4 Ways To Work Out How Much Your Renovation Will Cost

Hi guys, it’s Naomi Findlay here!

Are you ready to begin your renovation journey but worried about going over your budget?

Are you dreaming about a certain look for your property, but not sure how much it’s actually going to cost you?

Do you keep tossing and turning, worrying about whether you have under-estimated the cost of your project?

Almost every single renovation project ever undertaken, if not every single one, has had a budget. Everybody has a limit on how much they are willing to spend on their home.

This rings even more true when it comes to renovating for wealth. The budget for a renovating for wealth project is generally a lot tighter than a normal renovating for self-enjoyment one. Why? Because at the end of the day, it’s all about getting bang for your buck.

That is why it is SO important to establish a good budget and stick to it before you even pick up the tools. If you can get a good budget together early on, you won’t have to worry about running out of money and leaving your best ideas in the dust.

Have your budget mapped up before picking up the tools.

I’m not saying that you have to have every single tiny thing thought of and mapped out. Sometimes a spanner might pop up in the works that is beyond your control. But if you have a good, solid budget in place, it will help to reduce the impact this spanner will have on your budget, and your overall profit.

What you want to have is a well-researched budget locked in place before you start to get your hands dirty in the actual renovation side of things.

Make sure you stick to your budget

No matter how much of a whizz you are at working out your renovation budget, none of that will matter if you bail at the first sign of a new kitchen idea or cool lighting feature.

New things come out all the time, and it can be very tempting to shift course halfway through your renovation project.

To make sure you don’t stray from your budget, you need to have a budget spreadsheet with you – my Rapid Renovation Formula has a very extensive one for you to use, and it breaks down everything in an easy to follow way. When you are picking out new tiles or the colour of the kitchen benchtop you can add these costs into the spreadsheet. This way you can keep an eye on the overall budget and make sure you don’t blow your budget.

But how do you work out those costs in the first place?

There are four main ways you can use to work out the cost of your renovation. These four ways can be combined with one another to give you a good idea of your real costs.

1. Get your paper quotes from reliable tradies

The first one is about getting quotes.

You should aim to get a few – about 3 – quotes from different tradies for the same job. This way, you will be able to compare them and see what suits your budget.

However, don’t fall into the trap of just going for the cheapest quote. They could be the cheapest for a reason – and that reason might end up with you pulling your hair out halfway through your renovation.

The best place to start when looking for that perfect tradie is to ask your family, friends or even work colleagues. Many tradies survive and thrive through word-of-mouth recommendations. And, let’s be honest – you can never be too sure if that online review or testimonial is from a real person or not. But people you know will always put forward tradies they have had a good experience with.

Using a tradie recommended by a friend also has another benefit.

If you’re sniffing around for quotes to compare, you can be sure that other renovators are doing the same thing. And that means tradies will often bail last minute or not show up to a free quote when they could be out doing actual paid work.

A tradie who knows they have been referred by another client will be more likely to not let you down.

Also remember to get these quotes down on paper – and be clear about them being actual quotes, not just an estimate. Otherwise you might get a nasty surprise down the track when the final bill comes in a lot higher than the original estimate.

And that leads me to my second point.

2. Get an estimate from a tradie you know

Okay, so I mentioned above that it’s usually best to get a quote, rather than an estimate. This is especially important when you have never worked with that particular tradie before.

But, you might already have a plumber who you have worked with before – maybe he is your regular, the one you call when you connected your dishwasher and washing machine, the one who replaced your busted sewerage pipes after that big tree outside your house got its roots all tangled up in the pipes. You’re on good terms with him and he has always charged you a reasonable price.

In this case, you probably won’t need to shop around, because you already have a reliable tradie you can add to your team. You can ask your plumber to give you an estimate of what he thinks the cost will be, and you will be confident that his answer will be a pretty accurate reflection of the real deal when it comes to renovating.

The other reason you might have to work with an estimate rather than a quote, is when you’re dealing with an upgrade that you haven’t yet set in stone. Sometimes, you’re not sure where the dishwasher’s final resting place will be, so you can ask the plumber for an estimate based on the current draft up.

Again, try to leave the estimating to the tradies that you already know and have a good connection with. That way, there will be less chance of that estimate changing too much.

3. Calculate the cost of all the bling

Is your heart set on a certain style of tiles? I’m not asking if you’re thinking with your heart rather than your head (which you should never be doing when renovating for wealth).

I’m asking you whether you already have a clear idea of what sort of finishes you will be adding once the groundwork is done.

If you’re aiming for the budget end of the spectrum, you would be putting in stainless steel kitchen sinks and mixers. If your project is on the higher end of the scales, you might have black granite as your kitchen sink.

Likewise, whether you are replacing the flooring with new carpet or marble tiles, you can work out the per square metre price based on the advertised rate at carpet and tile distributors.

By knowing the level of finish that you will have, you can accurately work out the cost of all of your bling things.

4. Practice makes perfect

This last way of working out your budget is usually reserved for those who already have a few renovation projects completed up their sleeves.

Once you roll through a few renovation projects successfully, you will become better and better at working out your own costs. You won’t need to spend so much time finding quotes from different tradies, or endlessly browsing through tile shops to find how much the tiles you want cost.

You will already have all the information from your previous projects written down that you can pull up like a handy database. You will also have your B-Team (aka your awesome tradie team) ready to go, so you won’t need to shop around and you can get a pretty accurate estimate from them.

It’s all part of becoming your own renovation expert.

To make thinks a heck of a lot easier for you when starting out, I have some awesome Rapid Renovation software you can use that is based on all the stuff you would need to do – it can show you tradie costs and even includes the level of finish that you want to achieve. This software will give you a good estimate of all the costs of your planned renovation.

Happy renovating!