Phoenix Metro and Prescott
Whole Home Remodeling
Reworking a whole house is a sequencing problem before it is a construction problem.
A whole-home remodel touches nearly every system in the house at once: layout, structure, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, finishes. The difficulty is rarely any single trade. It is the order they have to happen in, and what happens to the schedule when one of them finds something unexpected behind a wall.
We design the project and build it, which means the drawings and the schedule are produced by people who have to live with both. Decisions that would otherwise get discovered on site — where the structure actually runs, whether a wall can move, what the panel can carry — get resolved during design, when changing them costs a revision instead of a demolition.
Whole-home projects are usually phased so the house stays usable where that is possible, or planned around a move-out where it is not. Which of those applies to your project is one of the first things worth settling, because it changes the sequence and the cost.
Much of the Valley's housing stock dates from the 1960s through the 1990s, and houses of those eras carry predictable surprises: panels sized for a smaller electrical life, plumbing materials that are now past their design life, and previous remodels done to varying standards, with and without permits. Part of the assessment is reading which of those your house is likely to hold, so the contingency is an informed number rather than a ritual percentage.
The other thing a whole-home scope buys is coherence. Room-by-room remodels done years apart accumulate five flooring transitions, three trim profiles and lighting from different decades. Doing the design as one pass — even when construction is phased — is what makes the finished house read as one decision instead of a history of them.
What we coordinate
- Design and construction documents
- Structural review where walls or loads change
- Permitting and inspection scheduling
- Licensed electrical, plumbing and mechanical trades
- Cabinetry, tile, flooring and finish carpentry
- Material selections, lead times and delivery sequencing
- Site protection, dust control and daily cleanup
How the project runs
Typical major phases.
- 01
Consultation and assessment
Walk the house, understand the goals, and identify what is structural, what is cosmetic and what is unknown until something is opened up.
- 02
Design and preconstruction
Layouts, scope, selections and a construction plan developed together, so the price reflects a defined scope rather than an estimate of a hope.
- 03
Permitting and approvals
We prepare and submit what the jurisdiction requires and coordinate the review process. Timelines belong to the city, not to us.
- 04
Construction
Demolition, structural work, rough-ins, inspections, finishes — sequenced so trades are not working over each other.
- 05
Walkthrough and closeout
Punch list, final inspections, and handover of what was installed and where the shutoffs are.
Phases describe sequence, not schedule. We do not publish durations for work that has not been scoped, and permit review times belong to the jurisdiction.
Design & preconstruction
What gets decided before we build.
- Whether the house stays occupied, and how the project is phased if it does
- What is load-bearing, and what that means for the layout you want
- Whether the existing electrical service and panel support the new scope
- Where plumbing can practically move, and where it cannot
- Long-lead selections that have to be decided early to avoid stalling the schedule
What moves the cost
Why two similar projects can cost very differently.
These are the variables that actually move a number. We do not publish price ranges for work that has not been scoped — a real figure comes from your project, not from an average.
- How much of the layout changes
- Renewing finishes throughout a house is a large project with predictable scope. Moving walls, relocating a kitchen, or reworking how the rooms connect is a different undertaking — it brings structural questions, moves plumbing and electrical, and turns a finish project into construction.
- The age of the house and what it is hiding
- Whole-home work opens more of the building than any other project type, so it finds more. Older wiring, galvanised supply lines, undersized panels, absent insulation and framing that was modified at some point are all common, and a whole-home scope is where they surface.
- How far systems get renewed
- Deciding whether electrical, plumbing and HVAC are updated in the areas being opened or throughout the house is one of the largest budget decisions in the project. Doing it while walls are open is far cheaper than returning later, which is why it is a design-stage decision rather than a construction-stage one.
- Structural changes
- Open-plan changes usually mean removing walls that carry load. Each one brings a beam, a load path to adequate bearing, and engineering. The number of these, not the size of the house, tends to drive the structural cost.
- Level of finish, applied across everything
- In a whole-home project a specification decision multiplies. Choosing a different tile, a different door, or a different plumbing fixture line affects every room at once, so small per-unit differences become large totals.
- Whether the house is occupied
- Working around a household means phasing, dust separation, and protecting finished areas while adjacent ones are under construction. It is a legitimate way to run a project and it costs more than an empty house, because sequencing is constrained.
What moves the schedule
What actually consumes the calendar.
We do not publish durations for work that has not been scoped, and permit review times belong to the jurisdiction rather than to us.
- Design completeness across the whole scope
- A whole-home project has more decisions than any other, and unresolved ones anywhere can stall work everywhere. Finishing design before construction starts matters more here than on any single-room project.
- Trade sequencing across many rooms
- The same trades return repeatedly across a house, and they cannot all work at once without getting in each other's way. Sequencing so trades are not stacked is what keeps the schedule real.
- Discovery during demolition
- More opening means more discovery. Some of it changes scope. Building decision points into the plan is what keeps a discovery from becoming a stoppage.
- Long-lead items ordered against final drawings
- Cabinetry, windows, doors and specialty finishes are ordered to approved dimensions. Across a whole house there are many of them, and they need deciding early or they set the end date.
- Phasing, if the household stays in place
- A phased occupied project takes longer in calendar time than the same scope in an empty house. That is a deliberate trade, and it is planned rather than discovered.
Before you commit
Worth understanding first.
- what the permitting path involves
Whole-home work crosses more trades and more inspection gates than any other project type.
Included capabilities
Work commonly included in this project type.
Monarch coordinates the full project scope, with specialty work performed by appropriately licensed trades where required.
Questions
Answers we can give honestly.
- Can we live in the house during the work?
- Sometimes, and it depends on the scope and how the project is phased. If the kitchen and every bathroom are down at the same time, the answer is usually no. This is worth deciding early because it changes the sequence and the budget.
- Do you handle the permits?
- We prepare and submit the permit package and coordinate inspections. What we cannot do is promise a review timeline — that belongs to the jurisdiction, and we build the schedule around the date they actually issue rather than a date we hoped for.
- What happens when something unexpected is found behind a wall?
- It gets priced and decided before work continues, in writing. Older houses hide things. The difference between a well-run project and a bad one is whether that conversation happens before the money is spent or after.
- Is it better to remodel room by room over several years?
- It can be easier on cash flow and harder on everything else — every phase repeats mobilization, protection and cleanup, and finishes chosen years apart rarely agree with each other. Where phasing makes sense, the design is still done as one pass so every phase builds toward the same finished house.
- How do you keep a project this size from drifting?
- With a defined scope before construction, decisions made in writing, and changes priced before they are built rather than after. Drift is rarely one big decision — it is twenty small undocumented ones, and the process is designed so those do not accumulate silently.
How a project starts
Start with a consultation. We look at the space, talk through what you want to change and what you want to keep, and set out what the design and preconstruction stage would involve for your project.