Most remodelling jobs in Calgary seem to proceed quite smoothly once construction has commenced, and problems arise long before. When a home owner first decides what he wants the house to look like and have and how much that might really be worth. At the point when construction starts it appears as if the end result has already been dictated. This is why most people plan to do Home Remodelling in Calgary With Turn Key Homes & Renovations early on so that they have an understanding of how it all works and how much things are really worth and look like.
I find the questions a homeowner asks early on are typically the right questions but the answers they receive aren’t quite as cut and dry as some guides suggest. A company owner of over fifteen years that has seen a great deal of houses of all kinds of shapes and sizes from some places like Killarney and Altadore all the way to neighbourhoods like Mount Pleasant or Lake Bonavista. The early stages seem to dictate a lot about what is to follow.
A guide like this might be really useful much before the jobs have progressed too far. It seems as if the real decisions are made sitting at the kitchen table. And that stage is easy to miss. Information about costs and the ability of the house to perform are sometimes difficult to pin down, which is why doing Home Remodelling in Calgary With Turn Key Homes & Renovations with expert guidance can often seem overwhelming.
What makes Turn Key Homes & Renovations the trusted Calgary commercial renovation company?
Your Local Calgary commercial contractor Turn Key Homes & Renovations applies planning, experience and quality construction to any commercial renovation in Calgary. Office renovation, retail store renovation or a complete commercial transformation, your team takes pride in understanding your specific business needs to create a functional, modern and stylish commercial space. Turn Key designs, layouts, construction materials, and long-term use of spaces are well considered.
A modern, profitable, and functional commercial space is achieved when clients partner with Turn Key Homes & Renovations. Using our design-build process and the ability to clearly communicate and complete each aspect of the commercial renovation process, from start to finish, Turn Key aims to manage a construction project with little impact on a business. Our aim is to complete first-class commercial renovations, on time and on budget in the City of Calgary.
Is your house actually a good candidate for renovation?
Before talking to a realtor or a contractor, take honest inventory of the structure you own. The bones of a Calgary home, meaning its foundation, framing, roof envelope, mechanical systems, and electrical service, determine almost everything about whether home renovations make financial sense on this specific property. A 1960s bungalow in Lakeview with a sound foundation and good lot orientation is a fundamentally different asset than a 1990s two-storey with settlement issues or a 1920s heritage home in Inglewood with knob-and-tube wiring still in the walls.
You walk through the property and check things with an honest eye. Note how old the furnace is and the hot water tank plus the electrical panel. The roof shingles might need attention along with the soffits and eaves. I think the windows are worth looking at closely too since they could be single pane originals or double pane from mid life or even newer triple glazed ones.
It feels like in Calgary where winters go below minus thirty Celsius the performance of the building envelope really matters. It is not just looks. This kind of thing adds up in your bills over the next twenty years or so. Maybe some people miss that part. If the structural shell holds up well and the lot sits in a neighbourhood you want to stay in then you probably have a solid renovation candidate. It seems that way at least.
How Much Do Home Renovations Actually Cost in Calgary?
That’s the first thing a homeowner asks, and almost no contractor ever tells you accurately, because the truthful answer is disappointing: “it depends on the scope, the finish and what the hidden conditions are behind the walls”. But there are some ranges: An on-site kitchen renovation at a standard finish (good cabinets and stone counters plus the required electrical and plumbing) can start in the mid-50,000s (Calgary) and run well over six figures for the largest jobs. A full main floor renovation could run starting from 100,000 and up. A real whole home renovation (kitchen, bathrooms, main floor reconfigured, mechanical and finished basement) will run into the three hundred thousands and up, on average, in an inner city Calgary home.
There isn’t any figure given, unless the contractor is guessing (and/or unless the customer knows what the low-ball estimate is), until he/she has seen the space and the selections chosen. A consultation should establish a budget bracket, and about two to four weeks after selections have been decided on, there should be a firm proposal, which in turn should contain a contingency of 10-15% with 20% if you have openings without wall access. The original wiring and plumbing size in many of Calgary’s older homes, as well as strange additions or other findings behind plaster/drywall when walls are opened, lead to unexpected costs at the time of demolition.
Renovate or Move? When Does Each Option Actually Win?
Selling and buying in Calgary almost never works like a clean exchange. After considering the realtor’s commissions, lawyers’ fees, transaction fees, moving costs, a new mortgage origination and an inevitably costly furniture and window dressing bill on the other end, most homes will spend between five to eight per cent of the new home’s value merely relocating. A $900,000 home will lose an estimate $45,000 to $70,000 in transaction costs, and that money has not, technically, altered a single floorboard.
There is also the harder-to-quantify cost: the neighbourhood. Calgary’s mature communities each carry a specific character, school catchment, commute pattern, and community fabric. Households who sell to chase more square footage in a newer suburb often discover within twelve months that what they actually wanted was more space and better flow inside the home they already loved being near. A well-done whole-house remodel of a sound structure provides the “feel” of a new house at a tangible discount to the move-up price and gives you the house and the land you already love. Renovate if the land and location is right and the structure is sound. Move when the location no longer works or the house is battling you in too many locations at one time.
What constitutes a complete house renovation?
Surprise over budget and over schedule often comes from the clients simplistic assumption of the effort required to fully remodel an entire home. Rooms are repainted, and a kitchen island added. This is in no way close to stripping, remodelling, and re-doing nearly every room and system in a whole house. Combining the architectural plans, structural, plumbing, electrical, mechanical systems, fixtures, finish carpentry, tile, flooring, cabinetry, lighting fixtures, and transitioning out to the landscape, is no easy feat and must be carefully envisioned.
For an average whole-home project in Calgary that means the interior designer or in-house design group is brought in on the initial stages, a development permit is sought if the home’s footprint is changed or load-bearing walls are moved, the demolition happens, followed by rough-ins of new mechanical and electrical systems, then insulation and drywall are completed, then an intense, highly orchestrated dance of finish applications occur. This construction phase alone will take between four and six months if the process is done efficiently, to which we must add a two- to four-month design and permitting phase.
Here’s an introduction to what’s possible on any given whole home project within Calgary: peruse finished whole home renovations in Calgary, all of which are designed and completed, and illustrate what you should be looking for from an expertly managed design build renovation in terms of both project planning and finishing workmanship.
Where to find a reliable Calgary home renovations contractor?
The Calgary renovation market has hundreds of contractors. A small fraction of them are firms you would want running a six-figure project in your home. Separating the two is mostly a matter of looking for verifiable signals rather than smooth sales pitches.
- Membership with BILD Calgary Region. Active membership in the Building Industry and Land Development association signals an established firm operating inside the professional industry framework.
- Alberta New Home Warranty Program registration. Required for qualifying new builds and major renovations in Alberta. A contractor who carries it is operating at a professional standard. A contractor who avoids it is a warning sign.
- Better Business Bureau standing. An A+ rating with the BBB, combined with verifiable reviews on Google and Houzz, is a baseline check rather than a trophy. The absence of a profile is the meaningful signal.
- A real, visitable office and a real project portfolio. Calgary contractors operating out of trucks and cell phones cannot run whole-home renovations at a professional standard. A physical office, a portfolio of completed projects, and references from past clients in similar communities are the minimum.
- A design-build model rather than a hire-the-pieces model, since the firm has ownership of design, pricing, construction and warranty all under one umbrella, the results tend to be more predictable than the process of hiring an architect, then a builder, then chasing trades and change orders.
How do these things like permits, code and the new changes to the Calgary zoning affect this?
Over the last number of years, Calgary has tightened both the building permit process and inspections considerably. Municipal rezoning initiatives, such as the shift to R-CG base zoning city-wide, have also altered the development potential on many lots. Renovations of a structural nature, any change in occupancy, secondary suites and/or changes in the footprint require permits, drawings stamped by professional engineers/architects (ex., if you have plans to add or remove walls) and inspections at each stage (framing; insulation; final).
This is not a hurdle to fear. It is a layer of consumer protection. But it does mean that any Calgary contractor promising to start tomorrow with no drawings and no permits is selling you a future problem, not a renovation. Good Calgary home builders work within the permit process, and for applicable jobs they will be registered with the Alberta New Home Warranty Program. They will also see inspections as a component of the process not an impediment.
How Long will a renovation take place in Calgary?
My experience managing hundreds of these jobs is that an average bath renovation should take three weeks on site, doing active work. Main floor renovation should be 4 months. A developed basement runs about three months.A total-home remodel will still be 4-6 months from demo to finish on its own, with another 2-4 months of design/permitting before the build stage.
If someone has quoted you far faster than this it is either they’ve skimmed over steps, intend to throw unqualified labor at the job, or they simply haven’t done the numbers. The slowest part of any Calgary renovation is rarely the building. It is the decision-making, including selecting finishes, locking in cabinetry orders, and approving electrical layouts. Homeowners who make decisions promptly during the design phase get faster builds. Homeowners who linger over tile selections for six weeks cannot then blame the contractor for the delay.
So What Should You Actually Do Next?
If you are seriously thinking about renovation in Calgary, the highest-leverage action is NOT looking at more vision boards. The highest-leverage action is actually having one conversation about your house, lot, neighborhood, and vision with one qualified design-build firm. An actual consultation will inform you within an hour of whether the vision you have for your home is realistic at all, give you a rough range of possible costs, and will definitively answer whether your house is a renovation candidate or not.
The families who get this right all do the following three things, in all cases: they assess the building realistically, they hire a qualified design-build team early enough that the question of renovation gets answered with real numbers rather than feelings, and they make their decisions on finish choices in the design team’s timeline rather than their own. If you do these three things, the process of renovation in Calgary ceases to be one of faith and instead becomes one of action.
About the author: Joe Quattrucci is the founder and CEO of Turn Key Homes & Renovations, a leading award winning Calgary design build firm that focuses on whole home renovations, custom homes and additions, and basement developments. The firm has been around since 2007 and is located at 1925 18 Ave NE; and is part of the BILD Calgary Region, an Alberta New Home Warranty program, and an A+ member of the Better Business Bureau. Further info can be found at turnkeyrenovations.ca.