Well, a lot depends on where you live, but $300+K sounds high.

I can tell you that we easily spent $150K in Calif 11 yrs ago by adding on a bedroom and storage room, bumped out the laundry room and gutted 2 1/2 baths.
The architect isn't the one to talk to regarding cost......building is just very expensive right now! Continue getting bids and have the contractors break down where the major costs are.
Just the fact you have foot thick exterior stone walls is pretty costly in itself.

Have you considered just moving and investing the money in a larger home that suits you better??

I must admit we've done the same thing you're considering.........remodeled our home to become our dream, retirement home...........three times in three different homes!!
Just saying that things change over the years and look carefully at how you invest huge sums of money.

You don't mention what area of the country you live in, and costs do vary widely, but even here in expensive Northern New Jersey, if we sold our house and added $175k to the sale price (not even the $300k your builders/contractors are suggesting), we could get a very differently configured house than we now have. A bigger kitchen, bigger garage, mudroom, etc.

If you really are planning on laying out that kind of money, you owe it to yourself to see what kind of house you could buy that would be more appropriate for your needs. You just might find it right there in your current school district. There's a lot more inventory on the market these days.

I started my kitchen budget at about $40,000. Then we realized we really wanted the master bath done so we went up to $75. Then we talked to designers and realized we should pop it up to $90....then we started getting bids and pricing appliances...and we're now at $200,000. I'm not going above that dangit! heh heh

We did increase the size of the job, and unlike you we have no major exterior work, but we are re-doing every room in the house. I'm in the process of interviewing contractors and find the bids to be wildly varying. I expected a range of $60,000 to $75,000 given my research (I'm buying EVERYTHING but the stuff you put on (sheetrock) or inside of the walls). One of the guys I really liked, I mean really wanted to hire right there said I was very light on the budget...sigh...I expect his costs to be about 65% of the hard item costs, which will put him over $250. So....I began the interview process again.

This sucks, really sucks, so I understand where you're coming from, but keep it up. And don't settle for one guy who does come in at your goal if the balance aren't even near. Low ball bidding never works well.

I would agree you should talk to your architect again and discuss options to scale it down or in phases. And I'd ask for recommendations from the architect. They should have done an approximate budget using norms in your area, so they should have some idea who fits in their budget schematic.

One other thing I suggest you do is to get an "As proposed" appraisal and make sure that what you are doing makes perfect sense in the market. When you start talking about a $200 or $300,000 job, you should make sure it makes some sense. You shouldn't expect 100% value right back, but you do want something close to 60% or 70% of cost when it's finished. It will cost you about $600 to do this, but it's well worth the money spent.

We took a hard look at what we were doing, since we were spending about a significant percentage of our homes future value on this remodel, but we couldn't find a comparable property to what we'll have for under $900,000 (our value will be $500,000 when finished). And that $900,000 needed a remodel :o( We live on a lake and just couldn't reproduce our location within cost, so spending what we're spending makes sense, and after the appraisal, shows we'll be recooping our funds in value fairly quickly.

Never do the remodel with a 25 year plan ahead of you. Look more in the 4 or 5 year field. You NEVER know what will happen. One of you could get sick and need to move for medical care, or someone dies, breaks their back, loses their job, etc., Stuff happens, so don't spend $200 if you can't recoop that value fairly quickly. You don't want to end up backwards in the house and then need to sell.

(20 year banker talking here so I have seen this happen SOOOO MANY TIMES I just had to lecture you!) :o)

Wow, this sounds incredibly familiar. We live in the Seattle area and hired an architect about two years ago for an addition to our house, including a kitchen upgrade, attached 2 car garage, family room and master bathroom. After a few meetings with the architect, he gave us a rough estimate of 150-200K. 1.5 years later, our architect gave us another bid, this time reviewed by a builder, and it was closer to 360K--we felt completely deflated. Now, we are looking at roughly 400-420K, two years after the first estimate from our architect. Our architect was the first to say that he "could give estimates all day, but in the end, it wouldn't necessarily mean anything." We've received two bids, the second is exactly 100K higher than the first, without any clear reason.(guess which GC we'll be using?) We're leaving a fairly high contingency, as is recommended for remodeling projects, just in case there are anymore surprises . . . But as another poster mentioned, do keep your eye on the market--make sure you can't buy what you need without the cost and headache associated with a remodel. In our area, remodels are hugely popular because real estate prices are still high. Best of luck to you!