The best advice I got on how much to spend was an amount similar to what you would pay for a new car. If you are a Mercedes kind of family then spend that amount of money, but if you are a domestic mini-van kind of family you will probably be just as happy spending a lot less. I would say 20% of the value of the house (over $100k in your case)is alot of money depending on the other factors in your area (is your house the biggest on the block, are others in the area worth more or less, how does your price compare with the average for your city/county).

Most importantly (I think) is not to spend more than you are comfortable with. If you want a $100K kitchen, can afford it, and live in an area that makes it worthwhile then go for it. If you are at all hesitant then spend less.

BTW my budget is closer to 10% ($40K on a $450K house). In my area even modest homes are expensive and spending more would just be for show.

I didn't really use the 10-20% of the value of the house because I figured the budget really depended on what I could afford and what would be in line with the type of remodels (of this size house) you would see in my area. If you are willing/able to DIY or be your own GC, then you can save some money. I'd say I started with how much I wanted to spend and found out most things were probably 20%-30% more than I thought they would be and would comparison shop like crazy and/or make tradeoffs to keep the budget from going crazy. We still spent more than we thought we would but it was one of those things where we really had no idea of the costs and by getting several bids and comparison shopping we knew our choice was to either spend that amount OR scale down what we wanted.

Also, it depends on how big your space is. If you need cabinets for a 10X10 space, that will be different than a 20X13 space. Cabinets are a big part of the budget and if you have a large space to cover, it would be hard to spend less than a certain amount if say you wanted a high quality wood white painted cabinets or needed non-custom sizes. Without knowing anything about your space - I would say a 25-30K budget with careful shopping could get you a nice kitchen. If you have 50-60K (that would be 10% of the value) that would be a budget I know I would have liked for a remodel without any sort of addition. You may want to go to some open houses in your neighborhood where the kitchen has been upgraded to see how that compares. If this is your dream kitchen and resale is not an issue - your budget will be driven by the thing you most want - is it a certain cabinet line or look, is it an exotic granite or certain countertop, is it amazing backsplash tiles, is it certain appliances. I'll just hope for your budget it isn't all of the above :)

In the end alot will depend on the number of cabinets and sq footage. Depending on quality and option cabinets alone can run $800 plus each. Then figure how many sq feet of of counters. Natural stone will probably run you $70 plus a sq foot. Small kitchen probably get away with 30 to 50 thousand. You talk about knocking out a couple of walls. If you are adding cabinets and counters the prices will esculate from there.

Budget ?

Cute idea :)

Admirable intention - laudable even ! We thought that we would be able to do it for 40K if we economised. Probably could have, but even exercising a bit (not a lot but a BIT) of self-control, and doing much work ourselves we are well over twice that amount...

My advice:

You should only spend what you can comfortably afford without going into debt.

I posted earlier but sailormann said it best. I think it will be hard to convince yourself to stick to your "budget" if you can comfortably afford more without going into debt and you don't plan to move. We fell in love with a certain cabinet color and went from there. Sure we could have convinced ourselves to go with a cabinet line/color that was less money and we didn't like as much but we didn't need the money for something else and it didn't make sense to us to spend let's say $14,000 for something we weren't crazy about instead of $18,000 on something we really wanted. We weren't planning to do our kitchen again so if it came to it we would wait until we could afford something we would be happy if we couldn't figure out a way to make things work between shopping for the best price, not going with every bell and whistle upgrade (saving the things that made sense like cutlery trays for aftermarket), and putting off a backsplash.

Wow, I had no idea that kitchens were supposed to cost 10 - 20% of the value. Boy did I miss the boat! :)
I spent $9,000, completely gutted, new windows & structural walls etc. & sold the house for over $700,000 & everyone said how great the kitchen was.

^^^^ $9k for just appliances?

Mine will be between 10 & 15% percent of the house value. I am sure the kitchen will be a little nicer than most others in my area but it is what I want for a functional kitchen. I am reusing most of the appliances, sink, faucet, etc. because I put them in five years ago when I did a mini remodel. Some of my renovation costs are those associated with working on an old house. As soon as you open walls and ceilings you are in for replacing wires, plumbing, insulating (none there to begin with), etc. That all adds up quickly.

It would have been really tough for us to do what we wanted in our total kitchen gut, where walls were taken out and EVERYTHING was moved (new electrical, plumbing, window, etc.)--a remodel on 10% of the selling price would have been $12K!! I guess maybe I could have done an IKEA kitchen, most likely, but it would have had to be completely DIY and most of the materials/fixtures/appliances I chose would have been very different!

Our goal was about 30K, and with expensive labor, it got closer to double that!! Yikes! That's what gardenweb did to me! I wouldn't recommend that for someone that might be reselling in a few years. This is my husband's grandpa's old farmhouse, and we're spiffing it up as our "forever" home.

Generally, I think that 10-15% number is about right and what I tended to read in magazines.

:)
Sarah

10-15% sounds about right - Ours will be in the 45k - 50k range, hard to say exactly since this is a total house reno (hubby could tell you the exact kitchen breakdown). We saved alot on cabinets by going with Thomasville from HD (their highest end option with all the bells and whistles) - almost 10k less than a quote for same quality cabinets from a "kitchen place." The cabinets arrived and are awaiting install - they are beautiful. But we're going pretty high end with the appliances (about 11k) and counter top (soapstone.) Our home value before reno (and the tanking economy) was 530k.

If this is your forever house, and you can afford it, then do what makes you happy. This is our forever house and we've completely priced ourselves out of the neighborhood with our renovation. ;-) But we're getting what we want and also know that since we're in a prime location, eventually the value will equal what we paid for the home + renovation costs. We just need to hold on to it for a while. LOL

I should add that our kitchen is really small. So that also helped us save a bundle on cabinets. ;-)

I think the car analogy is a good one. I've seen Ikea cabs in $$$$$$$ Manhattan lofts and Woodmode in $$ suburban ramblers, so a straight percentage might not be enough, or it might be too much. If you're eyeing a Ford Focus for your next car purchase or a Ferrari Fiorano you can get an idea of what type of a budget you'd be comfortable with. Most people will not overextend themselves on a car purchase due to the steep depreciation.

There's more wiggle room with a reno, because you're building on equity, but in a down market the wiggle room is smaller. I drive a Dodge Caravan and have spent just over $20K with backsplash, paint and trim still to go. Homes in my neighborhood sell for between $220K-$350K, so percentage wise we'll be hitting a little low, but it's what we were comfortable spending.

I think you should look at it as "what have I got to spend?" Then set a budget smaller than that by 15%, because you are going to end up going over.

My house is smaller in a declining area, so we had a small budget reno. Did a lot of work ourselves. Still our budget was under 10,000, and we ended up over 16,000.

Look at designs & styles, and appliances that you will love, then work backward on prices.

OT for a second....Sailorman...go back and read that thread about sophisticated kitchens pretty please? I replied to a comment you posted where you thought I was beating you up and I really wasn't :) (I tried to send an email but Sailor does not have a link)

Anyhoo, now on to budget....I'm with sailorman on this one...budget smudget :) Ok yes you should have a general idea what you want to spend, but personally I think that should be more focused on what you can afford than your home value. You also need to consider if it's a long term remodel or a quickie for resale (or a resale is likely within a couple of years). The standard rule is 15% of home value but you see all kinds of numbers. I'm around 35% of my home value in the kitchen (and 100% of it for the entire remodel) but I know we won't let this place go, even if we leave the state, so I didn't mind spending the money to make it what we wanted. And I also know I can sell it easily for more than appraisal due to our location (we're on a lake) if we absolutely had to.

I don't believe in the term "forever home" since I've been a banker for too many years. I've seen more clients have to leave their "forever homes" than I can shake a stick at.

DH dies, DW dies, A parent needs a place to live in their old age, a child returns due to tradegy in their life...the perfect home just does not fit anymore for one reason or another.

So instead of looking to the remodel budget with a "forever home" idea in mind, it's better to go into the game with a "what can I afford...both to spend and lose on value if I have to sell quickly" than to go hog wild with the intention of recouping someday.

The higher the budget for your kitchen, the lower the return by the way. My return is about 68% of the money we put into the kitchen (kitchen specific return) which is what I figured we'd get. A $5,000 kitchen remodel often recoups 200% of dollars spent. For me, my $5,000 spent on the master closet gave me a 200% return on value. My master bath return was only 60% (again I expected that).

In the end if I sold tomorrow for $100,000 over appraised value, I'd break even, which is better than I thought I'd be :) I hope you do a bit better than that LOL

Unless you KNOW you'll be selling soon, buy what you want, but no more than you can afford to lose. :)

With the economy so bad, I'd personally avoid borrowing for a remodel unless there were serious livability issues (and I've seen some befores that qualify!). But I do tend to be overly cautious.

The formula gets tricky when property values are so in flux as they are now. My home has lost about $250k in "value" since I bought it (and started planning my remodel) 2 years ago. Luckily I hadn't based a budget on the original appraised value. Actually I don't have one; I trust my small kitchen and frugal nature to keep me out of trouble.

With all of the foreclosures going on and the many deals that are currently available if one has cash, it makes it hard to use such rules as spend 10-15% on the appraised value of your house. There is the opportunity cost, that is, what opportunity have you lost putting a ton of cash into your kitchen versus putting the money into say, a foreclosed home that already has the granite counter tops, new kitchen appliances, and so on that you desire.

I think it's best if you decide how much you are willing to pay, how long you plan on living in your current home, try to shop around for the best bargains you can on both labor and materials. I also agree that a lot depends on your neighborhood, too.

I think things will continue on a downwards spiral and that many contractors and small cabinet resellers haven't quite adjusted to this fact just yet.

Just my two cents...

Fortunately we live in an area where the home prices have stayed reasonably stable and haven't really lost much (if anything) in their current appraised values.

Our home is worth about 200k and we are budgeting 25-30k total on the remodel so it seems like we are falling in the 10-15% range (although we didn't plan it that way).

The most expensive homes in our subdivision are appraised at the 235-250k mark and we were just trying to make sure that we didn't over-improve for the area we are in.