Whole-home renovation
Whole-home renovations, drawn before demo.
Good bones, wrong plan. We measure the house as it actually stands, then redraw it, so the demo crew is working from a decision instead of an opinion.
It starts with a measured drawing, not a mood board
The first deliverable on a whole-home renovation is a measured set of existing conditions. Every level drawn, the exterior elevations drawn, and a section cut through the primary stair or the chimney. It is unglamorous and it is the reason the rest of the project behaves.
Houses are not built the way their plans say. Floor levels step where nothing indicates it, framing bays land off layout, a previous renovation moved a duct chase, and the original drawings, if a copy even survives, describe an intention rather than a building. Designing against an assumption is how a project discovers in week three that the island cannot sit where the drawing put it.
That measured set is also useful on its own. It is the as-built documentation package, starting at $1,200, and builders and other firms buy it from us as a standalone deliverable before they price or design anything.
The Triangle's renovation stock
A large share of the houses we redraw sit in the late 1990s through 2010 window. The pattern repeats across Cary and the subdivisions that went up around it in the same years: a formal living room nobody uses, a compartmentalized kitchen, an undersized primary closet, and a porch that does not connect to the back yard.
The bones on those houses are usually good. The floor plan is what needs a rethink. That is a very different project from a prewar Raleigh bungalow, where the constraint is ceiling height, a small footprint and wiring that has to be replaced, or from a Chapel Hill house on a slope where the constraint is grade and tree cover.
Either way the work is the same shape. Read what the house does well, decide what is actually in the way, and draw the smallest change that solves it.
The three decisions that carry the budget
Most of the cost spread on a whole-home renovation comes down to three calls, and all three are cheaper to make on paper.
- Which walls are structural. A partition is a day of work. A bearing wall means a beam, a header, a load path down to a footing sized to take it, and a stamped detail when the span runs past the prescriptive tables.
- Whether moving the kitchen is worth the plumbing. Relocating a kitchen means new supply, new drain and vent routing, and usually opening a ceiling below. Sometimes the plan gain is worth it. Frequently the same gain is available by taking out one wall and leaving the sink where it is.
- Whether to add or to reconfigure. Adding square footage costs a foundation and a roof. Reconfiguring costs neither. We run that comparison in the first week, not after schematic design. See home additions for the other half of that decision.
What a whole-home renovation costs
These are our own North Carolina ranges, per square foot of the house being renovated, covering design, permits, labor and finishes at the level named. The $150,000 floor is the point below which the project is really a set of room renovations rather than a whole-home one, and the renovation scopes are the better path at that size.
| Finish level | Per square foot | A 2,500 sq ft house |
|---|---|---|
| Builder grade | $125 to $200 | $312,500 to $500,000 |
| Mid range | $200 to $325 | $500,000 to $812,500 |
| High end | $325 to $475 | $812,500 to $1,187,500 |
| Luxury | $475 to $700 | $1,187,500 to $1,750,000 |
Ranges current for 2025 to 2026. They exclude land, site prep over 10 percent and major structural surprises. The cost estimator runs the same math on your square footage.
The deliverable and the fee
Design runs under the renovation package: starting at $3,500, 8 to 14 weeks standard, with an expedited track at 5 to 8 weeks for a 30 percent premium when a contractor start date is already on the calendar. The expedited track asks for existing plans or a recent measure already on file, and decisions back within two business days.
The standard scope produces existing conditions measured drawings, two design directions, permit ready plans, elevations and sections, a render of the primary affected space, specifications for finishes and fixtures, and builder bid coordination. What we need back is site access for the measure visit in week one, reference photos at kickoff, and decisions returned within five business days.
Rooms that come with their own fixed scope, a kitchen or a bathroom for instance, can be pulled into the same engagement or handled separately under the renovation scopes. Either way the drawings agree, because the same measured base feeds both.
Deliverables and obligations as published with the Home Renovation Design package on the packages page.
Questions we get asked
- Do I need a permit for a whole-home renovation?
- Yes, and usually more than one review. Moving walls, changing the electrical or plumbing layout, and altering egress all trigger building review. Our permits guide covers what a complete residential submittal contains.
- Can I live in the house during the work?
- On a true whole-home renovation, rarely for the full duration. The honest answer depends on whether the kitchen and a bathroom can be staged to stay live, and we work that out while the scope is being written rather than after demo.
- Do you provide the measured drawings if I only want those?
- Yes. As-built documentation is a standalone package starting at $1,200: floor plans of every level, exterior elevations, one section through the primary stair or chimney, delivered as PDF and DWG.
- How do I know a wall is structural before we start?
- The measured survey plus an attic and crawl space look tells us where the load paths run. Where it is genuinely ambiguous, we say so in the scope and plan an exploratory opening rather than guessing on the drawing.
- Will you work with my builder?
- Yes. Builder bid coordination is part of the standard package, and the set is produced to be priced and built by someone else if that is the arrangement.
Keep reading
Start with the plan you have.
A floor plan sketch, a listing photo set, or just the address. We reply within two business days with what we would do and what it takes to get there.
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