Whole-Home Renovation in Richmond

A whole-home renovation coordinates work across most or all of the house in a single project: kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, lighting, and whatever electrical, plumbing, or structural work the scope requires. Done as one project, you pay for one mobilization, one permit package, and one trade schedule - which is why renovating all at once generally costs less in total than tackling the same rooms one at a time over several years.

Our job is as much project management as construction. We walk the entire house, price every room and every system as one complete scope, and sequence framers, electricians, plumbers, tilers, and finish carpenters over the months the project runs. You deal with one point of contact, the owners visit the site often enough to catch issues before they become problems, and you hear from us every week about what's done, what's next, and what to expect. Whether you stay in the home or move out during the work is a real cost and schedule decision - we help you run both scenarios before the plan is locked, not after.

This scope suits owners of older Richmond homes where the systems need updating anyway, families who've outgrown their layout but not their street, and anyone who has watched a room-by-room approach quietly cost more than it should have. It's a big number no matter how you slice it - which is exactly why it shouldn't be a moving one.

The building code doesn't only ask what you're adding - it asks how much of the original house is left. Strip a home back to its skeleton of studs, floors, and roof framing, and building officials can treat the project less like an alteration and more like new construction. Vancouver formalizes this in its own building by-law, which devotes an entire part to existing buildings and defines "reconstruction" explicitly; other Lower Mainland municipalities reach similar conclusions through their alteration provisions.

Crossing that line can pull in current-code requirements you weren't planning to touch - most notably energy performance, since a substantially reconstructed home can be asked to meet the same efficiency standards as a new one. Whether your scope crosses it depends on your municipality and your drawings, which is why we settle the question during design rather than discovering it at plan review, after the budget is set.

If your house predates 1990, provincial law assumes its walls may be hiding asbestos - in drywall compound, vinyl flooring, insulation, duct wrap - and WorkSafeBC requires a hazardous-materials survey by a qualified professional before renovation or demolition work begins. Since January 2024, asbestos abatement in BC may only be done by licensed firms with certified workers, and there's a public registry where anyone can verify a licence before the containment goes up.

If the project involves taking down large parts of the house, a demolition permit enters the picture, and some municipalities go further: Vancouver, for one, requires most of an older home's materials by weight to be reused or recycled rather than landfilled. None of this is optional, and none of it should be a surprise - it belongs in the scope and the schedule from the first version of the plan.

A whole-home renovation is your one clean chance to size the electrical service for where homes are actually heading: a heat pump, an EV charger, an induction range. Each is manageable alone, but together they can push an older 100-amp service past its limit - a question a licensed electrician answers with a load calculation against your square footage, heating, and appliances, not a guess.

Upgrading the service involves a licensed electrical contractor, a Technical Safety BC permit, and coordination with the utility - straightforward during a renovation, when the walls are open and the electrician is already on site, and disproportionately disruptive as a standalone project two years later. Even if the heat pump or the car is a someday plan, running the capacity and the rough-ins now is the inexpensive version of that decision.

Municipal inspections arrive in a fixed order - footings where there's excavation, framing with the plumbing and electrical rough-ins still visible, insulation and vapour barrier before drywall, then the finals - and on a whole-home scope that rhythm repeats zone by zone. Closing a wall before its inspection passes risks being ordered to open it again, so the schedule is built around inspection days rather than in spite of them.

If you're living in the house in Richmond while it happens, the same sequencing is what keeps you sane: dust barriers between zones, utility shut-offs announced days ahead rather than discovered at breakfast, and the one working bathroom renovated last, not first. The mid-build weeks are the real test of a contractor's communication - you should always know what's happening tomorrow, and why.

Nearly every whole-home renovation triggers permits - structural, electrical, and plumbing changes almost always require them, with inspections at set stages, and structural work needs drawings stamped by a licensed engineer. In Richmond we assemble the permit package as one coordinated application, bring in the engineers, and attend the inspections, so approvals never become the reason your schedule slips.

Permits run through the City of Richmond, and the delta ground adds considerations other cities don't have: flood construction levels affect how low habitable space can sit, and anything changing the building's relationship to grade gets looked at through that lens. Townhome and condo projects need strata approval alongside the city permit, and Richmond's large strata inventory means that second track applies to a big share of projects here. We manage both approvals in parallel and build the review window into the schedule from the first conversation.

Richmond runs permitting through its Building Approvals Department, and as of mid-2026 most applications start online in the MyPermit portal, reached through a MyRichmond account. The portal walks you through the application step by step and shows only the requirements that apply to your project type. Gas, plumbing and sprinkler permits go through the same portal, and the permits counter at City Hall remains open for anyone who prefers to apply in person.

Two practical details are worth knowing before you start. The city will not release a permit until the contractor's business licence is active, so that paperwork needs to be in order early. And inspections are self-serve: they are booked through Richmond's online inspection system using the permit number and access code printed on the permit itself, with requests made by evening generally scheduled for the next business day. We sequence those bookings so nothing gets covered up before sign-off.