Name: Remodel Carpenters
Price range: $

Most of our jobs have a narrow scope. The homeowner already has a window in mind, has bought the materials, and needs someone to install them. We consult on design too, but on maybe a third of our jobs or fewer.

This San Ramon condo was different. A realtor introduced us to the homeowner, who had owned the condo for about 30 years. With family members recently moved out, the homeowner wanted a complete, soup-to-nuts remodel of this 1970s home: refresh everything at once rather than room by room.

Literally everything visible was changed. A separate company handled the paint and carpets, and we did everything else:

The kitchen: new cabinets and new tile.
Two bathrooms: including removing a tub and converting it to a shower, along with new tile and a new toilet.
The fireplace: brought up to date to match the rest of the home.
Finish carpentry: new trim around the windows and new baseboards throughout.
The stairs: new treads and a new stair stringer. The stair stringer was a dramatic improvement on its own, and together with the stairs it changed the whole entry.

A whole-home remodel of a 1970s condo comes with the usual surprises of an older building: walls that aren’t quite plumb, floors that aren’t quite level, and trim that has to be fitted to what’s actually there rather than to the drawing. Running one lead across the kitchen, baths, fireplace, trim, and stairs meant those details stayed consistent from room to room, so the finished home reads as one remodel rather than a series of separate projects.

Coordinating with the paint and carpet company was part of the job too. Trim and tile go in before final paint, and carpet goes down last, so the sequencing kept each trade from undoing the last one’s work.

Nice results. The condo went from dated to fully updated, top to bottom.