I am fishing around for educated estimates on the cost per square foot for an historic restoration project, and it seems like this forum at GardenWeb would be a good place to start.

My house was built in 1931, has lathe and plaster walls, custom hand-crafted concrete details, seamless wood paneling, stained and colored glass windows and doors, soaring wood beam ceilings, turrets, gothic windows and doors, round rooms. Many cool features. Unfortunately, it suffered a large loss fire and has to be brought to its studs.

When we rebuild, we intend to keep it as close as humanly possible to its glorious old 1931 self. I am not interested in cutting corners, or dealing with less than qualified artisans and tradespeople. We have no intention of doing the work ourselves. We intend to use a good general contractor and do everything "by the book."

For those of you who have been through this, do you think $400/sq ft is too conservative? What would be a reasonably comfortable cost per square foot to insure we don't run into limitations?

The home is located in the Hollywood Hills.