ᐅ Turnkey vs. Ready-to-Move-In, Owner-Supplied Work

Mizit schrieb:


So, plain plaster on the walls is out of the question—personally, I don’t find that visually appealing at all. In our current rental apartment, we have ceilings and walls covered with a standard white wallpaper with some texture, nothing high-end, which is what we are imagining...

Flooring: Since we still have small children who will likely remain fairly small for about 10 more years, we don’t want to install anything extremely expensive that we’ll regret later when their ride-on toys, sharp stones, and so on leave marks. So solid wood flooring is not necessary in the living room, but it should have a good wood look. Otherwise, I find light, wood-grain glossy tiles quite nice. The floors in the children’s rooms will be fitted with something functional.

Is this roughly realistic?

As often is the case, the high final price is simply due to the large quantity of material. A roll of wallpaper doesn’t cost much, but unfortunately, you need quite a few rolls for an entire house. When we built our house, after visiting 2–3 wallpaper stores/home improvement stores/specialty markets, I estimated as follows:

Basically, there’s a simple rule of thumb for initial calculations: floor area x 2.5 = wallpaper needed per room. For a typical simple single-family house with 140sqm (about 1507 sqft), you need roughly 350sqm (3767 sqft) of wallpaper. Additionally, you have to cover the ceilings (350 + 140 = 500sqm / 5382 sqft).
So the calculation base is 500sqm (5382 sqft) of surface to wallpaper.

Price: a decent wallpaper/non-woven backing costs about €2–3 per sqm (about $2–3). You can of course use textured wallpaper (e.g. "woodchip") and save quite a bit. You also need adhesive to make the wallpaper stick to the wall, which costs about €0.50 per sqm (about $0.50). If you want to paint over the wallpaper afterward (which often makes sense because it lasts much longer — just one more paint coat...), the price can reach almost €1 per sqm (about $1). Adding that up, you end up with roughly €4–5 per sqm (about $4–5). So for a single-family house, the raw material costs are around €2000–2500 (about $2000–2500). You might find some good discounts online, but in physical stores, not much.
Labor costs add another layer to the total price.

The attic won’t be painted or anything like that. If anything, it will be the wooden supports on the outside. Those are very difficult to paint because you can only access them while the equipment is in place — and that usually comes and goes quickly once they have done their job. That’s why we also opted for plastic fascia boards, which don’t need painting (of course, that costs more...).

By the way, the landscaping costs a lot as well. As someone mentioned above, €30,000 (about $30,000) is substantial but not unrealistic. If you don’t have about €1000 (about $1000) per month in savings, you really need to include landscaping in the financing. We didn’t do that, and it took us 7 months of scrimping and saving to gather €12,000 (about $12,000). For €12,000, we are getting a driveway/terrace installed and part of the carport. The carport itself costs another €5,000 (about $5,000). So we already have paving stones and the carport outside, but the rest is still a big mess, and the fence, boundary planting, or similar is still missing... Although one plant may only cost €3–4 (about $3–4), the total adds up significantly if you want to plant a property boundary of about 30 x 20 meters (roughly 100 feet length minus 10 feet driveway...). 90 meters (295 feet) times 5 plants per meter equals 5 * 4 * 90 = €1800 (about $1800) just for “a few” plants, which won’t serve their actual purpose as a privacy screen hedge for at least 5 years.

Payday, thanks for the tip about the formula for rough calculation. I always find that kind of thing interesting.

But even if we generously estimate 3,000 euros (€3,000) for materials, Kern would charge 12,000 euros (€12,000) for the labor. Here again, I have to admit that I don’t yet have a realistic idea of tradespeople’s wages, but at first glance, 12,000 euros (€12,000) for painting and wallpapering a nearly 160 sqm (1,722 sq ft) single-family house seems quite high. That would correspond to a pure labor cost of 75 euros (€75) per sqm (approximately 7 sq ft) – isn’t that rather expensive per square meter?

We will probably have to get some alternative quotes as well…

However, you should calculate the labor based on the wallpapering area, not the "house area."

That means 12,000 EUR / 500 sqm (5,382 sq ft) = 24 EUR / sqm (2.23 USD / sq ft). Suddenly, that’s not so much after all....

But the best advice is what YPG said: talk to tradespeople and ask them for prices or rough quotes. Otherwise, it’s really impossible to estimate accurately....

With a budget of 15,000, there has to be more involved than just wallpapering and painting. Most likely, the entire house’s drywall sheets need to be filled and the ceilings skimmed. After that, everything has to be sanded multiple times to achieve Q3 quality. Or perhaps also the flooring? The cost of materials for that can add up quickly. You’ll be surprised at the additional expenses if, for example, you choose laminate flooring at around 15€/m² (1.40 USD/ft²) just for the raw material price. You need an underlay for soundproofing, which can easily cost 5-7€/m² (0.46-0.65 USD/ft²) when installed over underfloor heating (to ensure the heat reaches the surface). The baseboards also add significant cost because you need a lot of meters of them. And the baseboards still need to be properly attached to the walls, which is another task.

For our 125m² (1,345 ft²) townhouse, wallpapering (non-paintable fleece wallpaper and classic types, and smooth fleece on the ceilings) and painting almost everything afterwards — with all walls and ceilings sanded beforehand (unfortunately not very well done) — cost 6,800€. The painter was from the construction company, used in a different house system where painting and flooring are already included, but we arranged this directly with him. We originally planned to do the painting ourselves with a painter friend, but he canceled last minute due to illness (so much for DIY work through friends…). Luckily, the painter was available.

I can see that we still have no clue about many of the costs... I really thought that using a relatively inexpensive laminate flooring for about 10 euros (approximately 11 USD) would be enough for the kids’ rooms for now.

But we will definitely inquire with local tradespeople to find out what their price expectations would be...

We calculated similarly back then for the flooring, including a safety margin. We estimated laminate at 15€ per square meter for 55 m² (592 ft²). You’ll need at least 1-2 extra packages for cutting waste. So, 60 m² (646 ft²) × 15€ equals 900€. In the end, we paid 1500€ for the materials because of skirting boards and underlay.

For painting work, a site like MyHammer is quite okay. Alternatively, check classified ads, as there are always painters available.