Rebuilding a barn into a house, how much gold.

[Mordante]

Dear all,

I DM a very small group, 2 players. We DM in turns, each of us DMs an adventure. However I might want to give our party a sort of house. But nothing fancy. The idea is that the group gets an abandoned barn. Maybe 10*15meters and 6 meters high. How much gold would be reasonable to turn something like this into a house. Or at least something where you can live. So a few bedrooms, a fireplace and kitchen and a wash/bath-room. Part of the reason why I want them to have this house is that certain elements in the area need a 'safe house' or meeting place. The local sponsors of the group gives them this house. But under the condition that sometimes friends will come over for a meeting or to stay a few nights.

But back to the original question, what would be a reasonable amount to convert a barn into a house?

[RNightstalker]

I think diving into Stronghold Builder's Guidebook would be the perfect solution. It would probably be a (ballpark) max of 5000 to purchase and make reasonable upgrades, but for the "secure" activities, those can cost more.

[Maat Mons]

Dungeon Master's Guide gives 1,000 gp as the price for a "simple house," and 5,000 gp as the price for a "grand house."

[Calthropstu]

Dungeon Master's Guide gives 1,000 gp as the price for a "simple house," and 5,000 gp as the price for a "grand house."

I figired a grand house would be 1000.

[Teth]

I figired a grand house would be 1000.

The sourcebooks are not known for their firm grasp of economics when pricing things.

Option one, you're buying tools, getting local wood for labor, then building it yourself or with the aid of friends or locals you barter with assuming you pick a time of the year when they're not busy with other work. Probably no more than 10gp total, but if you build a house like a commoner then you get a shack like a commoner, unless someone happens to have an appropriate craft or profession and actually knows what they're doing.

Option two, buying tools, then paying for trained hirelings, remembering that the table cost is the minimum for trained labor period and that you need an entire work crew plus whoever knows how to tell them what to do. You get something between a nicely built shack and a professionally-built but nonmagical house depending on who you hire and how much you pay, but price is probably dozens of gold minimum up to low thousands if it's really nice.

Option three, hire some druids to come over and cast wood shape repeatedly, or else quarry or buy stone and hire people to cast stone shape. Wood shape is 60gp a shot if they're just high enough level to have just learned it, stone shape is 210gp for same with clerics and druids or 360gp resorting to wizards. All of those are likely to go up depending on who's actually available and willing locally, plus you have to make it worth their time to come out to your site and again for the time everything actually requires, so it goes up very quickly. You still need someone with professional skills to manage all this if you want the result to be sane, and that also needs to be someone with enough status or seniority that a group of spellcasters will actually listen to them. Quality is there but it's more a status symbol for a certain level of wealth or power to demonstrate that you can invite spellcasters to do labor for you.

Option four, whichever of the above but with extensive use of Craft Wondrous Item to add modern plumbing and kitchens and food storage and floor-to-floor teleporters and whatever. High-level mage towers, castles of powerful kingdoms, major religious buildings, etc., not something in common use, but organizations that have numerous spellcasters directly under their command are likely to do this, even if just by spellcasters passively doing stuff to make life easier for them when not otherwise busy.

[Raven777]

The sourcebooks are not known for their firm grasp of economics when pricing things.

I am 99% sure this was a pun since a grand is an expression meaning 1000 in english.

[Teth]

I am 99% sure this was a pun since a grand is an expression meaning 1000 in english.

Let's not bring Pun-Pun into this, it's a short step from there to Chuck Norris jokes.

[RNightstalker]

Let's not bring Pun-Pun into this, it's a short step from there to Chuck Norris jokes.

If he only cried, there would never have been a plandemic....

[Maat Mons]

For characters doing the labor themselves, I'd be inclined to handle things using the Craft rules. You need raw materials with a value equaling 1/3rd of the price of the finished product.

The number of rooms you described (kitchen + washroom + multiple bedrooms) definitely falls within the definition of "grand house" in D&D terms. According to the DMG, a "simple house" has 3 or fewer rooms. (From what I understand, in many historical periods, one big room would have been typical for most houses.)

If medieval barns are anything like modern barns in terms of size, "grand house" seems fitting for the internal volume you'd wind up with too.

If we assume that a barn costs half as much as a simple house (I'm just making that figure up), then you've got a 500-gp-value building you're converting into a 5,000-gp-value building. So you're essentially "creating" 4,500 gp of value.

Going by the Craft rules, that would require 1,500-gp-worth of materials. So I guess 3,000 gp in labor costs if you hire it done. Or you could do it yourselves... in probably about 2 years, if both your characters work on it full-time... and can consistently hit whatever the Craft DC is.

If characters are gathering their own resources, I'd be inclined to use something akin to the Profession rules to determine how much value of materials they can collect each week. This would add maybe another couple of years to the project.

[Fizban]

So a few bedrooms, a fireplace and kitchen and a wash/bath-room. Part of the reason why I want them to have this house is that certain elements in the area need a 'safe house' or meeting place. The local sponsors of the group gives them this house. But under the condition that sometimes friends will come over for a meeting or to stay a few nights.
SBG says retrofitting a space costs 10-50% of the usual price. A barn is short on furniture and you'll need some new walls so I'll take the high bar, which is still a 50% discount (if all you want is the furniture you could probably go as low as the 10%). Since you're talking about retrofitting a barn, I'm assuming this isn't supposed to be the height of luxury, so Basic rooms it is.

A fireplace is definitely part of a kitchen, probably should be part of a master bedroom, and I would say since it's required to survive through the winter, you get a minimum of one free per however many non-suite rooms just like privies. Bedroom units include the cost of a privy somewhere, but not a full washroom, so you probably want one of those. Now about that Kitchen- I'm guessing you don't need a 20'x20' kitchen equipped for serving 15 people, so I'd cut the size and price by half again.

So that retrofit comes to 250gp for a small kitchen, 200gp for a wash room, 175gp for each standalone bedroom, and another 250gp if you want a furnished and walled common room (those are all 200 square feet except for the common room which is 400). Door and window shutters are cheap enough I wouldn't make a fuss unless they're trying to turn the place into a fortress or have two glass windows in every room.

Note that the sizes given are quite large by modern standards: those bedrooms are 14'x14' if you make them square, though if you've got 3'+ thick stone castle walls that would make up for it. The 1,000gp simple house price maps to SBG as a single basic bedroom suite (800gp), which is bed bath and basic furniture, and the remaining 200gp would cover doors, windows, locks, and some cooking utensils.