How to Budget for a New Floor
Making a budget to change your home's flooring, and how it can save you money.
New flooring is one of the most popular renovations homeowners in the Charlotte NC area, make to their home or rental property. There are many reasons why homeowners make changes to their flooring products, and new flooring is a home improvement that always makes a home look better. The main reason why most homeowners change flooring products in the Charlotte NC area is wear and tear, especially flooring products that are located in high traffic areas like hallways and kitchens. Another reason why homeowners will change flooring products, is that they are simply tired of the look of their current flooring product, and are simply looking for a change to their home's interior design. Then you have the homeowners building new or making repairs from water damage. No matter what the reason is for you to decide to change the flooring in your home, the best way to start your flooring project, is to make a budget. A good budget will give homeowners a price range when shopping for materials, an idea on how much labor will cost, and keep homeowners from overspending on flooring cost. Budgets set goals for the homeowners to help keep spending cost in order, leading to customers who use budgets paying less for new floors then customers who do not use a budget.
In order to get a good working budget, homeowners are going to need to know how to set up a flooring budget. The first step in making a good flooring budget, is to get the measurements of the area you are going to put new floors. With labor and flooring materials both being sold and quoted in square foot pricing, it is critical to know the area of space you are going to be flooring in your home. Once we have these measurements, it will make adding up the budget a lot easier. So lets first talk about how we come up with the area of the room, or the square footage measurement of a room. Figuring square footage is a really easy formula, and all you will need to measure is the length and width of the room. Once you have the length and width of the room, simply multiply the length times the width, or L x W = square footage. If you have more than one room to put floors in, simply measure each room, use the square footage formula above to get your square footage, then add the square footage of the rooms together, to find the total amount of square footage to be floored. It is good to write down all of your measurements and label your rooms, as you may use different flooring products in two separate rooms, and this will be helpful when shopping for flooring materials and installation labor. Also, when budgeting for flooring materials, be sure to add a small waste factor, such as 10%, to make sure you will have enough flooring to finish your project, as cut pieces on ends often are not usable anywhere else. Generally, not much material, however a factor to keep in mind. Your list should look something like this:
Home Measurements
Room Measurement Square Footage Total
Living/Den Area 25 x 20 500 Square Feet
Hallway 8 x 20 160 Square Feet
Bedroom 15 x 20 300 Square Feet
Total Square Footage: 960 square feet
Now that you have the measurements taken and calculated into square footage for your project, it will make things a lot easier when you go to shop for new flooring products, and the associated installation materials and cost. If you go into any big box home improvement store or big wholesale flooring retail outlet, pretty much all the materials are priced by the square foot. If you have a $2.00/square foot budget for materials, you'll automatically know what flooring products are in your budget and what your choices are. Once you have figured out what flooring product you are going to use, you simply take the flooring product price, and multiply it by the square footage of the room, or total if you are using the same product in every room. Let's say for example, a homeowner in the Charlotte area wants laminate floor in living room & den area, and carpet in the bedroom. You have a carpet and a laminate flooring product picked out, and have pricing for the products as well. You simply multiply the square footage of the rooms x the square foot total, being sure to add a 10% waste factor to your square footage. Your material list for your flooring project, should look like this:
Materials List Price Square Foot + 10% Total Cost
Armstrong Aged Cherry Laminate Flooring $2.99/sq. ft. 726 square feet $2,170
Old Oak Frieze Carpet $2.34/sq. ft. 330 square feet $772
Total Flooring Material Cost: $2,942 * Sales Tax 8% = $3,177.36
*Prices taken from www.lowes.com
Now that you have your material cost figured out, its time to start shopping for labor. Most home improvement stores like Lowe's, where we took our flooring pricing from, offer installation on flooring products, however they are often marked up labor rates from local flooring contractors that will do it for a lot less if you deal with them directly. There are a lot of easy ways to find flooring installers in the Charlotte NC area, by using online resources such as Google, Bing, Yelp!, Craigslist, and other sites where home improvement service providers list their businesses. Many of the same flooring contractors on these posting boards, are the same installers that the big box retail stores use for there installation services. By eliminating the middle man, customers can save big money on labor cost for flooring installation. A good rule of thumb when selecting a flooring contractor to install your new floors, is to call and get estimates from 3 or more flooring contractors, to help get a going labor rate for flooring installation in your area. More than likely, these prices will be relatively close in pricing, and your decision will more than likely come down to which contractor you like better during the estimating process. Catching flooring products on sale can save a lot of money when re-flooring your home, however labor cost is generally where homeowners can save the most money when installing new floors in their home. Here is some general information an estimate should include:
Flooring Product Labor Rate Labor Cost
Laminate Flooring $1.50/sq. ft. $1,100
Carpet Installation $2.00/sq. ft. $660
Total Labor Cost: $1,760
Total Flooring Cost: $3,177.36 (materials) + $1,760 (labor cost) = $4,937.36
Also, with laminate flooring, and some other flooring products, trim accessories such as quarter-round or shoe molding may be needed as well. Trim accessories are sold and measured in linear feet, so simply add up the perimeter of the rooms to figure your materials and labor cost for trim installation. We will follow up with an entire blog post on how to measure, budget, and price labor form trim accessories, but for our example, your notes should look something like this for this particular flooring project:
Trim Material Linear Feet Material Cost Labor Cost Total Trim Cost
Quarter Round 146 linear feet $0.60/ft. ($88) $1.00/ft. ($146) $234.00
Total Project Cost = Total Flooring Cost ($4,937.36) + Trim Cost ($234.00) = 5,171.36
As you can see from our example, creating a budget for a flooring project is pretty simple, when you have all the required information needed to create one. Once you have your budget set, try to stick to it as much as possible, and also use it as a tool for saving some money on flooring material cost or flooring installation cost. A good budget will also help the homeowner know how much money to budget towards this particular home improvement project. Budgets offer many great advantages to homeowners looking to install new flooring into their homes, so we hope that this article, on generating a flooring budget, was helpful to our readers.
At MB Construction Company, we offer Charlotte area homeowners competitive labor prices, as well as free estimates, including generating the material list for the customer for free. We help homeowners save money on installing new flooring by eliminating the middle man, low overhead cost, and competitive flooring labor pricing. We stick to our estimates, so you also know what you are paying up front. Any changes in work will be generated with a separate estimate, and a change order to the initial estimate will be applied only after the customer and MB Construction agree to a fair price. Often times, homeowners love their flooring choice so much after seeing one room completed, they often want to add other rooms to the project as well, resulting in additional cost for both materials and labor. A quality, trustworthy flooring contractor will always be upfront about pricing, and fair when pricing change orders. Flooring your home can make it feel like a new home, so we hope that this article has been helpful in taking your flooring project to the next step.
Stay tuned to our blog for more ideas and tips on home improvement projects, in addition to ways on saving money on home improvement projects. Feel free to comment, and also leave ideas for new blog entries as well.
Authored by:
MB Construction Company
Charlotte NC Home Improvement Contractor
Phone: 704-267-7763
Website: http://www.mbconstructioncompany.com
Free Estimates on all Home Improvement Projects!
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