Project Profile

A 1900 home, made ready for retirement

A whole-home remodel in Brevard: two new baths, a rebuilt dormer, a front porch that finally fits the house — and a hundred-year-old frame full of surprises.

Location: Brevard, NC
Project type: Whole-home remodel
Timeline: Feb – Aug 2026
Final investment: $271,142

The finished home: white clapboard with a full wraparound front porch, two dormers, porch swing and rocking chairs — After — the new front porch, built to match a house from 1900.

What they were after

They loved their kitchen. The rest of the house hadn't caught up.

This couple came to us through a referral from another contractor. They'd remodeled their kitchen a few years earlier and loved that space — which made the rest of the house harder to live with.

They were heading into retirement, and they were clear about what that meant. This is the house they plan to stay in. They wanted it to be the way they want it for that part of their life. Not a flip, not resale — theirs.

Here's what they came to us with:

The bathroomsA real primary bath — and a second one, so guests upstairs weren't sharing.
The officeSomewhere they could actually work year-round. They both work from home, and that room was always cold.
Upstairs comfortIt was hot all summer and cold all winter, no matter what they did downstairs.
The side stairThe old one felt unsafe, and it sat right in the view from a downstairs window.
Curb appealThey wanted the house to look like theirs from the road.
The front porchThe big one. They love being outside in Brevard weather, and they wanted a porch that looked like it had always been on a house built in 1900.
The basementA dry, solid basement instead of one they worried about.

One thread ran through all of it: modern function, traditional look.

The original front of the house: a small entry portico with dark shutters and no porch — A small portico, no place to sit.

The finished front with a full-width covered porch, columns and a brick-bordered walk — Full-width porch, brick border, period-correct columns.

How we planned it

Three months before anyone swung a hammer

From November to February we worked with them on scope and preconstruction — defining what the project actually was, and putting a real estimate behind it. We sat down together and decided what mattered most and where their money should go.

Here's a small example of how that plays out. On the front patio we talked about staining the concrete. We decided against it, and went with traditional concrete color and a brick border instead — which ties into the brick on the side of the house and reads right on a home from 1900.

That's the kind of decision that separates a porch that belongs on the house from one that just got added to it.

The porch also solved a problem we weren't pointing it at. Between the new roof over it and the new gutters carrying water away from the house, the basement flooding they'd been living with stopped. We never had to go chase that one separately.

A lot of what you pay for on a job like this disappears the day after it goes in. It's worth seeing while it's still visible.

Formed front porch slab with yellow vapor barrier and a rebar grid on chairs, ready for concrete — Front porch slab, formed and ready: vapor barrier under a full rebar grid, tied and set on chairs — more steel than the minimum.

Carport slab formed with vapor barrier and rebar, new posts framed above it — Same under the carport, poured against the new posts that replaced the ones on the cracked slab.

The side of the house stripped to sheathing and covered in peel-and-stick house wrap — And behind the new siding: peel-and-stick house wrap, sealing a wall that had none.

What it cost

$250,550 proposed. $271,142 final.

Here's the whole picture, including the part most people don't show you.

Original proposal: $250,550
Final: $271,142
Difference: +8%+$20,592 — driven by what we found once demo started. More on that below.

Scope area	Proposed
Upstairs remodelTwo bathrooms, one with a custom tiled shower. All new plumbing, electrical and HVAC — and 200 square feet added to the house.	$84,652
Front patio & porchA full front porch built to match the house, with a new concrete patio, brick border and a new front door.	$65,715
Back porch & stairThe old side stair replaced with a new back porch and a spiral stair.	$34,167
SidingNew wood lap siding over advanced air-sealing house wrap.	$32,481
Exterior paintA fresh coat of paint over the whole exterior of the house.	$16,667
Office windowsNew, well-insulated windows for the home office.	$14,793
PreconstructionPlanning, design, drawings and permits.	$2,075
Proposal total	$250,550

What we found

The parts of the house nobody could see

Once demo started, the 1900 frame started telling on itself:

Framing that had been cut apart for plumbing at some point in the house's life, and left that way.
Knob and tube wiring — the original 1900 electrical — still live in the upstairs.
Headers that weren't sufficient to support the second floor.
A rotten beam in the carport — which meant redoing the carport roof entirely.

Original knob and tube wiring in an opened floor cavity, with a voltage tester glowing red against the conductor — Knob and tube — the original 1900 wiring. The tester lit up the second it touched the conductor, which tells you it was still carrying current.

The carport beam with the ceiling opened up, showing rot through the timber, temporarily held by a new post — The carport beam once we opened the ceiling. Rot straight through it — shored on a temporary post while we rebuilt the roof.

A crack running through the carport concrete slab at the base of the decorative iron posts — And underneath it: a slab cracked through at the base of the posts holding that carport up.

We worked through every one of these with the building department so the house came back up to code, and leaned on our trade partners — our plumbers and electricians — to find creative solutions to what this particular house needed. The upstairs plumbing is a good example: it ran up the outside of the house. All of it had to be brought in and re-routed through walls that were never built to carry it.

The hardest part of the job was the upstairs. We removed a room from the second floor, which left the house open to the weather, and rebuilt a larger dormer in its place. That took a lot of planning and a lot of hard work from our crews.

The rear of the house during demolition, the dormer opened up and a pile of removed framing in the yard — The room comes off — and that white pipe on the wall is the upstairs plumbing, running up the outside of the house. This is the stage that keeps a builder up at night: it's open, and the weather doesn't care about your schedule.

New stud framing for the upstairs bathrooms against the opened original structure — New framing for the two baths, going up against what was left of the original structure.

The new roof deck sheathed and taped, seen from on top, looking out over the yard — Closed back in. New deck, sheathed and taped, on a bigger dormer than the one we took off.

On surprises

What happens when we find something

This is worth saying plainly, because it's where most renovations get stressful. Homeowners can feel overwhelmed when a builder starts finding problems in the middle of their project.

We've worked on a lot of old homes. We expect to find things like this. So we have a process for handling them as they come up, and for communicating clearly about how we need to proceed — what it is, what it takes to fix it, and what it costs. Every one of the changes on this job showed up in that conversation as it happened, not as a surprise on an invoice at the end.

The office during finishing, deep green walls and a bank of new windows on two sides — The office mid-finish — new windows on two walls, and heat that reaches it.

A finished bathroom with black and white patterned tile floor and a wood vanity — One of the two new baths upstairs.

If you're considering a project like this

Two things matter more than the rest

Proper planning and setting clear expectations. That's what those three months from November to February were for. Before anyone swings a hammer you should know what the project is, what it costs, and what's likely to come up along the way. The projects that go badly are almost always the ones that started before everybody agreed on those things.

Knowing how you and your builder will handle the unknowns. On a house this age, there will be unknowns. Ask any builder you're talking to what their process is for the day they open a wall and find something. Get those two things right and the rest is work.