We Rebuilt a 1956 Hanok in Seoul. Here Is Every Number We Wrote Down.

Renovation cost articles usually give you a single round number, unverifiable and useless. We can do better, because we kept a daily construction log for 128 days and wrote costs into it as they happened.

This article collects every figure we logged, each linked to the day’s entry where it appears in context. First, the honest frame: we self-performed most of the work (our labor is priced at zero below), and several large contracted packages — noted at the end — never got itemized in the public log. What follows is not “what a hanok renovation costs.” It is what our receipts actually said — which, as far as we can tell, nobody else has published in this detail, in any language.

The house: 106 m² (32 pyeong), ㄷ-shaped urban hanok, built 1956, renovated February–June 2026 into a four-bedroom stay.

Getting the old house out: demolition & waste

The unglamorous first surprise. Debris does not remove itself, and in Seoul every category of waste — timber, stone, tile, mixed — has its own truck run and its own price.

Item	Log	Cost
Timber waste run (truck + disposal)	#05	₩100,000
Tile/stone run #1	#06	₩110,000
Stone waste run	#09	₩110,000
Roof-tile waste, 2 truckloads	#20	₩220,000
Mixed waste, 1-ton heaped	#25	₩300,000
Mixed timber/metal run	#29	₩235,000
Light mixed load, end of project	#66	₩100,000
Waste subtotal		₩1,175,000

And one negative cost: dismantling the previous owner’s rooftop steel canopy yielded 563 kg of scrap, sold for ₩129,490 cash.

Materials we logged

Item	Log	Cost
Commissioned floor plan (Kmong)	#03	₩70,000
Angle grinder (bought) + second (rented)	#04	₩80,000
GCS wall insulation boards, 55 sheets	#27	₩1,500,000
Thermal camera rental (per day)	#30	₩6,500
Demolition hand tools (trowel, steel dustpan)	#31	₩22,000
Self-leveling mortar, 40 bags (SL30)	#42	₩504,000
Dry-Fix cement (failed experiment)	#46	₩13,000
Pendant + exterior lighting (Euljiro)	#59	₩320,000
Bathroom ventilation fans ×3	#59	₩210,000
Courtyard stone-texture floor coating, 3 pails	#76	₩225,000
Materials subtotal (logged)		₩2,950,500

Labor & professional services we logged

Our standing rule: self-perform the repeatable work, buy specialists for the irreversible work, and hire day-helpers at the volume peaks.

Item	Log	Cost
Day helper, eave plastering (4h @ ₩15,000)	#23	₩60,000
Plumbing master, whole-house re-pipe (8h + materials)	#33	₩800,000
Material haul-in: trucks + forklift + 3 helpers	#36	₩340,000
Leveling-pour labor share	#42	₩500,000
Fixture installation: 3 toilets, 2 basins, hardware	#58	₩450,000
Eave rain gutter (vs ₩2M competing quote)	#81	₩1,100,000
Labor/services subtotal (logged)		₩3,250,000

Useful benchmarks that emerged: Karrot day labor runs ₩15,000–20,000/hour; toilet installation is quoted around ₩100,000 per unit; a skilled tiler needs about 1.5 days per bathroom before you add masonry tubs or slope rebuilds.

Appliances & fit-out we logged

Item	Log	Cost
Washer-dryer tower (grade-1)	#67	₩1,600,000
↳ government efficiency rebate	#67	−₩600,000
Wheeled smart screen (budget alternative)	#74	₩300,000
Fit-out subtotal (logged, net)		₩1,300,000

The logged total — and what it isn’t

Adding the subtotals: ≈ ₩9.2 million logged, net of the scrap sale and rebate. Now the honesty section — the significant items our public log priced only partially or not at all:

• Roof tiling package (lightweight tiles, ~7 pallets, batten grid, 4-person crew, ~2 days)
• Traditional windows & doors (hansik changho, 8 units incl. three large courtyard walls)
• Carpentry — structural (buyeon, gate, maru) and interior finish (3 carpenters × 3 days plus)
• Tiling labor across four wet rooms, and tile stock itself (5 pallets)
• Wood flooring (sponsored, in our case — budget it if it won’t be in yours)
• Air conditioning, 4 units (subsidy applied; invoice never itemized in the log)
• Rolling consumables — the drumbeat of X18 cement, urethane foam, putty, paint, and silicone that appears bag-by-bag across 80 entries but resists totaling
• Our own labor: two people, ~85 working days. At even modest Seoul day rates, this is the largest number on the whole page — and it’s invisible.

A fully contracted renovation of this scope would multiply our logged figure several times over. What our numbers are good for is calibration: real Seoul prices, 2026, receipt by receipt, for anyone standing where we stood in February — looking at an old hanok and wondering what saying yes actually costs.

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Every figure above links to the day it was spent. For the narrative version, start the 128-Day Log from Day 1.