6 Reasons to Consider Whole-House Remodeling in Austin

Long before you lose yourself in tile options and paint colors, there’s an important choice to make when remodeling a home in Austin. Do the whole house? Or just a room at a time?

When you visit Barton Springs, you can inch into that 68-degree water bit by bit, or jump in all at once. Either way, you end up in the same place. But “a little at a time” takes way longer, with multiple pain points, and you’ll feel the cold a lot more.

Whole-House Remodeling: When Diving in Beats Dipping a Toe

Obviously, jumping into a whole-house remodeling job makes no sense if you love everything about your home except that one room. But that’s rarely the case, especially in a market like Austin where the best housing buys are those with good bones but in desperate need of updating, or older, smaller homes that need expanding and modernizing.

Often, homeowners choose the one-room-at-a-time approach to renovations because they’ve not done much remodeling and want to see how it goes before committing to more. Or they feel going room-by-room will somehow be less expensive and/or less disruptive. And sometimes, their intent really is to just do one room, but once completed, they see more possibilities.

Factors that Make Whole-House Remodeling More Appealing in Austin

The cost of renovations is only going up from here.

The lumber prices have more than doubled since the pandemic began, with price spikes more than tripling its cost during that time. Virtually all building materials are subject to the inflation caused by COVID-19, supply chain interruptions, labor shortages and more. Add to that Austin’s continuing white-hot real estate market and housing crunch, both of which drive up demand for remodeling, materials, and skilled craftsmen.

So, while it may be more expensive to do a whole-house remodel in Austin than it was a year ago, the total costs of doing it room by room over time will likely be much, much higher.

You can save a lot of money on a variety of “fixed” expenses.

Contractors have costs that must be factored into every remodeling job. Site visits, permitting, scheduling, ordering materials, coordinating trade workers, etc. all must be done for every project regardless of size. Even simple steps—like materials delivery or renting a dumpster for demolition—are more efficient and cost-effective to do once instead of multiple times.

“Great. Now everything else looks terrible.”

With so many houses built in Austin during the 90s and 2000s, all it takes is remodeling a kitchen or bath and suddenly, the rest of the house that looked “fine” before now just feels “sad.” So, unless you’re absolutely certain you want to keep the rest of the house as-is for a long time, you should at least consider doing a whole-house remodel.

This is where an experienced “design build” contractor can be so valuable. When the designer is also the builder, they can look at your home as a whole, help you explore what it would mean to expand your vision for the one room to other areas, and show you the efficiencies of executing that vision all at once.

“Open concept” footprints make it hard to remodel just one room.

Most homes built in Austin after the 1970s are open concept, with the kitchen, dining and living areas all part of one “great room.” It has a lot of advantages for family and entertainment. But if you’re thinking about remodeling just your kitchen…

In open concept, flooring is almost always carried throughout the space. Same with paint color. Accents. Trim. Remodeling an open concept space means touching everything—and if done piece-meal, the ongoing disruption to the most-used space in your house will quickly get on your last nerve.

Speaking of disruption…

An experienced contractor will do everything possible to limit the chaos that just naturally comes with renovations. When you do a whole-house remodel, there will be a lot of disruption, but by working with your contractor you can figure out how to live around it while all the work is being done simultaneously.

However, when you remodel a room at a time, the level of disruption rises then falls, then rises again when work moves to the next space. Each time, your routine may need to change as you try to live around all the activity. And because the work is being done room by room, all the steps (permitting, demolition, prep, framing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, inspections, drywalling, painting, finishing, etc.) must be repeated in the proper order for each room. Which means the total time your family deals with the disruption will be much longer.

You want a “cohesive aesthetic…”

It sounds impressive on HGTV, but that’s just a fancy way of saying “you want your home to be a single, seamless, balanced unit that reflects your taste throughout, not a random collection of different rooms.” Pretty much everyone wants that but doing piece-meal renovations makes achieving it much more difficult. This is another instance where a “design build” contractor can make a real difference.

Ready to Jump In?

As a high-quality design build contractor, New Creations Custom Kitchen & Bath has excelled at whole-house remodeling in Austin since 2006, and we believe strongly in its efficiencies and aesthetic advantages. Contact us and we’ll happily help you decide the best approach for your renovations.