Home renovations in Ferndale & Whatcom County

Whole-house renovations and room-by-room remodels — done by a builder who checks the structure before he worries about the paint colour.

Our Main Trade

Good houses, bad floor plans.

Whatcom County is full of solid homes built between the 1950s and the 1990s. The bones are usually fine. What has aged badly is everything else — chopped-up floor plans, tiny closed kitchens, original wiring, single-pane windows, and forty years of whatever the last owner decided to do himself on a weekend.

A renovation is how you fix that without giving up the lot, the trees, the neighbourhood and the school district. We take the house back to what is worth keeping, correct what is wrong underneath, and rebuild it around how you actually live.

Because we came up through framing, we are comfortable with the part that scares most remodelers: moving structure. Taking out a bearing wall, adding a beam, re-supporting a floor, opening a vaulted ceiling. That is where the biggest gains in a renovation usually are.

Scope

What a renovation with us covers

Floor plan changes — removing bearing and non-bearing walls, adding beams, opening kitchens to living space
Structural repair — sagging floors, failed joists, post and beam work, foundation-related framing fixes
Rot and water damage — the usual culprit around old windows, decks, and bathrooms in this climate
Electrical — panel upgrades, rewiring, replacing knob-and-tube and aluminium branch circuits
Plumbing — repiping galvanised and early poly, new drainage, relocating fixtures
Insulation & windows — bringing walls, attics and crawlspaces up to current Washington energy code
Siding, roofing & exterior — the weather envelope, which matters a great deal this close to the water
Interior finishes — drywall, trim, doors, flooring, tile, paint, cabinetry and built-ins
Basement & garage conversion — turning unused square footage into living space that meets code
Accessibility work — single-level living, wider doorways, curbless showers, ramps

Get a Renovation Estimate

How Renovations Go

Order of operations matters.

Walk the house and find the real problem

Often what you want is not what you need, or it is cheaper than you feared. We look at structure, moisture, electrical and layout before we talk about anything cosmetic.

Design and price it honestly

We scope the work and write it up phase by phase. Where the price depends on what is behind a wall, we say so up front and give you a range instead of a number we would have to break later.

Demolition and discovery

The walls come open. Anything we find gets photographed and shown to you with a written price before it is covered back up.

Structure, then systems, then finishes

Framing and beams first. Then rough plumbing, electrical and mechanical, inspected. Then insulation, drywall, and the finish work — in that order, every time.

Punch list and handover

We walk every room with you, write down what is not right, and finish it before the final invoice.

Worth Saying

We will tell you when not to renovate.

Occasionally a house is far enough gone that the money is better spent on a rebuild, or the thing you want is not achievable inside the existing structure. We would rather say that at the free estimate than eighty thousand dollars into the job.

Questions

Common questions

How long does a whole-home renovation take?

For a full renovation of an average Whatcom County house, plan on three to six months on site, plus four to eight weeks beforehand for design, estimating and permits. Single rooms are much faster. We give you phase dates in writing before we start so you are not guessing.

Can we live in the house during the renovation?

Sometimes. If we are working room by room and the kitchen and at least one bathroom stay usable, plenty of families stay put. For a whole-house renovation where we are opening walls, replacing systems and refinishing floors, it is usually cheaper and far less stressful to move out for the messy phases. We will tell you honestly which situation you are in.

What happens if you find something bad behind the walls?

We stop, photograph it, and show you before anything gets covered up again. Rot, failed framing, old knob-and-tube wiring and water damage are common in older homes here. You get a written price for the fix and you decide. We do not quietly bury problems or quietly bill for them.

Do you handle the permits?

Yes. Depending on where the house is, that means the City of Ferndale, City of Bellingham, City of Lynden, or Whatcom County Planning and Development Services. We prepare the applications, schedule inspections and keep the file.

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