Hi Reader,
I'm helping a friend with her bathroom renovation right now. On its face, it’s pretty simple: take out the tub, put in a shower, replace the vanity and tile. A basic remove & replace.
She'd already priced the shower, the tap, and the tile, and she had a figure in her head she felt good about.
But there were a few things she hadn’t priced out:
- The plumber moving the drain over an inch or two to fit the new shower insert.
- The days it takes for the tiling guy to do his thing.
- The cost of hauling the old tub out of the house and disposing of it.
Turns out the fixtures and materials were the cheap part. And unless you are planning to DIY everything, you’ll find the same thing happens on pretty much every project.
It’s easy to forget about labour because you don’t see it on the shelf at Home Depot. And yet it’s easily half of most projects, if not more.
The cost of labour is why it’s so tempting to DIY. Time is the most expensive commodity out there — and in construction you need a lot of it.
But you're not just paying for time.
You're paying for expertise and troubleshooting, for the tools you don’t want to buy yourself, and for the mess that gets carried away when the trades leave.
So when you build your budget, price the labour right alongside the materials. Better yet, ask your contractor or trade to split the two on the quote, so you can actually see it.
Until you have a realistic sense of how much labour will cost, you haven’t got a good budget.
What are your questions about pricing out the labour costs on a home project? Hit reply and I’ll give you my best advice — maybe in a future newsletter!
Have a great weekend,
Gerald
P.S. Labour aside, here are 20 other unexpected costs you might not have included in your budget.