Curious as to where you live. I live in San Jose Ca. Some contractors wont accept a job for under 200K. For permitting and plans clients can have nightmare situations...I have been fortunate but yes Kitchens are expensive and i notice appliances have increased in price too. refridgerators that are 10K! What is happening????

we felt like we got our money's worth and were quite lucky we did not have too many surprises when opening up walls. Trustworthy contractor with years of experience showed us everything that was going on every day. We had one small hiccup but we resolved it...but we were given price options: move plumbing for 5k or put up a support beam for about $200...I chose the support beam!

Jo Jo, beautiful kitchen! Love that you added the fun tile and hood, really makes the space interesting and unique!
We are in the Boston area and I know the economy is up, but 30k plus for cabinets, 20k plus for appliances and contractors asking 80k a job makes the money fly out the window really fast!

Oh wow. yes we can all relate the going rate these days is 100K. I am in the business. I am an interior designer...but I know alot of great people to do the work who I trust. Thank you for your kind words. I am very happy with the results...the before and after is on my page if you are interested...sometimes the BEFORE and AFTERS really show the story. For me 4 years in the planning, 4 years in the saving!

would love to see photos of your kitchen Kaylie and also time frame (just comparing) also where do you live? My kitchen demo started 4/6 and was complete 5/29. This included demo of floor and and removal of cabinets and counter tops all appliances and removal of one wall. Then adding new floor, new cabinetry, kitchen nook, countertops and appliances.

it's all about choices. nobody needs a 10k fridge or a giant range.

if you can afford them and want them, fine, but it's a choice.

if you have planned 15 percent of the cost of the home, you are probably in the right place, but everything is compromise.

I am planning to redo my kitchen next year but for condos that sell for about 220k$, I am aiming for 30 to 40k. More would be silly. we're going for Ikea cabinets, quartz sold by Ikea, new appliances but nothing fancy except a Bosch dw and probably a drawer mw (not that many countertops, so I don't want it on a countertop). we're taking down two partial walls (not load bearing) and install a hood.

it's certainly not as fancy as you, but still in a relatively high cost of leaving (Worcester suburbs).

So really, costs are in a certain way a choice.

It is all relative. Are planning on staying in the home for a long time...well in our case YES. So I designed and definitely had a budget. we went over by 6k not too bad. That was for labor and structural things that popped up that we could not avoid. There was absolutely nothing wrong with my dishwasher, fridge or sink so I kept them-but everything else needed to be switched out. Once the ball rolls it is easy to get caught up in it-we stuck to our guns. Sounds like we are all a good level headed group here! Love this!

Wow Kaylie, that’s awesome! Our cabinets are coming in at double your total cost :(
I hope you’ll post the finished product on here!

Get Back JoJo - happy to post them once we're done! Cabinets are coming in this week sometime and then the real fun starts. I live in the Princeton, NJ area which isn't exactly affordable. As far as time frame goes, I started ordering everything around April 20th and have mostly been waiting for things to come in. We just moved into the house so we did half the demo before moving in and are waiting until the very last minute to do the rest so that we can have a kitchen sink for as long as possible. We plan to take two weekends to finish demo and install the cabinets. Templating will happen the following week and counter tops will go in 1-2 weeks after that. I'm actually not going to paint the cabinets until the counter tops are in so that I can see how everything looks before choosing a color. We'll probably start using it before the doors go on and take our time on the details.

Lg, yes, totally a choice. We currently have dysfunctional layout in our kitchen, 2/3 is sitting area and 1/3 is where all of the workspace and appliances are crammed in...so we are moving everything and taking down a wall, Which is an expensive proposition. We have the money to do it, but it’s still painful to watch the money flow out the door. But, we have children with special food needs and I spend A LOT of my life in the kitchen, so we are doing staycations this year and getting a 36 inch range top and double ovens :)
Looking at the survey results, it looks like a lot of people are in the same boat, so it makes me feel a little better.

I have followed your dilemmas and it looks like you will have an awesome kitchen.

Kaylee, one other request for you to post your kitchen.

My renovation involved no moving or knocking down of walls, or even new cabinets. New counters, painted cabs, trim, and walls, new DW and range, new tiled backsplash, replacement of ancient wallpaper with paint, and new LVT floor., in kitchen and laundry. Everything but the counters and LVT was DIY. If I include the new carpet on the stairs and FROG - cost was about 15k.

It's hard to separate out the cost of JUST the kitchen if you do a multi-space project. I did the kitchen and entryway (which is now a mudroom), and the bathroom all at once because same tradesmen so why not? And we did some structural changes by opening two rooms to each other, removing the world's most annoying closet, etc. For all of it, I'm at ~ 20% of the home value (a little less).

so funny Kaylie....I used to live in Lawrenceville-absolutely loved it! Beautiful area! Lived there before moving to California

I think you should have asked this in terms of % of home value, not actual dollar value, so I didn't vote in the poll. I still haven't added it all up (2 years later!), but I think my kitchen expansion/reno was about 7% or 8% of my home's value.

Toronto, I get what you are saying. Psychologically I just need to know I am not alone in my big spend :)

" Psychologically I just need to know I am not alone in my big spend :) "

Ah, I get it!

We are right at 22,000. This includes: painting cabinets, hardware, fire clay tile backsplash, quartz counters and sink, faucet, new cooktop and rangehood, bamboo shades, recessed and accent lighting, open shelves and contractor fees. By painting our cabinets and removing some of the uppers, it opened our budget to splurge on a nice backsplash and 3 cm quartz.

Many days were spent obsessing over all the different options- and in the end this was a nice compromise. We are about to begin the project next week- having much anxiety and excitement.

We live in New Orleans btw. I have family in San Jose and couldn’t believe how much they spent basically doing the same to their kitchen.

Mine cost $28.500. BUT...and it's a BIG "but" - I re-used my Corian countertops, only having to purchase a new 5' section, no island, already had pot lights in ceiling (added one more and had to re-do an old worn junction box that had been in a soffit), already had under cabinet lighting, which I reused. I also had already had hardwood floors put in 13 years before. I re-used my Corian integrated sink and my 13 year old Perrin & Rowe faucet. The only appliance I replaced was my garbage disposal (13 year old seals were shot and no replacement parts available). I also already had a huge bay window over my sink area, so no new windows. The only appliance moved was the refrigerator and since I have a basement, moving that copper tubing for the ice maker 5 feet, was easy and cheap.

It would have been far more costly if I had had to do a new floor, new countertops, new appliances and new lighting. If I had followed the 15% rule, I could have put in an $87,000 kitchen. Not happening... I love my new kitchen!

The 15% "rule" does not seem to make sense in HCOL areas. A mid range house in my neighborhood is about $1,500,000. If you put the exact same house on a similarly sized lot further inland in California, that same house would likely be ~$600,000. That doesn't mean it would make sense to spend $225,000 on the kitchen in my neighborhood. The house is not that special. It just happens to be in a desirable location.

But I find that the cost of labor is higher in those high COLA’s. I think that does and the rule more true, at least here in the Boston area.

I too am trying to calibrate what an appropriate cost is for a major kitchen remodel. Like dmpsd, I live in coastal San Diego, a HCOL area. A home on my street sells for about $1,800,000. Using the 15% guideline, the remodel would cost $270K. However, the cost to completely rebuild my home is less than $700K, per my homeowner's insurance company. I was skeptical that the rebuild cost was too low, so I even had the insurance company (which I highly trust and have been with for over 20 years) send someone out to my home to inspect all of the materials and confirm the rebuild cost is appropriate. All that said, the quote we currently have for remodeling the kitchen is about $175K. My gut feeling is that it's way too much, considering that's more than 25% of the cost to rebuild my entire house from the ground up. Am I off base here?

Rosemary, you have to take land value and cost of living into account too. The cost to rebuild is only for the structure, not the land. Where as the 15% rule(which, admittedly, is totally up for debate) is based on total property value. The cost of labor here in the Boston area is astronomical and is taking up 2/3 of our budget, so I would assume the same would be true or worse in SD. BTW, I lived in PB in my 20’s...SD is one of my favorite places on the earth!

SD is pretty awesome, Momofthree. I don't know how you can tolerate the cold in Boston!
:) It makes sense that COL is a big factor, but please help me understand how the value of the land is related to the cost of a remodel?

The main reason I have sticker shock is that the design build firm we've been working with gave us an original estimate of between $100K and $150K for the kitchen remodel plus some other minor things like remodeling the fireplace near the kitchen so that it has the same aesthetic. We paid the design fee with the expectation that the cost would be in that range, but we wound up with a proposal for $250K- DOUBLE the midpoint of the estimate! Admittedly, we added replacing a few kitchen windows to the scope of the project, but those things definitely didn't justify an increase of $100K+ from the original estimate. We then reduced the scope of the project to be smaller than what we originally discussed (without the extra windows, fireplace work, etc), and yet their latest proposal is still $175K. I'm super annoyed that we've spent months working with this very reputable firm only to arrive at this point. It feels like bait and switch.

@rosemaryap - I feel your pain. I am in Carmel Valley. We did not use a design build firm when we remodeled after my neighbor had an experience very similar to yours. Good luck.

@dmpsd- wow, we're practically neighbors! I'm in Del Mar. If you don't mind me asking, who did you use for your remodel? Is there a private message feature on Houzz?

Hubby and I attended the information session of a well-known design build firm that frequently advertises on the radio. We were told that using a separate architect and contractor is a bad idea because when the contractor starts tearing things down, he/she may find that the structure of the home is different than what the architect thought, and change orders are costly. That made sense to me. But now I'm thinking it would be better to pay one architect for a design we love and then get bids from contractors. Is that what you did?

I think we made the wrong decision because we've now paid for a design that we don't get to keep unless the firm we engaged does the construction. If we do the same thing with different design build firms, we'll have to pay design fees again and might wind up in the same position of receiving a proposal that far exceeds the original estimate. Argh!

@rosemaryap. At OnePaseo for dinner. Will try and figure out how to message when I get home.

I spent 40k but it’s a new build. So I’m not counting flooring plumbing electrical etc. and it’s not very big

When we bought our house and started talking to GCs and kitchen designers, they all said, this is an 80k job. I was shocked....surely a kitchen could be had for half that! We did a lot of work ourselves, including demo, all plumbing and all electric (and yes it was permitted, my dad is an electrician) and still came pretty close to that. Champagne taste I guess. And it’s a big kitchen.

I too live in a HCOL area - East Bay. Way too expensive here. I found that all contractor estimates were either 2 or 3 times what I paid to do the kitchen remodel. Land cost does come in play due to the cost of living of all the contractors. They live in an expensive area so charge accordingly to pay their bills. I ended up skipping the general contractor, pulled my own permit, hired an electrician, a contractor and a plumber, appliance installer and a HVAC guy to move a AC return. My cost was 1/3 the cost of the highest contractor. Oh - I used a custom cabinet maker as they install themselves, so ended up with nicer cabinetry.

It was stressful and took longer. It was definitely worth it.

" It makes sense that COL is a big factor, but please help me understand how the value of the land is related to the cost of a remodel? "

I think it's because everything you buy (from the services of a KD to the tiles on the floor) comes from someone who has higher expenses......And they have higher expenses because, in part, of the real estate costs of their homes, offices, showrooms, and workshops.

Of course, that has nothing to do with your "bait and switch", or the specifics of your project.....I meant it as just a general issue affecting the local economy.