Whole house update
Kitchen, bathrooms, floors, paint and lighting in one schedule. Usually no change to the shape of the house.
Services
Full home and commercial
A whole house renovation touches most rooms at once, with one plan, one schedule and one crew lead. We also build additions and fit out small shops and offices. The plan sets the order, so a finished room is never wrecked by the next trade.
Where do you start with a whole house renovation?
Start with what is wrong, not with what is pretty. List the things that fail you every day, then fix structure and water first, then wiring and plumbing, then the rooms. Set the budget order too, so if money runs short, the finishes give way, not the roof. We put all of that in a room-by-room plan before we quote.
Three shapes of job
Update, add on or fit out
Big jobs come in three shapes. Each one starts with a different first question.
Addition
A room added on, a second storey, or a rear extension. Zoning check, engineer, permit, then build.
Commercial fit-out
A shop, a clinic or a small office. Layout, lighting, flooring, washrooms and finishes, built around your opening hours.
Behind the walls
Problems we find on whole-house jobs
Open up a whole house and the past shows up. These three are the usual suspects.
01
Surprises behind old walls
Older houses hide knob-and-tube wiring, galvanized pipes and missing insulation. We budget a line for them and show you when we find them.
02
Sagging floors
A beam cut by a past renovation. The engineer sizes a new one and we install it before anything else.
03
Permits never pulled
A past basement or deck done without a permit. We bring it up to code so the sale later goes smoothly.
04
Too little power for the plan
A whole house update adds lights, appliances and often heat pumps. An older service may need an upgrade from the utility before the new rooms can be powered.
Step by step
How a whole-house job runs
A whole house runs in six stages. The order is the same every time: structure, systems, rooms. The stages shared by every job, plan through finish, are on the process page.
Example houses that show the scale of this work, not our own projects. We show our own before-and-after photos in person.
- Stage 1
Room-by-room plan
Every room gets a line: what changes, what stays, what order.
- Stage 2
Drawings and permits
Structural changes get an engineer. Additions get a zoning check first. Permits are filed.
- Stage 3
Structure and systems
Beams, roofs and foundations first, then wiring, plumbing and ducts while everything is open.
- Stage 4
Rough rooms
Framing, insulation and drywall, inspected at each stage.
- Stage 5
Finish rooms
Kitchen, bathrooms, floors, paint and lights, in the order the plan set.
- Stage 6
Hand over
A walk-through of every room, paperwork for every permit, one list of touch-ups done before we leave.
The quote
What changes a whole-house quote
On a whole house, scope is the price. These five decide most of it.
Straight talk
When the roof or foundation comes first
If your house needs a new roof or foundation work before anything else, a roofing or foundation company goes first. We say so at the first meeting and come back when they are done.
Questions
What people ask about full home and commercial
Two whole-house questions families ask before they decide.
How do you plan a whole house renovation while living in it?
Split the house into zones and do one zone at a time. Keep one bedroom, one bathroom and a place to cook working at all times. We seal the work zone with dust walls, set daily start and stop times, and schedule the loud days for when you are out.
Should I move out during a full renovation?
You can stay through most of it. The weeks of demolition and drywall dust are the hard ones, and some clients leave for those. If the kitchen and every bathroom are being done at once, moving out for a short stretch is easier and often faster.