings the total cost of this project to $30,754.91. That makes the cost per square foot of this project $236.58/SqFt. And that is our low-budget kitchen remodel project.