The full house
Whole-home renovation
Every room, one schedule, one contract, one superintendent.
What this work really involves
A whole-home renovation is not nine small projects booked back to back. It is one permit set, one structural narrative, one mechanical load calculation and one finish schedule that has to agree with itself from the entry to the back deck. We run it as a single contract with one superintendent who is on site every day the crew is.
Most of the Eastside houses we take on were built between 1958 and 1994. That means 2x4 exterior walls with R-11 batts, a furnace sized for a floor plan that no longer exists, aluminium-frame windows, and at least one wall someone removed without a header. The renovation has to answer all of that before anyone talks about cabinetry.
Permit path
Building permit with mechanical, plumbing and electrical sub-permits; structural review where walls or headers change
What is included
- 01
Existing-conditions survey
Laser measure of every room, a floor plan drawn to the walls as they actually sit, and photographs of the crawlspace, attic, panel and water service before a single line is designed.
- 02
Structural narrative
A licensed structural engineer reviews every wall we intend to open, sizes the headers or beams, specifies the point loads down to a footing, and stamps the drawings that go to the review desk.
- 03
Whole-house mechanical plan
Manual J load calculation for the new plan, duct or ductless layout, make-up air for the range hood, bath exhaust rated to the room, and a decision on whether the existing furnace survives the remodel.
- 04
Electrical service review
Panel capacity, service size, AFCI and GFCI coverage, and a circuit schedule. A 1970s 100-amp panel rarely carries a renovated house with induction cooking and a heat pump.
- 05
Finish schedule
One document that lists every floor, wall, trim profile, paint sheen, tile, plumbing fitting and light in the house, with model numbers and the room each one lands in.
- 06
Daily site management
One superintendent, a shared schedule you can read, weekly on-site walk-throughs and a written log of every decision that changed the drawings.
How the stages run
- 01
Survey and feasibility
Two weeks. We measure, photograph, pull the county record card and confirm what the lot and the code will actually allow.
- 02
Schematic design
Four to six weeks. Plan options, a rough order-of-magnitude budget band, and an honest conversation about which walls are load bearing.
- 03
Design development and pricing
Six to ten weeks. Engineering, selections at the studio, subcontractor pricing against real drawings, then a fixed-price contract.
- 04
Permit
Six to sixteen weeks depending on the jurisdiction and whether structural review is triggered. We submit, we answer corrections, we track the queue.
- 05
Construction
Five to nine months. Demolition, structural, rough-in, inspections, insulation, drywall, finish carpentry, paint, floors, fixtures.
- 06
Closeout
Two to four weeks. Final inspection, punch list, as-built markups, manuals, filters, touch-up paint and the warranty binder.
What moves the price
- Square footage touched
- Price moves with the number of rooms that get new finishes, not with the size of the house on the tax record.
- Structural work
- Each beam that replaces a bearing wall adds engineering, steel or LVL, temporary shoring and usually a footing.
- Mechanical scope
- A new heat pump, ducting and a panel upgrade sit between $28,000 and $65,000 on a typical Eastside house (sample band).
- Window and door package
- Lead time and unit cost both climb sharply once you leave stock sizes.
- Occupied or vacant
- Living in the house during work adds containment, phasing and roughly 8 to 12 percent to the schedule.
Two things we will always tell you
Whole-home work is where phasing pays. If the budget will not carry everything, we sequence the structural and mechanical work first, because that is the part you cannot redo later without opening finished walls.
We do not start demolition before the permit is issued. It is the single most common way a remodel loses three months.
Sometimes. It depends on whether one bathroom and one cooking point can stay live through rough-in. We map that out phase by phase before you decide, on our living-through-it page.
The contract is fixed price against the drawings and the finish schedule. Allowances are used only where a selection genuinely cannot be made yet, and each one names what it covers.
The superintendent. You never have to meet an inspector or chase a correction notice.
We stop, photograph it, price the fix as a change order with the engineer's input if it is structural, and you approve it in writing before we carry on.
Next step
Start with a walk-through, not a price
Ninety minutes in your house. We look at the crawlspace, the attic and the panel before we look at the kitchen, and you leave with a budget band you can plan around.