Whole-Home Renovation Across the Houston Metro

All at once is usually cheaper per square foot and always faster overall. The crew mobilises once, the trades run in a single sequence, and you pay for one set of dust walls, one disposal cycle and one round of inspections. Phasing costs more in total because every phase repeats that overhead, and because a wall finished in phase one often gets reopened in phase three for a pipe or a duct. Phasing is the right answer when the budget genuinely is not available at once, when you cannot vacate, or when an approval question needs settling before the larger work starts. If you phase, still draw the finished house first so nothing gets built twice.

You can if the work is a cosmetic refresh done room by room and a kitchen and one bathroom stay usable. Once the job goes to studs and the mechanicals come out, the house loses water, power or air conditioning for stretches, and moving out is the honest answer. In this climate that is more than a comfort issue: an opened, unconditioned house holds humidity, and new drywall, cabinetry and flooring do not tolerate it well. Living on site also slows the schedule, because crews lose hours each day to protection, clean-up and working around your belongings. Price the rental either way, then decide once you have seen the trade sequence — that is where the unliveable weeks appear.

Longer than most people plan for, and the construction weeks are usually not the constraint. Three things set the calendar: how long design and selections take, how long approvals take in your jurisdiction, and lead times on windows, cabinetry and appliances. Any one of them can outrun the build. Inspections then add fixed pauses between rough-in and cover-up that no amount of extra labour shortens. The honest way to get a date is to sequence your actual job on paper — trade by trade, with inspection holds and confirmed lead times — rather than quote an average. Ask to see that schedule before you sign, and ask what happens to it if a hidden condition turns up.

It applies to structures in a mapped floodplain. If the cost of your improvement reaches 50% or more of the structure’s market value before the work — the building alone, land excluded — the whole structure must be brought into floodplain compliance, which can mean elevating it. Whole-home renovations trip this more often than any other kind of job, simply because the whole house is in the scope. Harris County Sec. 2.45 and the equivalent city floodplain ordinance set out the requirement, but the only answer that counts is a written determination from the floodplain office for your address and your numbers. Get it early, because it can change the design, the budget and whether you build in stages.

Start by establishing who actually has jurisdiction, because the mailing address does not answer that. Parts of this region are unincorporated and reviewed at county level, at least one community is a township rather than a city, and some subdivisions answer to an architectural committee more than to any permit counter. Structural work, mechanical replacement and anything that changes the footprint will need permits and inspections almost everywhere. Separately, private deed restrictions and HOA review under Texas Property Code Ch. 209 can control elevations, materials and colours regardless of what a permit would allow. In coastal catastrophe-area counties, windstorm (WPI-8) certification applies to qualifying window, door and roof work. All of it is verified per address.

Texas does not license general contractors or remodellers. The Texas Residential Construction Commission was abolished on 1 September 2009 and was never replaced, so anyone claiming a state remodelling licence is describing something that does not exist. What is licensed is the trades: electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians are licensed by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and that work must be performed by a licence holder. So the useful questions are different ones. Who holds the trade licences on your job, what insurance is carried, what the written scope actually covers, and how change orders are priced and approved. Ask for the trade licence numbers and verify them yourself — it takes a few minutes online.

There is a predictable list. Cast-iron drain lines under the slab are at or near the end of their service life, and the time to replace them is while the floors are already open. Galvanised supply lines narrow with scale and drop pressure. Panels are undersized for modern loads and some circuits are ungrounded; aluminium branch wiring appears in houses wired around the late 1960s and early 1970s and needs correct terminations rather than removal. Floor tile, mastic and textured ceilings from before the mid-1980s can contain asbestos, and paint in housing built before 1978 falls under the federal lead RRP rule. Both call for testing and a defined process, not an assumption either way.

Late changes are the biggest single cause of budget drift on whole-home jobs, and the reason is sequence. Trades run in a fixed order: structure, then plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough-in, then inspection, insulation and drywall, then finishes. A change requested before rough-in usually costs only the price difference. The same change after drywall costs demolition, a second rough-in, a second inspection and a second finish, on work you have already paid for once. That is why selections are locked before demolition starts. If something does have to change, ask for it in writing with the cost and the schedule effect stated before anyone lifts a tool — and expect a genuine hidden condition to be handled the same way.