A renovation budget, with the details left in.
Cabinetry, fixtures, structural work, and finishes all need a place in the budget. These fictional project estimates show how a design-build firm could explain those choices; they are not records of completed work.
Cost ranges by room
Kitchen
$85k – $180kFull gut, new cabinetry, stone, appliances, lighting and floor. The bottom of the band is a straightforward footprint. The top is structural work, a moved sink, and a large island.
Design, permits and our fee includedPrimary bath
$48k – $95kBack to studs, waterproofed properly, heated floor. Tile and stone selection move this band more than anything else — it is routinely a third of the job.
Design, permits and our fee includedAddition
$210k – $420kFootings through finishes. Roofline, foundation depth and how far mechanicals have to travel set this far more than square footage does.
Design, permits and our fee included
Ranges reflect projects completed in the last twenty-four months. Material prices move; we re-check these twice a year and the date they were last reviewed is at the bottom of this page.
A price, not a guess with a percentage on top.
Square-foot pricing is how a project ends up 40% over. Here is what actually happens instead.
- Range
First call — free, and honest
From a description and a few photographs we will give you a range within about twenty minutes. If your budget and the work are not in the same neighborhood we say so then, not after two site visits.
- Fee
Design agreement — typically $4,500 to $12,000
Scaled to the project. It buys measured drawings, structural coordination, selections and a line-item price. The drawings are yours. If you take them to another builder, that is a legitimate outcome and it happens.
- Price
Schedule of values — a fixed price, line by line
Every trade, allowance and material priced separately, with the allowances stated in the open so you can see what is a real number and what is a placeholder. You approve it before we order anything.
- Draws
Payment against progress, never ahead of it
A deposit to schedule, then draws tied to completed stages. You are never paying for work that has not happened, which is the single best protection a homeowner has.
Your draw is a trust fund, and we are its trustee.
Under the Michigan Builders Trust Fund Act the money you pay a contractor is held in trust for your project and for the subcontractors and suppliers on it. Using it to finish somebody else’s job is not a cash-flow problem. It is a felony.
Ask any builder you are considering how they hold draws and whether they can show you a schedule of values. If the answer is vague, you have learned something useful for free.
Michigan Compiled Laws § 570.151. Read the statute →Change orders, and why ours are rare
A change order is not a scam. It is what happens when the house tells you something the drawings could not. Rotten sill plate, undersized joists, knob-and-tube in a wall nobody planned to open.
What makes them feel like a scam is when they arrive after the work, with no number attached, at the end of a job you can no longer walk away from. So: nothing on a Larchmont site moves before a written change order is signed — with the cost, the schedule impact, and what happens if you decline.
We average two per project. Across the three projects on this site, one had two, one had one, and one had none. Every one of them is written up on its project page, including the amount.
What is not in these numbers
Furniture, window treatments, appliances beyond the allowance stated, landscaping, and anything asbestos or lead abatement turns up. Those last two are tested for before we price, not discovered later.
Tell us the room and the ceiling on your budget.
We would much rather hear a real number on the first call than design something you were never going to build.
Ranges last reviewed September 2026.