Generally $70–$100 per square foot of the house for a major renovation — less for a refresh, considerably more to take it to the studs.
So a 2,000 square foot house, renovated the way most people mean when they say whole-home renovation, is realistically a $140,000–$200,000 project before windows, mechanicals, structural repairs or the roof.
Whole-home renovation is the hardest thing on this site to price, because “renovating the house” can mean paint and flooring or it can mean every wall opened and a layout drawn from scratch. Those are the same words and a three-times difference in money.
So the first question isn’t how big the house is.
It’s how far this goes.
We think about whole-house work in three depths. Most projects land in one of them, and the difference between them is much bigger than the difference between a 1,600 square foot house and a 2,400 square foot one.
| How far it goes | Starting range |
|---|---|
| Refresh — the layout stays exactly as it is. Paint, flooring, light fixtures, an updated kitchen and bathrooms, and whatever mechanical work is needed to make it safe. Walls stay where they are. | $40–$65 / sq ft |
| Major renovation — kitchen and bathrooms rebuilt, some walls moved, new finishes through most of the house, electrical and plumbing replaced where things are already open. The house you know, working properly. | $70–$100 / sq ft |
| Down to the studs — everything out. Every wall opened, all new wiring, plumbing and heating, and a layout drawn from scratch. The only things kept are the ones worth keeping. | $120–$170 / sq ft |
Those are per square foot of the whole house, not of the part being worked on. And they are the starting point — the age of the house and what you want kept both move them.
Take a 2,000 square foot house and hold everything else steady.
| Depth of work | 2,000 sq ft house |
|---|---|
| Refresh | $80,000–$130,000 |
| Major renovation | $140,000–$200,000 |
| Down to the studs | $240,000–$340,000 |
That spread is the honest answer to “what does it cost to renovate a house.” Until we know which of those three you mean, nobody can give you a number worth anything.
An older house takes longer, and almost none of the extra time shows up in the finished photographs.
| When it was built | Effect |
|---|---|
| After about 1980 — standard framing, modern wiring, drywall, insulation already in the walls | base range |
| Roughly 1940 to 1980 — some mix of old wiring, thin insulation and framing that is close to standard but not quite | about 6% more |
| Before 1940 — plaster and lath, knob-and-tube or early wiring, little or no insulation, framing that is whatever the carpenter had that week | about 14% more |
None of that is a penalty for owning an old house. It is demolition that has to be done by hand, walls that are not where the drawing says, and studs that are not sixteen inches apart. We have written separately about horsehair plaster, knob-and-tube wiring and what happens to old plumbing, because those three things account for most of the surprises in a pre-war house.
This surprises people every time. Saving the original trim, the plaster and the floors is more expensive than tearing them out and putting new ones in, and it is often still the right call.
New trim gets ordered, cut and nailed.
Original trim gets removed without breaking it, labeled, stored, repaired, refitted and refinished.
Budget roughly 10% more across the project when we are preserving rather than replacing. In a house worth preserving, that is usually the best money in the whole job — it is the one thing you cannot buy back later.
That one was a whole-home restoration after ten thousand gallons of water went through the second floor, the first floor and into the basement. The original plaster was skim coated rather than torn out. The trim, the doors, the hardwood floors and the staircase all stayed. Six months of work and one change order in the whole job.
It is the clearest example I have of what the preservation premium buys you, and of why the age of a house belongs in the estimate rather than in a phone call halfway through. The whole project is here.
The ranges above cover the renovation itself. These are the five things most likely to sit alongside it, and they are quoted separately because plenty of houses need none of them and some need all five.
| Not included | Add |
|---|---|
| New windows throughout | $8–$14 / sq ft of house |
| A new heating and cooling system | $12,000–$25,000 |
| A third bathroom or more | $22,000–$38,000 |
| Structural repairs | $8,000–$30,000 |
| Roof or siding | $15,000–$45,000 |
Structural is the widest of those for a reason. Replacing a rotted sill plate under one corner and reframing a floor that has been sagging for forty years are both “structural repairs,” and they are not the same job.
This is worth saying plainly, because it will save some people money.
If the number you have in mind is under roughly $75,000, you are almost certainly better off pricing the rooms individually than pricing the house. A kitchen, a bathroom and a finished basement priced as three projects will get you a more useful number than a whole-house budget stretched across everything.
Whole-house pricing earns its keep when the work is genuinely continuous — when the electrician is in every room anyway and the floors run through.
Spread thin across a house, it just hides which room got the money.
Further apart than any other kind of project, and usually for one of three reasons.
Square footage helps less here than anywhere else on this site. Our own 102 Center Street was about 900 square feet when we bought it, 1,100 when we finished, and it still ran $200,000 to $230,000 — because it needed everything. New electrical, new plumbing, a new heating system, and a rear addition.
A house does not need one kitchen because it is big. It needs one because it is a house.
The kitchen, the bathrooms, the service, the heating system and the permits all cost what they cost whether the house is 900 square feet or 2,600. That is why the per-square-foot number climbs as houses get smaller, and why the smallest whole-house projects are often the ones where pricing room by room makes more sense.
On a refresh, usually yes. On a down-to-the-studs renovation, usually not — and the answer changes the budget, because rent or a hotel for several months is a real number that belongs in the plan rather than as a surprise in month three. We went through that decision in full under living in the house during a renovation.
Decide the depth first, then the house, then the extras. For homeowners around Selinsgrove, Lewisburg, Sunbury, Northumberland, Shamokin Dam, Milton, Watsontown, Danville and the surrounding Susquehanna Valley, that is the order that produces a number you can actually plan around.
$40–$65 per square foot if the layout is staying and the house mostly needs finishes.
$70–$100 if the kitchen and bathrooms are being rebuilt and some walls are moving.
$120–$170 if it is going to the studs.
Then add for the age of the house, for keeping what is worth keeping, and for whichever of the five extras your house actually needs.
Put in the size of the house, how far you want the work to go and roughly when it was built, and you’ll get a realistic starting range before anybody walks through it.
If the number works for your budget, the next step is a fifteen minute phone call. Get the number in the right neighborhood first. Then figure out the details.
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.