The moment to fix what room-by-room can never reach: the pipe, the wiring, the panel, and the floor plan itself.
Licensed & insured · Free in-home consultation · Fixed written pricing
There is a point where remodeling one room at a time stops making sense. Usually it arrives when the third contractor tells you the panel cannot take another circuit, or when you realize the plumbing behind the wall you just tiled is the same galvanized pipe as everywhere else in the house.
A whole home renovation is the moment to fix what a room-by-room approach can never reach. Repiping, rewiring, a panel that can carry a modern house, ducting that actually reaches the back bedroom, insulation in walls that never had any, and a floor plan that reflects how people live now rather than how they lived in 1955. None of that is visible when it is finished. All of it is the difference between a house that has been renovated and a house that has been redecorated.
It is also cheaper per room. Every trade comes through the house once instead of six separate times, materials are ordered in one pass, and a single permit covers scope that would otherwise be filed and inspected repeatedly. The premium you pay for phasing a renovation over five years is larger than most homeowners expect.
The tradeoff is disruption. A genuine gut renovation is not a project you live through. We are direct with you about that at the consultation, because discovering it in month two is a bad way to find out.
Galvanized supply lines narrowed by decades of scale. Cast iron drains at the end of their service life. Panels sized for a house with one television. Ducting added in the 1970s that was never balanced. Insulation that stops at the first stud bay. Prior additions built without permits, sometimes competently and sometimes not. None of it is unusual for the age of this housing stock, and all of it is dramatically cheaper to address while the walls are open.
Not everything old should go. Original hardwood, plaster, steel casement windows, arched openings, and period casing are hard to reproduce and expensive to fake. We will tell you which details are worth keeping and which are simply old.
A renovation this size has hundreds of handoffs. Every one of them is ours to manage, not yours.
Call (818) 881-8333Scope is set project by project. These are the six areas a whole home renovation usually touches.
Wall removal, beams, lateral bracing, and foundation work identified by an engineer.
Supply and drain lines replaced throughout while the walls are open, not patched in sections.
Rewiring, a panel sized for the finished house, and circuits where a modern household needs them.
System replacement, duct runs that reach every room, insulation, and windows.
The dense, expensive rooms, built in sequence with everything else rather than around it.
Continuous flooring across the plan, trim, doors, paint, and the punch list.
Seven phases. The house gets worse before it gets better, and the middle of the project always looks alarming even when everything is on schedule.
We go through the whole house, open the panel, look at the plumbing, check the attic and the crawlspace or slab, and talk through how you want to live in it. This is a longer visit than a single-room consultation for good reason.
Floor plan, structural engineering where walls or loads change, energy compliance, and material selections across every room. Selections get made now because a renovation this size cannot absorb decisions made mid-build.
Submittal, corrections, resubmittal, permit. Existing unpermitted work gets addressed as part of this.
Selective or full demolition depending on scope. Salvage anything worth keeping first. This is the phase where the house tells you what it has been hiding.
Framing changes, beams, repipe, rewire, HVAC, and inspections. The most valuable phase of the project and the one with the least to show for it at the end of each day.
Insulation, drywall, then kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, doors, trim, and paint working through the house in sequence.
Sign-off, then a full walkthrough room by room. The punch list on a project this size is long by definition, and it gets cleared before final payment.
This is the part of a whole home renovation that gets decided last and should be decided first. It changes the schedule, the cost, and whether the experience is tolerable.
The fastest and cheapest path per square foot. Trades work in parallel instead of tiptoeing around occupied rooms, demolition happens all at once, and there is no daily setup and breakdown to protect a living area. The cost is that you are paying a mortgage and a rent at the same time for the duration, which is a real number and belongs in your budget even though it never appears on our quote.
We seal off a section of the house, complete it, then move to the next. This works when there is a clear division in the floor plan, when at least one bathroom and some form of kitchen can stay in service, and when nobody in the household is particularly sensitive to dust and noise. It takes longer and costs more, because every zone means a fresh round of containment, protection, and mobilization.
A middle path that suits people who cannot move out and cannot afford everything at once. Repipe, rewire, upgrade the panel, and address structure while the walls are open, then close up and finish rooms over time as budget allows. It is not glamorous and there is a stretch where the house looks unfinished, but it puts the money in the right place first. The mistake we see most often is the reverse: beautiful finishes installed over the same failing systems, which have to be torn out within a decade.
Never install a finish over a system you intend to replace later. New tile over old galvanized pipe, or new cabinets over a panel you know is undersized, is money you will pay twice. If the budget will not stretch to both, do the system and wait on the finish.
On a whole home renovation the invisible scope is frequently larger than the visible scope, and it is what separates a real quote from a low one.
Hold 10 to 15 percent in reserve, and on a pre-1960 house consider the upper end. A full renovation opens every wall, which means it finds every prior repair, every shortcut, and every leak that has been quietly working for thirty years.
We price the work after design is settled, in writing, with allowances itemized by room. A whole-house number quoted before drawings exist is not a price.
We renovate homes throughout Encino and the surrounding San Fernando Valley and Westside communities. Tap your city for local housing stock and permitting.
Not on the list? Call (818) 881-8333 — we travel outside our core area for the right project.
We will walk every room, look at the systems behind the walls, and tell you honestly what is worth doing and in what order. No charge, no obligation.