I bought a Toll brothers home in Northern Colorado.

After doing all my electrical, low voltage and interior design options I’m at $85k about 30k more than I wanted to do for design upgrades.

So it’s my home that I intend on staying in for at least 10 years so I want to make it to my liking.

I’m trying to figure out where I can trim down and DIY..

Biggest costs-
$19k Yorktowne cabinets. This is for the whole house. I chose that cause I wanted a flush flat face in a pure black.
$7k to get the WPC wood flooring to great room, upstairs hallway, and loft. (forgot the first floor bedroom/study so that’ll be another $2k
$8k in counter top (chose a white quarts with dark stone in it that looks kinda like marble, for kitchen and master bath) I can save 3k by going with a lower tier quartz like a solid gray or white color, or a raw stone quartz those look cool too.
$4k to tile the shower and pan in main floor
$5k to tile great room fireplace to the ceiling
$5.5k to tile the master bath shower and bathroom floors
$6.3k on kitchen appliance package (built in gas cooktop) chimney range hood. If I went with the lower tier package I’d get an under cabinet range hood which I’m cool with but I like the look of the chimney hoods. I can diy to a chimney in the future but when removing the existing cabinets above may ruin the sides of the cabinets next to it so nervous on that.

Something like a counter backsplash I can do..
I’m looking up to see if I can go with the standard shower in the main floor, and then pull the shower pan and included tiles and tile it myself after.

I may even be able to tile the fireplace wall myself too, since it’s a 20’ ceiling I just gotta get a scaffold.
So I can see myself maybe doing the DIY for the main floor bathroom($4k), backsplash ($900), tiling great room fireplace ($5k).

I might drop the appliance package to the $4.5k one and save $2k.

What y’all think? I can save probably 8-10k on some DIYs, but It feels kinda silly to get a new build and start tearing down things.

I have no fuking clue

Not sure breh

Make sure you don't get MDF baseboard.

Ugh I went with the included baseboards. Which I think are wood. I want a flat planet modern one, but I’ll prob diy that Down the line, it was 2k.

& the reason my cabinets were that much was was bc if I wanted any other flat panel, it would’ve been mdf

It’s all kitchen and bathroom stuff, I think those being two of the biggest value-added rooms when selling. Not sure if you’d get the full $85k back when selling down the road, but probably worth it if the upgrades will add enough to your enjoyment of the place while you live there

Regardless of how much money you (or people in general) have or don’t have.......$8k for countertops is ridiculous. People get way too carried away with their houses IMO.

$8k could buy so much cool chit/experiences that could truly improve ones life....rather than just fkn countertops.

No hate op......just my thoughts on out of control consumerism.

You may be able to save some money on the cabinetry/countertops.

The marble look quartz tops you are describing normally goes for around 65/sf - 120/sf installed depending on manufacturer and labor mark ups. I dont know the pricing in your area, but as far as large manufacturers are going I'll list off a few big manufacturers from least expensive to most. The manufacturer sells the slabs to fabricators who then cut and install it. Most fabricators will charge you 100-200 for the sink cut out as well.
MSI --> Silestone --> Cambria

Cabinetry --> Find a local/somewhat local guy that sells imported cabinetry. Send them an email with your layout and the style you like. They should be able to offer you an estimate. I don't know if you are getting a good deal since I dont know the size of your kitchen, and what optioned pull outs and **** you have.

Best of luck bro

Tbh I’m not sure how much countertops go for.

They’re like these. I thought this for the kitchen and master bath weren’t too bad.




But I can def save 2.5 - 3k and go with the flat white or something like this.


I figure I’m in a good location and the stuff I put in the house will just add to the overall value later.

Toll fuks you on options doesn't it? As in you can't see what you'll pay until you agree to upgrade?

Imo it's always worth upgrading, you might pay a bit more of a builder premium but ripping stuff out and replacing it after the fact is a huge PITA

Fwiw I bought a toll house and fukkin hate it, it's only 5 years old but the build quality is horrific and the boomer former owners were too stupid to get the builder to fix everything while they were still under warranty. The plumbing was backwards so it took 5 mins to heat up the sink and shower, subfloor is fukked etc. Make sure toll don't cut corners dude

I'm about to drop 150k on tearing out all the boomer chit and poor toll work and redoing the entire downstairs. I'd have built with a custom builder if I could have found a lot 5 mins from my office, but there you go

tiling has to be one of the easiest things to do. but $80k is not a big budget and u said ur like over by $30k sounds like u got other things to worry about

No, they give you the price of the upgrades.

Yea I’m specifically being strategic with where I’m doing upgrades. Ex recessed lighting, electrical (upgrading outlets to be under cabinets so they don’t show on backsplash, conduits to hide wires etc), & doing wood floors, cabinets, bathrooms etc.

What issues have you noticed? I spoke with a ****** neighbor who’s having his built and he’s spotted things that he’s having them correct.

I looked up how much you should spend on upgrades, and google said 12% of base price.
My base price was 569k, and after structural upgrades it’s 590k, so this is 85k over the base I’m using of 590k.

My equities already gone up since they raised the base to 599k now. I was shooting to stay under 650k initially. I’m selling a home right now under contract for 500k that’s free and clear. So I can def do a 20% down and make payments. But me being over is just what I’d thought I’d spend.

The worst chit is the whole house creaks like a fukking pirate ship. The stairs all creak, the entire floor makes noise, I can hear it going up into the roof.

Our contractor says he needs to tear out the entire subfloor, luckily he's only charging us $4k while he redoes the floor to replace it

The plumbing was incorrect

The actual floorplan is kind of retarded tbh, the laundry room is 6x6 for a 5000 square foot house, the kitchen layout is fukkin stupid too so that's getting redone.

Mainly it's the creaking noise that drives me insane tho, we had a concrete slab home in texas that made zero noise compared to this chitbox

any retard knows you focus on structural upgrades....get carpet in as many places as you can and replace with wood or whatever after.

Lol @ 4k to tile a fkn shower.

should just legit build a house if you wanna go that route, hire a few guys to help you and get as much of it done yourself as possible to keep costs down and it'll be designed/laid out exactly how you want it

Where do you live now? 5k sq ft damn.

& yea that would drive me nuts too. My 1978 home right now doesn’t do that or at least I haven’t noticed.
My stepdad tiled the whole kitchen to breakfast area, down the hall to the foyer lol.

LMAO... no, just no. Educate yourself....it's clear you don't have knowledge in the basics of this.

Non of that is going to add value...if it does, it will be very little.

unfortunately lots in this area cost about 350k an acre, this house has an acre and most of the homes in this subdivision have 1-2

Also the costs have gone up so much, if we'd built in 2019 an 800k house is now 1 mil+ for the same home, but yeah I totally agree and wish I could have built but my wife wanted a house NOW

In a new build? I guess I could get carpet in the whole upstairs and then just buy the same flooring and have it installed.
It’s $11k for the carpet / wood right now. I’ll see how much the cost would be for the wood if I buy it. Will lightly fall around 7k-8k I think for cost, 1300sq ft I’d have to do and it’s $5sqft, then labor.

But the shower I might seriously consider doing myself.

Not going to dox myself since this is my 3rd account account now lol, but it's on the east coast

We had a 1960 house in CA that had a crawlspace etc but didn't make any noise at all. When I walk in the kitchen bottles on the island vibrate because the joists are so long. We need to add a bunch of piers to try to fix it

The other thing is the quality of trim is absolutely trash. There's gaps, misaligned pieces, it's all terrible quality. I'm OCD about that chit so I'm replacing it all. Even the door frames aren't all the same height and there's a 1.5" gap under some doors

The reason we don't just start over is 5000 sqft on an acre here goes for like 1.4 mil new and we got this right before the market went retarded so actually got it under asking (at 2.5% interest) I'm reluctant to start over


Toll has 3d Walkthroughs on their website OP which plan did you get? Ours is a ugly boomer trim version of this plan

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=r2YXZq5NJCF

Sheesh that’s a lot of land. All the communities in Colorado are cramped up now. My sold house sits on 8500 sq foot lot and I thought that was small when I first moved here.

Yea it’s hard to maintain quality because it’s just a big company and they hire immigrants who are just there to work. I intend on walking through every week to make sure everything’s good.

If a Mexican guy here can do a lot of that stuff, I know I’m very meticulous when I work on my stuff so I’d make sure it’s done right

Yes. In the one im getting built, I even asked if they can put carpet in the the tiled areas or at least keep it untiled...they wouldnt/ I would at least ask. Much cheaper to get it tiled yourself vs them.

Also, i would rethink the cabinets...19k?!!!

Those are some high ass prices.

It’s a builder :/

Maybe I can go with the included countertops and then just have it installed after close by counter top contractors? Ugly granite countertops are currently included.
I can’t imagine the mark up would be that high.

Just make sure you get a pre drywall 3rd party inspection and take pics of all the walls and stuff, in case you want to modify or do changes, you easily know where all the wires/plumbing, studs, wtc are.

The new tolls here have 9000 sqft max, this was a 2014 house built in an area where they have septic fields, next to a water shed, so the city mandated 1 acre per lot.

The bonus is its next to a nature preserve and there's like 50 acres of trees owned by the HOA between the houses so the whole subdivision feels like it's in a wood which is awesome

That and the 5 min commute is also why I don't want to sell and start over.

Deft stay on top of them, they will HATE you for doing it but it's essential to get it all done right

It’s 15k base, but I extended my island, and I added a full bath on main floor, so they charged for those additions :/ they’re Yorktowne.

I only have one week to finalize everything so I’ll see if I can get quotes for flooring. If the savings is less than 2k I wont bother bc that’s not enough to have contractors be tearing up your new build lol.

I think for tiling the master shower and other shower I’ll do that after then and save the 10k. Cause I know the cost of the tiles will be less than 2k.

Great point. Repped