Remodeling Cost for Small Apartment With Pics (Example)

[Ori Skloot]

I've gotten a lot of questions lately about rehab and renovation costs.  I think it's very tough for new people to understand the real cost of renovating an apartment, house or building.  I also see a lot of posts from wholesalers where there rehab cost is way underestimated (of course).   I just finished a quick rehab of an apartment in one of my buildings and I thought it would be of interest to see my actual costs. 

A few things to note:

• I had two of my own employees who know construction do the work.  I pay each one $27/hour.   If you hire a handyman in the bay area you will probably pay $35-50/hr depending on skill level and the trade involved.
• This work was done in Richmond, CA.  I think the pricing should be approximately the same around the rest of the Bay Area.  Perhaps it would be a little higher in the South Bay or Peninsula.  
• I wasn't aiming for a high-end look, but I also feel that if I'm already putting in the effort then I might as well put in decent materials and invest in doing it right.
• This apartment is pretty small, 500 square feet.  It was a 1-bedroom apartment with a weird living room space that didn't feel functional.  I turned it into a 2-bedroom apartment that now does not have a living room.  
• This renovation took 2.5 weeks for two guys

Scope of Work

• Demo and gut entire kitchen, gut one bedroom, and partial gut of bathroom
• Build new closet and frame out a wall to create a bedroom
• Install new laminate flooring in two bedrooms
• Install new subpanel and new electrical for entire apartment
• New (and some reused) cabinets
• New quartz countertop
• New (but bought used) 24" range
• New microwave and fridge (new fridge not shown in photos)
• New toilet, medicine cabinet and vanity light in bathroom 
• New built-in kitchen table and chairs

Cost of Work (approximately)

• Labor $6,500
• Cabinets $2,000 - I bought some nice, used Ikea cabinets from Craigslist for a previous job and I had some left over. I decided to use the left-over cabinets for this job. They are higher-end then necessary for this apartment. The extra cabinets I needed in order to complete the design ended up costing $2,000. I would say this was the biggest splurge for this project. It was a pain in the arse to run to Ikea and figure out how to piece together
  
• New Laminate wood flooring - $.089/square foot.$300
• Used 24” oven and apartment size fridge.$900
• Microwave, Sink, faucet, sink hardware $600
• Quartz Countertop (one 10 foot slab)$300
• Electrical Materials: wire, receptacles, lights, etc..$400
• Baseboard (had it left over from another job so $0, but would have cost around $100)
• New interior door, wood studs, drywall, mud  $300
• Paint $100
• Dump Fees $500
• Misc stuff I’m probably forgetting $500

TOTAL COST $12,500
Rehab cost per square foot = $25

[Ori Skloot]

@Matthew Paul   Thanks for the good point.  My rate with workers comp and withholding is around $33/hr.   That's the number I used to get $6,500 in labor.   I pay them a very nice bonus at the end of the year, so realistically it's probably more like $35/hr, so my labor cost for the job would be around $7,000.