A shopping list for your apartment
It organises your work, helps you keep things in order and, when needed, keep a cool head... Ladies and gentlemen - we give you His Highness the Cost Estimate. Our greatest renovation ally, thanks to which getting through the hardships of construction and finishing an apartment becomes much simpler.
The cost estimate - wasted energy or an essential part of a successful project?
A cost estimate is an absolute must-have for architects and clients alike. To make full use of its potential, it is worth looking at a few important aspects that affect the quality and usefulness of a cost estimate in interior design.
In today's article you will also learn how (and above all - where) to create the perfect pre-construction cost estimate, finishing work cost estimate and full-scale investor's cost estimates for finishing an apartment.
To paraphrase the title of one of my favourite films, here it is:
Everything you always wanted to know about cost estimates but were afraid to ask
A cost estimate is a financial document for a construction project that sets out the price calculation according to established methods, based on a bill of quantities or a measurement of the completed works. In the case of an investor's cost estimate, it is an estimate of the costs to be incurred.
In plain language - it is a breakdown that lets you gather, analyse and optimise the costs of finishing an apartment in one place. A properly prepared document covering building materials and finishing materials, as well as the cost of finishing works and the cost of labour, is the basis for applying for a mortgage.
A cost estimate will also come in handy if we are planning to finish an apartment and are applying for a personal loan - regardless of whether the renovation concerns a property from the secondary market or finishing a new-build apartment handed over in shell condition.
How much does it cost to finish an apartment in 2024?
The answer is short: it depends:)
The final cost of finishing an apartment is affected by a great many factors. Without a thorough analysis of the project and a discussion of the client's expectations, it is really hard to give a clear answer to this question - unless we consider the cost of finishing a new-build apartment under a package offered by the developer.
Ready-made finishing packages do let you estimate a turnkey apartment finish based on a price list per square metre, but if that finishing standard doesn't suit us and we don't want our apartment to look cookie-cutter (fittingly, for something priced by the square metre), an individual cost estimate is essential.
How much does it cost to finish a 60-square-metre apartment?
How much does finishing an apartment cost in Warsaw and other larger cities? Depending on the location and floor area, finishing an apartment with a floor area of around 60 square metres costs approximately PLN 1,600 - 2,000 per square metre. How much does finishing an apartment cost in smaller towns?
Here prices can be as much as 20% lower. Bear in mind that this is a very rough figure that does not include specialist services, custom-made furniture or materials beyond the mid-range.
Finishing an apartment - where do you start creating a cost estimate?
This is where the pre-construction cost estimate comes to our aid: in it, we filter the client's expectations through the solutions available on the market and, above all, through their financial means. This document lets us check which elements of the project we can deliver while keeping the expected quality, and points out where it is worth looking for alternative solutions.
In the preliminary cost estimate (also called a bill of quantities), besides the first calculations of materials and furnishings, we also include an estimated labour cost of finishing the apartment. This is the perfect moment to go through all the points of the project with the client once more and optimise the costs of finishing the apartment.
Presenting the preliminary cost estimate is usually followed by a big cut, elegantly called value engineering, and we move on to the detailed investor's cost estimate. And this is where the real fun begins…
Finishing an apartment - how not to finish yourself off in the process
In one of my previous articles I mentioned that my breakdowns usually resemble a hefty tome, but that's just what cost estimating is like. Even if we take apartments in shell condition, which are less demanding in terms of typical construction items, finishing the bathroom alone can run to dozens of line items, from porcelain stoneware and wall tiles, through sanitary ware, taps and lighting, all the way to labour: laying ceramic tiles, painting walls and ceilings, and fitting the sanitary ware.
When creating cost estimates, I like to follow the basic method of deduction, i.e. "from the general to the specific". By moving the biggest and most important expenses to the top of the list, I get a clear picture of the whole undertaking and find it much easier to keep the budget under control.
What makes up the cost of finishing an apartment?
The first and usually the largest item is, of course, buying the property. I do, however, remember projects where the cost of finishing an apartment or house matched that amount (or even exceeded it), so - each to their own.
Another important point is the labour cost of finishing an apartment, which, unfortunately, clients often treat as an afterthought. Why unfortunately?
The labour cost of finishing an apartment
When wondering how much finishing an apartment costs, clients rarely give much thought to labour costs. Construction and finishing works usually eat up half the budget, which never fails to astonish clients.
Just to be clear - nobody expects our clients to know the current rates for painting or tiling precisely, but from my own experience I can say that it is exactly this item on the list that causes (to quote a classic) shock and disbelief.
Second place in my personal ranking goes to the cost of finishing the bathroom.
To sum up: it is worth starting cost estimating by choosing a general contractor with whom, based on the design, we will define and price the scope of finishing works.
Finishing an apartment - what you can't see
After the consultations, I enter into my cost estimate all the necessary construction works (when we are dealing with building a house or a complete renovation of a property from the secondary market) and labour costs: laying floors, painting walls, laying ceramic tiles, joinery and decorating services - all of this generates huge costs, also when finishing an apartment in shell condition.
The next important item is the cost of building materials and construction chemicals. It sounds a little absurd, but in a cost estimate what you can't see is of huge importance - boards, frames and, of course, carrying out the work itself.
Only once this stage is closed can I see in black and white how much of the budget I can spend on interior doors, the front door, buying furniture, both freestanding and built-in, buying household appliances, lighting, electrical sockets…
The cost estimate - what affects it most?
I think I've already mentioned pricing using the "my brother-in-law's apartment" method, but the topic is important enough to deserve more attention. Why (apart from the ready-made developer packages discussed earlier) is the cost of finishing an apartment such an individual matter?
The first issue is location. The labour cost per square metre in large cities and smaller towns can differ by as much as 30-40%, which, in the case of an apartment with a floor area identical to your brother-in-law's but located elsewhere, can make a considerable difference.
What else is worth remembering when preparing an apartment finishing cost estimate?
Another matter is choosing a renovation crew. When looking for contractors, I strongly advise against going by price alone, but it is worth checking how much tradespeople charge in our area for a specific scope of work, so as not to get ripped off.
Secondly, we need to answer the question of whether the work concerns finishing an apartment in shell condition or a property from the secondary market.
What labour costs can we expect?
The labour cost of finishing an apartment can vary greatly in these cases, because most contractors, knowing the surprises an apartment in an old tenement building can spring on you, make allowances both for the scope and for the expected duration of the work. Sometimes finishing the property and bringing it to shell condition requires more money than the entire finishing that follows.
Finishing works are one of the largest items in a cost estimate, so it is worth giving them more attention.
The cost of finishing an apartment and the prices of building materials
Point three: the prices of building materials. We all remember what happened to the prices of aluminium profiles and OSB boards during the pandemic. Admittedly, these prices have calmed down a little recently (and are holding at absurdly high levels), but there are still occasional slumps, and general contractors, like stock market traders, hunt for the best buying "windows".
With small floor areas you won't feel it, but with houses or large apartments even a slight change can significantly affect the final price of finishing the apartment.
What affects the standard of an apartment's finish?
Finishing materials of a higher standard - the prices of sintered stone or porcelain stoneware bearing the names of famous designers can be several (or even more than ten) times higher than those of ordinary ceramic tiles. Laying them is also priced higher because of the format, thickness or type of material.
It's similar with floors - laying a wooden floor is much more expensive than installing laminate flooring.
Additional costs also come from replacing radiators with underfloor heating, non-standard sizes of doors and windows, and even the technique used for painting the walls.
Of course, the items above concern conscious decisions and specific actions that we take together with the client at the stage of choosing materials and furnishings. A separate category is unforeseen expenses, most often related to finishing an apartment from the secondary market (although they also happen when finishing an apartment from the primary market).
Turnkey apartment finishing - which cost estimating software should you choose?
It's high time to move on to purely practical matters: how do you organise your work with such extensive calculations, spiced up with many variables on top of that? The answer is: as simply as possible, so that the finishing works don't finish us off in the process.
KIS List is a smart shopping list, online cost estimating software, a space for storing data and a platform for communicating with clients, all in one. It owes its name to the slogan Keep It Simple, and these are not empty words!
If creating cost estimates is your nightmare, you'll fall in love with this tool in no time - KIS List complements software for interior designers and is like a virtual assistant that does the worst of the work for us.
Imagine this: instead of spending hours copying data from websites, we go to a shop's website, find the product we're interested in, click, and that very moment it's on our shopping list, which is also a cost estimate. Magic?
KIS List - the perfect tool for creating shopping lists and summarising finishing works
No, although some say that KISer (the browser extension for fetching information, created by Robert) is a magic wand, and if Harry Potter were an architect, he would definitely use it :).
KISer automatically pulls everything that matters for the project from manufacturers' websites or online shops: prices, names, catalogue numbers, the product link and photos of the selected products. The app then automatically puts the specific data into the right fields, adds it all up and voila - your shopping list and cost estimate in one are ready.
The simplest way to estimate finishing costs
While product data is being fetched, our role is limited to pointing to the right project we want to assign the list to; there's no tedious typing in of data and even more tedious checking of the table for mistakes. With KIS List you'll forget altogether that such a thing as a manually filled-in cost estimate or a shopping list in Excel exists.
Once the shopping list is filled with products, we can edit it freely: move products, mark them as options, hide them and add alternative items. It's a real command centre for the project and the budget, which, thanks to full control over all the elements, also makes it easier to cut spending.
The neat, readable breakdown can be exported to PDF or Excel in the blink of an eye and discussed with the client or manufacturer. The quality of documents prepared this way beats all the documents we used to prepare in programs like Excel or Word.
Turnkey apartment finishing with KIS List
And what about the cost estimate? In KIS List, it creates itself - the app automatically calculates the total cost of finishing the apartment by adding up all the products added to the list. Of course, apart from this "top-down" calculation, we can include other items and additional costs in the breakdown.
We can make a cost estimate based on the whole breakdown or itemised by room or product group. From there it's a short step to preparing a document for ordering, but that's not the end of the surprises that will delight every designer's heart.
How to finish an apartment hassle-free?
If we're at the stage of creating a preliminary cost estimate and want to highlight the visual side of the selected items, with one click we can turn a classic list into a moodboard - without having to open graphics programs and arrange the photos on a board ourselves.
It's one of my favourite features, which lets me check in an instant whether everything really goes together - and whether I've forgotten anything.
An essential app for renovating and finishing an apartment
What else can you count on when using KIS List? Virtual consultations with clients, a team chat, a catalogue of 3D models, a favourite products library, and all documentation, invoices, contracts and arrangements always in one place...
KIS List is definitely more than an app for making a shopping list and simple cost estimating. Start your free 14-day trial today and see what KIS List can do for you.
