We're dabbling with the idea of building a second kitchen for me to do cakes out of. I talked to a local bakery that added onto her house and she said it costed her $60,000 but she has a full bakery (with donuts, breads, etc.). I just want to be able to do cakes. Just wondering if anyone has done this and what a ballpark cost would be. I can't see it being $60,000 for a small addition and just enough room for the essentials.

I'm in Wisconsin and am fairly aware of the laws pertaining to this so please don't tell me to look into renting kitchen space from someone else. It would not pay for me. Thanks!!!

LOL...I looked at the topic title and was thinking about how expensive it is to go to a ball game!

Talk to a contractor. Talk to ten contractors. Could it be 60K for a small addition? Easy.

Do I hear someone out there saying, "But it's just wood and nails?"...Only kidding. The contractors will give you free estimates and you can price the equipment you want ... cooler, oven, freezer, mixer.

My equipment was $48K but included a $7K comm'l dishwasher, a $1200 walk in refrigerator, an $800 deep fryer and a 6-burner stove. Construction was $28K. I started with an empty box-room, had to trench thru concrete for the water lines, special HD approved ceiling tiles, even special HD approved wall coatings (paints). I have just under 1200 sq ft total.

Off the topic for one minute... Debi-(indydebi) I have to again compliment you for sharing! You are probably the person who sticks out the most in my mind because you always are willing to help. And you share whatever you have-nothing is held back, I for one appreciate your help and I know the other CCer's do too! Now back to the question at hand...( sorry)

i think you will be quite surprised to see how expensive it is and how fast the $$$ mounts up. I got a quote just to covert half of a double garage in to a commercial kitchen, and not including any appliances was going to be $12K that was 6 yrs ago. You might be able to get your building built if you know people that will do parts of it for you, otherwise i think it will be pretty high.

i spent 28K 8 years ago to open a storefront.

i think with craigslist and ebay auctions and careful buying you could buy things for a lot less.

i'm gonna build a small building on my property here in the next couple years...i'm gonna do it on the cheap, i don't have 60K.

i can do a lot of the work myself.

Thanks for the advice. The room I would add on would not be anywhere near 1200 sq ft (heck, our house isn't even that big!) And I wouldn't be having a walk in freezer or anything like that... just the basics. My husband used to build homes so he's fairly knowledgable and would be able to do most of it himself. We will see! Thanks!

We built a basement room for my commercial kitchen. It's around 160 sq ft (which, I have to say, is NOT big enough, but hey, it was all done on the cheap and it's all paid for). The most expensive part was the sinks. I have a $40 fridge, a stove which was free, plus Ikea stainless steel stuff, a set of chrome shelves from Costco. Nothing is 'commercial' quality because I don't need it to be and couldn't afford it anyway! It did, however, pass the health dept inspection and I love being fully licenced and legal. I reckon we spent, in total, including flooring, paint, appliances, shelving etc, maybe $5k max.

mommabuda,

it's cool that you are getting a tour. Please let us know how it went

The tour was GREAT! This lady was very helpful and willing to answer any questions that I may have in the future. I was worried because I had heard so many things about Wisconsin being a tough state to get by in but really, it's not all that bad. The kitchen she had was a pretty standard home kitchen other than the stainless steel 3 basin sink and the commercial refrigerator. Other than that, there was a laminate countertop, regular stove, regular freezer, tile floor... just like a regular kitchen. My husband came along to check it all out and he thinks it's very doable for under $20k BUT he's putting in a stipulation that we can add another 10 feet onto his garage and then put the kitchen behind that (ugh, he's been bugging me about a bigger garage forever!) So now I'm contacting the health department to see what we need exactly (if we need a plan on paper or what to get started) and then we'll be seeing if we could be eligible for any grants and what kind of loan we could get.

We've been looking at refinancing because when we bought this house, we had my parents cosign because we actually had 2 houses at the same time and the economy just took a dump but now that our other house sold, we should have no issue getting that loan refinanced and this business rolled into it.

We were planning on Disney World next year but we'll see how this goes and we might just skip that. Not sure yet... but yeah, I'm much more hopeful this time rather than last when I saw that other home bakery. She was trying to scare me with her $60,000 kitchen.

glad you had a good experience. Mine was about 13,000, and then we built the house on top of it. I'm in your area and we had a lot of people do things on the side.
Best of luck!