Complete Remodel

What a complete remodel covers

This is the work that takes a house forward as one job rather than five separate ones spread over five years. In practice it splits into outside and inside.

Outside

• Siding. Replacing tired or damaged siding, which changes how the house reads more than anything else on this list.
• Roofing. Including metal roofing where you want the look and the lifespan.
• Porches and entryways. New front porches, posts, railings and steps — the part everyone walks past.
• Windows and trim. Replacement, and the trim and shutters that frame them.
• Gutters and downspouts. Unglamorous, and the thing that protects everything underneath.
• Exterior painting. The whole envelope, properly prepared rather than just recoated.

Inside

• Flooring. Through-out rather than room by room, so there are no thresholds between mismatched floors.
• Painting. Walls, ceilings and trim.
• Trim and doors. Baseboards, casings, interior doors and the fittings on them.

Why one contractor for the whole thing

The expensive part of a big renovation is rarely any single trade. It is the gaps between them — the week nothing happens because the siding crew is waiting on the window order, or the painter arriving before the trim is in. Running it as one job means the sequence is somebody’s problem before it becomes your problem.

It also means one number, one schedule and one person to ring when you want to know where things stand.

How a whole-house job runs

1. Walk the whole house. Inside and out, listing what actually needs doing versus what you would like doing. Those are different lists and it is worth separating them early.
2. Agree the scope in writing. Itemised, so you can see what each part costs and drop anything that is not worth it to you.
3. Outside first, usually. Getting the house weather-tight before interior finishes go in avoids the obvious disaster.
4. Inside after. Flooring and paint last, so they are not being walked over by everyone else.
5. Walk it again together at the end, before the balance is paid.

Can you live in it while it happens?

For exterior work, almost always — it is noisy, but nothing stops you using the house. Interior work is the disruptive part, and it depends how much is happening at once and whether it can be staged room by room. It is worth raising at the estimate rather than discovering halfway through, and it can usually be planned around.

Doing part of it

Nothing here is all-or-nothing. Plenty of these jobs start as “just the siding and the porch”. If the budget only reaches so far this year, the useful conversation is which parts to do first — and the honest answer is usually whatever is letting water in, followed by whatever the street sees.

Common questions