Turnkey vs. ready to move in, own contribution

So, just plain plaster on the walls is out of the question, personally I don't find that visually appealing at all. In our current rental apartment, we have ceilings and walls wallpapered with a normal white wallpaper with some texture, nothing high-end, that's what we envision...

Flooring: Since we still have small children who will probably stay small for about 10 years, we don’t want to install anything extremely expensive and then regret it when Bobby cars, sharp stones, and so on leave marks. So, it doesn’t have to be real wood in the living room, but it should still have a good wood look; otherwise, I find light, grained-glossy tiles quite nice. The kids’ room floors will be equipped with something functional.

Is that roughly realistic?

As so often, the hefty final price is simply due to the huge amount of material needed. A roll of wallpaper doesn’t cost much. Unfortunately, you need a few more rolls for an entire house. When visiting 2-3 wallpaper stores/hardware stores/specialty stores for our house, I calculated roughly like this:

Basically, there is a simple rule of thumb that is roughly accurate for calculation: floor area x 2.5 = necessary wallpaper amount per room. For a typical simple single-family house with 140sqm, you need roughly 350sqm of wallpaper. Additionally, wallpaper for the ceiling is added (350 + 140 = 500sqm). So the calculation basis is 500sqm of surface to wallpaper.

Price: a decent wallpaper/fleece costs about €2-3 per sqm. You can of course use woodchip wallpaper and get significantly cheaper. You also need paste to keep the stuff stuck to the wall, costing about 50 cents/sqm. And if you want to paint over your wallpaper afterward (which often makes sense because it lasts much longer—just paint over once more...), that adds nearly €1/sqm. Adding this up roughly comes to around €4-5/sqm. That means material costs of €2000-2500 for a single-family home. Big discounts are maybe possible online; in local stores, surprisingly not much.

Labor costs are another step up.

The attic won’t be painted or anything like that. If anything, it’s the wooden supports from the outside. Those are extremely difficult to paint because you can basically only do it while the equipment is still in place, and it goes away pretty quickly once they have glued it on. That’s why we opted for plastic supports, which don’t need painting. (Of course, that costs something…)

By the way, the outdoor area costs a lot more, really a lot. As someone mentioned above, €30,000 is a hefty sum but not unrealistic. If you don’t have €1000 per month to spare by saving drastically, you basically have to finance the outdoor area. We didn’t do that and managed to scrape together €12,000 in 7 months by being stingy. For €12,000, we can get a driveway/terrace installed and part of the carport. Another €5,000 comes on top for the carport. Then we’ll have paving stones + carport outside; the rest is still a bomb, and the fence/boundary planting or something similar is still missing... Although a plant might only cost €3-4, it adds up to a significant amount if you want to plant your property boundary with dimensions of 30x20m (100m length - 10m driveway, etc.). 90m length times 5 plants per meter is then 5*4*90 = €1800 just for "a few" plants that will realistically only start their actual role as a privacy hedge in at least 5 years.

Payday, thanks for the hint with the formula for the rough calculation. I always find that interesting.

But even if we generously calculate 3000 euros for material costs, Kern would charge 12,000 euros for the labor. Again, I have to admit that I still don’t have a realistic idea of craftsmen’s wages, but at first glance 12,000 euros for painting and wallpapering a single-family house of just under 160 sqm seems quite a lot? That would correspond to a pure labor cost of 75 euros per sqm – isn’t that rather expensive per sqm?

We will probably have to get alternative offers as well...

But then you don’t have to calculate the labor cost based on the "house area," but on the wallpapering area.
That means 12000 Eur / 500sqm area = 24 Euro / sqm. That suddenly isn’t much at all....

But the best thing is what YPG said, talk to craftsmen and get prices from them, or have them make rough offers. Otherwise, you really can’t estimate it....

With the 15,000 there has to be more in it than just sticking wallpapers and painting. probably the whole house spackling the drywall panels, spackling the ceilings. then sanding everything multiple times to Q3 ?? quality. or perhaps also floor coverings? there the material cost also hits hard again. you will be surprised at what costs still come on if you choose, for example, a laminate for about 15€/sqm in pure material price. you need an impact sound insulation underneath, which with underfloor heating easily costs 5-7€/sqm (so that the heat actually reaches the top). and the moldings also cost a lot because a lot of meters add up. and the moldings also have to be attached to the wall somehow uw

for our city villa 125sqm the wallpapers (non-woven and classic types that aren’t painted, ceiling smooth fleece) and then almost everything painted (some special rooms were wallpapered with non-paintable wallpapers) with all walls and ceilings sanded beforehand (unfortunately not really well done...) cost 6,800€. it was the painter who is used by the construction company in another house system (where painters and floor coverings are already included), but arranged directly with him. we actually wanted to do the house ourselves with a friend who is a painter. but he canceled shortly before due to illness (so much for the topic of self-performance by friends...). luckily the painter had time...

I can already see, we have no clue about many costs yet... I really thought that with a rather cheap laminate for just under 10 euros, it would be done for the children's rooms for now.

But we will definitely inquire with local crafts businesses to see what their price expectations are...

we calculated similarly back then for the flooring including safety margin. Laminate calculated at 15€ for 55sqm. at first you need at least 1-2 more packages due to offcuts. so 60sqm * 15 = 900. in the end we paid 1500 for the material because of skirting boards and impact sound insulation.

for painting work something like MyHammer is also quite okay. or check out classifieds, there are always painters there.