About the Author

Olivia Bellamy

Olivia Bellamy has spent over 10 years working in residential construction project management, giving her a front-row seat to where home budgets go wrong. Her job has always been in the middle, keeping projects on track and translating what builders say into what homeowners actually need to know. She started writing about home building costs because she got tired of seeing people go into major projects with no real sense of what things cost or why.

Blogs Posts

Basement finishing cost runs between $15,000 and $75,000 for most US homeowners, with a national average around $30,000 to $50

Rewiring a house runs $10,000 to $30,000 for most US homes, or about $5 to $17 per square foot depending

Messy pantry shelves slow everything down. You buy food you already have, lose ingredients behind boxes, and find expired items

Building a new home in the U.S. costs between $150 and $300 per square foot on average, which puts a

Heard the term rough in plumbing and wondered why everyone treats it like such a big milestone? It can be

A house foundation type decision can shift your total build budget by $10,000 to $60,000 before you’ve bought a single

Have you ever looked at an old brick home and noticed how perfectly everything lines up? That is often the

Painting kitchen cabinets sounds easy until the doors come off, the drawers are stacked in the garage, and you realize

A fire pit area that looks planned and holds up over time does not have to cost a lot, and

I have sat across from enough homeowners in pre-construction meetings to know that the first real question is always: “So

Deck quotes can be confusing because the same project name can refer to very different work. A small pressure-treated platform

Finish Level Cost Per Sq Ft Best For Basic $25 to $50 Open family room, play area, simple office, storage

Seen & Celebrated

Type in what you’re looking for!