Happy national “Reveal Your Foundation Repair cost” day. Brian advised against “cost honesty” (because he is my ultimate protector, which I appreciate), but I’m going to share some real numbers, similar to the asbestos and lead removal quotes (thanks for the feedback there). My hope is that these numbers can provide educational information for others (despite my fears – I’m very, very aware of how privileged we are to be able to even embark on this expensive project). This particular project is all about me learning and sharing, so it’s time to learn and share. Our original goal was to restore this house, make it a proper home to be able to live in (with some but not all bells and whistles), but that has shifted…keep reading. So today I’ll share our four foundation quotes, and walk you through them all (and why we are dialing it back in a good way).

The Foundation Quotes

In our inspection report (above) from Tom said that it needed substantial foundation repair due to settling and some dry rot, but he told us over and over that the house in general was in really, really good shape. When you are in the house, it feels solid besides the sloping. Again, this is not our house that we are living in. It might be a place for my team to create content, the kids to play drums and ping pong with their friends, or sure, hopefully live after college. We have no intention of moving any walls (just adding a tiny bathroom), nor adding a ton of cabinetry or a 500lb cast iron tub. There is only one room that supports an upstairs room, and that room is actually in the best condition, foundation speaking. This house has been around for so long – surely we could just fix it and live with it being OK, but not perfect???? But I didn’t get to that epiphany til after the first quote…

The First Quote – Company A (Hello Sticker Shock!)

The first quote, from Company A, came back at $114k with unknown additional costs to be added as they are discovered. This would include essentially redoing the entire foundation, using different methods for different rooms based on their individual needs (they were all built over time, so they all have different problems). It would require weeks of excavation, re-engineering, digging out crawl space, the works – over 2-4 months. I LOVED this contractor, by the way. He was so knowledgeable, communicative, experienced, and kind. Before he sent the quote, Brian and I were 95% sure we were going to hire him. But then once we got the quote, we looked at each other and had no idea how to proceed. We expected it to be a lot, but it simply didn’t make sense to spend this on this house that we don’t need (and the cost was sure to be much higher by the end). And yes, it could add some value to our property, but if we were to treat this like a proper renovation, it could cost well over $600k. And furthermore, foundation work isn’t even good design content! You can barely even shoot the repair process, and if we did it’s just dirt and wood. I will likely splurge here and there on really special design elements, but this first quote made us totally rethink our approach to this project (thus, us DIY-ing some of the asbestos and lead abatement). We had three other quotes scheduled and I’m so glad that we did…

Wait, But Didn’t The Grit And Polish Lift Their Entire House For 35K??

After I got the first quote, I re-read Kathy and Garrett’s post about how they lifted up their entire house (which was admittedly much smaller and before they added the second floor). They lifted and poured a new foundation (and the works) for $35k. For context, this was in 2021, an hour and a half out of Seattle (meaning this wasn’t 10 years ago and it was near a big city). This made me even more sure that we didn’t need to spend over 100k… We needed to get creative and lower our expectations, while keeping it safe. And it made me even more sure that publishing the costs will help others in similar situations make more informed decisions.

Our Second Foundation Quote:

This was by a massive nationwide company that I thought would be interested in the PR or social media stuff, and potentially offer a discount, but after they assessed and I told them that it was going to be a very “public project,” they backed out. He said that it wasn’t really what they did, and they didn’t feel comfortable doing it. Seems like they were more about strapping larger commercial buildings than repairing vintage farmhouses (and perhaps if they didn’t do a good job, there could be a bad PR experience). Not everyone is interested in getting blasted online 🙂

Our Third Foundation Quote:

This team came out twice, and I really liked them. Ultimately, they said they could do the works for well over six figures (similar to Company A) or do about 1/3 the work for 1/3 the cost (just repair or replace). While they were getting us actual numbers, I got the quote back from Company D (below), which blew us away…

Our Fourth And Final Quote

Company D approached things differently. They can do the massive house lifting/brand new foundation route, should it be in one’s budget, or they could simply repair and replace the problem areas. He said that they work with people of all budgets, and they have a really clean formula for what things would cost, calculated in a program. Once quoted, they do NOT go above that cost (which is not typical for contractors). He did multiple trips and spent a lot of time underneath the house in our 8″ crawl space to make sure they had all the information to plan and give an accurate quote. He asked a ton of questions, trying to understand what we really wanted for each room (and what concessions we were willing to make). Their first quote came back at $90k…. OOF.

But I really liked him, and I remember him saying that they work with all budgets. So I reached out and was super blunt. I asked, “What if we only wanted to spend $25k on repairing the foundation? What if, after thinking about it, we really just wanted to do the bare minimum to make it safe and last another 100 years, but not necessarily another 300 years. Yes, we wanted to level some of the extreme settling that is causing one room in particular to fall into the ground (the old prop room), but what if we didn’t try to make it perfect or brand new?? What’s the minimum they could do and the minimum we could spend to make it legal and safe???

He came back with a whole new plan, based on his experienced assessment of our foundation, reducing the scope by a TON. The new, reduced scope of work came back at $29k.

Now you might be worried that it’s going to be shoddy work, that the house is going to fall down, but I’m not, and neither is the contractor – they do this all day, every day. Basically, only one beam has dry rot (and will be replaced), the rest are fine, but the other companies (and Tom’s advice) were based on completely replacing everything for preventative measures (non-pressure-treated wood can rot). This company would do some light excavating, use some steel adjustable posts to replace the less strong pier and posts, lift the corner of the prop room and put it on a beam, repair the cracks in the poured foundation, and replace any dry rot. But if we were ok with the rooms not being perfectly level, a little wonky, no 90 degree angles, but very safe, then he could do it for that price.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!

Y’all, I can’t stress this enough, so don’t freak out and be worried for us: This house is strong. We aren’t moving walls. It’s been around for almost 200 years, and everybody says it’s in great shape. Is it as strong as a newly engineered/built house? Nope. But it never will be, no matter how much dough we put in it. There is only one room that supports a room above it, and that room is in great shape – its original engineering is strong. The rooms that need more help are the added-on rooms – the prop room, canning room, and gardening shed, which don’t support anything but a roof. I remember reading a few comments from a couple of you, warning me that when a house is this old and cobbled together, messing with it a lot might make it weaker. You are just throwing good money after bad. Extensive foundation repairs won’t guarantee 90-degree angles or a perfectly flat floor. When houses are this old, you either work with them to repair and make them better, put in hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to completely make them “brand new” (essentially what we did for our home), demo them out and start over, or give up. For this guest house, we are going with the Fourth Quote, and we feel GREAT about this, while understanding that this is still a TON of money at $29k.

Like all of life, it’s all about balance. We are now constantly reminding ourselves what we really want out of this house – not a fancy restored cottage with a pebble ice machine, but a pretty, cute cottage full of vintage charm. We are setting up boundaries and parameters for budget and time, and then having fun within them (much like parenting). This house will be a fun flex space with bare minimum amenities and a lot of charming details through vintage and DIYs. The more we pare it back, the more excited I get about it.

*Pretty Photos by Kaitlin Green