[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Thanks guys. After talking to a few people and getting some prices, i’m going to do it myself. Probably contract out the plumbing.

The drywall seems like a pain but hearing costs like $2000 -$5000 just for some taping and mudding, i’ll do it myself even if it takes longer.

Was hoping someone would come on cp and say they just did their basement for under $30,000 but that’s starting to sound unrealistic.

Keep in mind, I think your numbers are also missing quite a few things that you're probably kinda writing off as nothing/not including but contractors would charge full value.

1. Planning/reading/familiarizing yourself with a design
2. Prep/pre-clean
3. Travel/materials selection and acquisition
4. Clean up

I assuming if you were to drive out and grab drywall or even have it delivered that you're not considering that as time. Run out of screws and send someone out to buy some? Same thing. Finish cutting this and that and need to vacuum and throw stuff into the garbage? Ditto. Chatting with sub and explaining what needs to be done or arguing about why they didn't follow the blue print? Hourly rate or whatever.

Consider that a trades person does some of this stuff as a job. DIY has its place for sure, but sometimes if you DIY, it just keeps on getting pushed and nothing gets done.

Knowing what I know now and semi rant on some major snafus during my previous experiences....

Things you can do:

Spoiler!

IMO, for things you are hoping to sub out, spend the time to do the materials acquisition, prep like cleaning or taping etc. and even clean up. Spending 15-20 minutes to write things/draw pics on the wall with permanent marker can save hours. Also look at the big picture and don't be totally cheap with your savings. Spend the money on better materials and equipment as required. Making it easy on the subs can save quite a bit. A few hundred bucks on equipment that functions properly can probably save you time and grief (ie: a good shop vac/multiple shop vac vs a crappy domestic vacuum with crappy suction; a few bucks in ultra sharp olfa blades for box cutters for straighter/smoother cuts; slight premium for good materials/easy to use materials/materials they are familiar with etc.). If it's time, if you can save a few hours of a sub by equipping them better, you get a better result and that time savings essentially pays for the equipment that you get to keep.

Assuming your basement is completely empty and concrete, I'd grab some sidewalk chalk and start marking where you expect walls and outlets and cables (electrical, ethernet, plumbing etc.) and use that as a base point for accurate measurements and planning the blue prints. That's the biggest thing I'd change after everything vs eye balling things with subs and yourself. Mark it down and you can see things with better accuracy to the point you can use those lines to probably even plan furniture acquisitions and/or the ability to move materials in the enclosed spaces. This is especially helpful in discussing things with people with no imagination and/or improve visualization and help deal with issues before you start putting things up. You can even go as far as using spray paint and permanent marker to mark things in a more permanent later on so the subs don't have an excuse when they fuxxor something up (it'll be covered and painted over later on anyways). But sometimes, trying to help just gets in the way of the contractor due to rework/making the job more difficult. So keep that in mind too.

I've been a part of a few situations where the plans constantly had to be revised because the estimates didn't take into account existing vents or pillars or things like that. I've been a part of a development where the idiot GC put the blue print in a box and stacked crap on it and had subs running around with crappy photocopies of blue prints that were several drafts behind and incorrect.

Things I've learned developing my basement, standing in for the GC for an office development and refreshing my new home purchase are:

Spoiler!

- Paint: Don't pay full price. A place like Sherwin Williams will easily offer 30-40% off if you find the coupon and/or set up an account with them. Paint is surprisingly more expensive than expected.

- Floor: Especially basement floor, depending on how you'll use the basement floor, really spend the time to consider heated floor or use a hardwood underlay so that the floor isn't too cold.

- Materials wise: Spending 20-30% more isn't a big cost in the grand scheme of things. The time and labour and reversing a decision is the more expensive component IMO. For instance a Cat 7 cable might be double in price to something like a Cat 6, but for a few hundred bucks more for the entire home, you're future proofing by pulling 10 Gigabit vs 1 Gigabit lines. The Primecables website was pretty solid prices for this stuff. They sell on Amazon too. Spending a few bucks more per wall plate is another way to really make the place look snazzy. A couple hundred bucks worth of crown moulding and baseboards is also a pretty good use of money IMO. Timbertown had some pretty bonkers sales on occasion.

- Materials acquisition: Don't choose a single stop shop hardware store and settle. There are some things on Amazon that were better than what was available in store for a fraction of a price ranging from fixtures, hardware and dumb things like hinges. Plus the selection is more than most hardware stores and you can get the stuff delivered to your door vs driving out and dragging it home. I'd suggest shopping around and getting 2-3 prices on certain things. I used much of those savings to acquire premium materials than I would have obtained through a big box hardware store. I even looked in sourcing from a smaller town (Didsbury/Crossfield etc.) and I was able to get some pretty good deals sourcing a large order and making it an easy sale/margin/scheduling for them. They'd just drop off a pallet of the materials on their way out of town after they pick up their materials from their supplier in Calgary. Open box and clearance stuff is also sometimes fricken awesome.

- Additional cost savings: Other than volume/member discounts to do a quick check into, I acquired an Amazon credit card and took advantage of a 5% cash back offer. I believe there are other credit cards out there that will offer an introductory cash back offer of 4-5% for the first $2-5K in spending. Definitely consider looking into those. $5K worth of materials is $200-250 as a minimum.

- Lights: Many people glaze over this, but holy hell, it's crazy how different some places will look with $50 worth of 2700K LED light color lights vs 3000K LED light color lights. We're talking colors that appear and disappear like tan, purple, white etc. and/or colors that suddenly pop or become subtle. Not just paint, but hardware like brushed Pewter that suddenly looks closer to an oil rubbed bronze with the yellowy light vs satin silver or stainless steel in whiter light. I highly recommend playing with the different colors using floor lamps before settling on one or using combinations of certain ones.

- Cleaning costs vs building costs: A top down cleaning with a cleaning company might cost less than $500. A vent cleaning is about that to half that depending on the size of your home. You might save more than that by allowing work to be done closer to the construction site rather than let's say paying someone to work in a garage and walk across your home constantly with materials or to measure/re-measure etc. (which I did and I think it saved probably 5-10 hours on something tedious like baseboards which required distance plus stairs at times) Plus these professional cleaners might do a better job than you can and a clean nice finished build with no dust is kinda like that extra cherry on top that can kinda impress friends when you show them.

- Utility room sound: I highly recommend figuring out how to dampen sound from the utility room. This includes lengthening vents across the room further away from the furnace, dampeners, insulated walls to absorb sound, solid core doors to deaden sound etc. The guy I hired didn't do a good job and I had to sort out a few things after the work was done with a different HVAC guy later on which was more costly and not as effective as doing it right the first time. Plus, cleaning sucks.

I developed a roughed in (mainly plumbing) 650 sq ft ish basement for around $33-35K around 2015 through a GC I knew. I think you can keep your costs to your budget if you do certain things yourself and sub certain important parts of the project. You can also save a ton if you are careful with your acquisition costs. $50-100 bucks here and there might seem negligible, but consider if you do this 20-30 times, that's a few grand right there.

DoubleF's dumb anecdote:

Spoiler!

For the price, my basement had premium trim, a media room, a display landing, storage space, spare bedroom with attached full ensuite.

I think the GC had a few lazy subs that required him to show up on site in person to fix dumb things that weren't done right at all which ate away at his margin because he had to fix it out of his own pocket. Super dumb things like being morons and not using a few cents worth of wall plugs to install a towel holder, so time and effort to fix, patch and paint the holes plus replace the damaged towel rack. This after the thing ripped out of the wall when the GC did a demonstration with a winter jacket. Or major gaps in the base board/crown molding because the idiots installed some right side up and some upside down and went full "not my problem" on the work they did. The actual work done likely should have cost $3-5K more for the rework/removing lower end components for the upgraded components to agree to the contract and a discount to keep me from strangling the GC for a seemingly constant stream of things that had to be reversed because the subs were lazy and didn't double check before doing things. I also had to add around $1-2K of rework a few years later to fix some idiotic things that certain subs didn't do properly that required fixing (ie: mainly vents and cable pulling related).

I took all these lessons and did a major refresh (not really reno as it was mostly paint, trim and doors) on my recent home (3 floors) for around $40K. If I didn't learn those lessons, what I did on my place might have easily cost $70-80K through a GC.

EDIT: Oh and for doors. I had to install a ton of doors, so my savings were a bit bigger, but Ryobi has these door installation kits that include easy use chisels. My contractor was blown away that this product existed and could help with the chiseling for dead bolts and strike plates and hinges for the door, rather than have to chisel each one out completely free hand to make it fit at the frame or drag a door back and forth from a routing tool.

https://www.amazon.ca/Ryobi-A99LM2-L...JH3HAQZ8JCX605

https://www.amazon.ca/Ryobi-A99HT2-I...JH3HAQZ8JCX605