How Much Does a Home Renovation Cost in Michigan in 2026

Nationally, the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com) puts a midrange minor kitchen remodel at $28,458. Michigan carpenters averaged $29.88 an hour in May 2025, under the $31.55 U.S. mean (BLS). Contractors paid $600 or more to remodel a Michigan house need a state license, barring MCL 339.2403 exemptions.

Kitchen and bath: the two national yardsticks

Zonda’s 2025 edition sets the average cost of 28 remodeling projects against what each adds at resale, sampled in 119 U.S. markets. The report’s defined midrange minor kitchen remodel had a national job cost of $28,458 and a resale value of $32,141, which the report scores as 113% of cost recouped. Its defined midrange bath remodel came to $26,138, with $20,915 regained at resale, or 80%.

Neither is a Michigan price. The captured report pages omit what each project contains (square footage, cabinet line, fixture grade), so use them as a rough check on a local bid.

© 2025 Zonda Media, a Delaware Corporation. Complete data from the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report can be downloaded free at www.costvsvalue.com.

Michigan carpenter wages next to the U.S. figure

For May 2025, the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program estimates 18,590 carpenters employed in Michigan. The mean was $29.88 an hour, or $62,140 over a year; for the country, $31.55 and $65,630. At the median the order flips: $29.66 in Michigan, $29.12 across the U.S. The survey counts wage and salary workers and “does not cover the self-employed,” so a carpenter working for himself is outside these numbers. Pay is one input to a bid, not the bid.

Article 24: the license a paid remodeler needs

The Occupational Code licenses two kinds of home contractor through the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). LARA’s homeowner guidance says a residential builders license lets the holder build a whole house and also do “maintenance & alteration (remodeling) work.” A maintenance and alteration license names the trades its holder qualified in. MCL 339.2404(3) lists twelve, carpentry, insulation, masonry, basement waterproofing and tile and marble work among them, and lets a specialty licensee take on another trade that is “incidental and supplemental” to its own.

The rule reaches paid work on a “residential structure”: a detached one- or two-family dwelling, or a townhouse no more than three stories above the grade plane with a separate means of egress (MCL 339.2401(c)).

Under MCL 339.2403, nine kinds of people can do this work unlicensed:

1. authorized representatives of the federal government, of Michigan, or of a Michigan county, township, city, village or other political subdivision;
2. a property owner, working on a structure on that property which the owner uses and occupies;
3. a landlord, for maintenance and alteration of the landlord’s rental property;
4. court officers acting within the scope of their office;
5. anyone other than a salesperson whose sole business is doing work under contract with a licensed residential builder or maintenance and alteration contractor;
6. whoever works on one undertaking or project, under one or more contracts, when the aggregate price for labor, material and all other items stays below $600. That exemption is void when the work is only part of a larger or major operation, or when an operation gets divided into contracts of less than $600 to evade the act;
7. an electrical contractor licensed under the skilled trades regulation act, but only for the electrical work it performs;
8. a licensed plumbing contractor, only for its own plumbing work;
9. a licensed mechanical contractor, only for its own mechanical work.

Working unlicensed costs a contractor its collection tools. Section 2412(1) keeps it out of Michigan courts on a claim for pay under a contract that needed the license, unless it alleges and proves it held one during the work; section 2412(3) denies a lien on real property to anyone unlicensed while performing. To check a name, open LARA’s Find / Verify a Licensed Professional or Business page and pick Residential Builders.

Permits, and why 2026 remodels still use the 2015 code

One construction code applies across all of Michigan (MCL 125.1508a(1)). Where no county, city, village or township has taken over enforcement under section 8a or 8b, the state is the enforcing agency (MCL 125.1508b(1), 125.1502a(v)). Before construction, the owner, or the owner’s builder, architect, engineer or agent, applies to that agency for a building permit and pays the fee it has set, subject to the code’s own exceptions (MCL 125.1510(1)). Ordinary repairs are permit-free under subsection (7).

The edition is tied up in litigation. LARA’s rules page, read September 29, 2026, says a Court of Claims order dated July 7, 2025 (Home Builders Assoc et al. v LARA et al.) temporarily blocks two rule sets that would have based the residential code and its energy chapter partly on the 2021 IRC and IECC starting August 29, 2025. While the stipulated order is in place, the partly adopted 2015 IRC and residential IECC provisions stay in force.

What Michigan owners ask before a remodel

Can I gut and redo my own kitchen without a license?

Article 24 requires none when the house is on your property and you use and occupy it yourself (MCL 339.2403(b)).

My contractor’s license shows only carpentry. Can he take the whole bathroom?

Only if the tile and any other Article 24 trade work is incidental and supplemental to the carpentry; plumbing and electrical wiring are licensed separately under the skilled trades regulation act (MCL 339.6107(1), 339.5731(1)). Licensed plumbing and electrical contractors are exempt for their own trade’s work, and a residential builder license covers remodeling as a whole.

He offered to write the job as two contracts under $600. Does that avoid the license?

No. Splitting an operation into sub-$600 contracts to evade the act cancels the small-job exemption, and so does a job that is only a piece of a larger one.

Further reading: what a kitchen budget buys, bathroom remodel tiers, Michigan furnace and AC installation, Michigan foundation repair, picking a Michigan home inspector, HELOC calculator.