Whole-Home Remodeling in Burbank, CA

Whole-home remodel costs vary enormously depending on how much of the house is touched, whether structural walls are coming out, how much of the electrical and plumbing systems are being replaced, and the finish level chosen throughout. A multi-room remodel that updates a kitchen, bath and living space together costs materially less than a full gut renovation that rebuilds every system in the house. We give you a fixed written scope after the full-house design phase at the consultation, tailored to your specific house and goals rather than a square-footage average.

Yes, virtually every whole-home remodel requires a permit through the City of Burbank Community Development Department, Building Division, since the scope typically touches structural walls, electrical, plumbing and enough of the building envelope to trigger Title 24 energy and CALGreen documentation. We prepare and carry that permit package as part of the job, and we confirm exactly what your project requires at the consultation before design begins. Because a whole-home scope can touch structural, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work all at once, we submit it to the City as one coordinated permit package rather than filing separate permits room by room, which keeps inspections aligned to a single schedule instead of several competing ones.

A full gut renovation of a Burbank house typically runs four to nine months or more, depending on the size of the house and how much of the structure and systems are being reworked, and design and permitting time at the front end can add several additional weeks. A multi-room remodel that stops short of a full gut generally runs faster, more in the range of the individual room timelines added together with some overlap. We build a realistic full-house timeline into the fixed scope at the consultation.

Yes, opening a boxed-in 1950s ranch floor plan is the single most requested whole-home project we run, and it is achievable in the vast majority of Burbank houses. We identify which walls carry load across the whole floor plan at once, size and engineer the beams that replace them, and detail the posts and footings that catch the new load — all designed on paper before any wall comes down so the finished space is open, safe and code-compliant throughout. Interior walls in a 1950s ranch often also carry the home's original electrical runs or HVAC ductwork, so part of the same design pass is mapping where those get rerouted before demolition, rather than discovering a buried circuit once the wall is already open.

For a multi-room remodel, many households do stay, with dust protection and a phased schedule that keeps at least part of the house livable at any given time. A full gut renovation that touches the entire structure and every system typically requires moving out for the duration, since the house is not functionally livable with walls, electrical and plumbing all open at once. We talk through what your specific scope requires honestly at the consultation so you can plan accordingly.

Because a whole-home remodel typically touches a large share of the building envelope, it commonly triggers full Title 24 energy compliance and CALGreen green-building standards across the house rather than the more limited requirements a single-room remodel might see. In Burbank's hot, dry inland climate with no coastal marine layer, that plays out as insulation, dual-pane low-E glazing and HVAC or heat-pump upgrades genuinely built into the scope. We document full compliance as part of the plan-check submittal so the permit issues without hold-ups.

Yes, and for many older Burbank houses this is one of the most important parts of the project — an electrical panel sized for a 1950s household rarely handles a modern kitchen, home office and entertainment setup, and original plumbing runs often need replacing before new fixtures go on top of them. We assess the existing systems at the design stage and scope any needed upgrades into the written estimate up front, rather than discovering undersized wiring or aging pipe mid-demolition. A common find in these houses is original galvanized steel supply piping, which corrodes from the inside over decades and gradually chokes water pressure even when nothing looks wrong from outside the wall, so we test and evaluate it as part of the same systems assessment.

Yes, wider doorways, curbless showers, comfort-height fixtures and better lighting are straightforward to design into a whole-home remodel from the start, and it is far more efficient to build these in during a full remodel than to retrofit them room by room later. We discuss long-term plans for the house at the consultation so these details are part of the original design where they matter to your household. Burbank's post-war ranch housing stock is a natural fit for this kind of planning, since most of these houses are already single-story, so the main additions are things like zero-threshold entries, lever-style door handles and blocking built into the walls ahead of time for future grab bars.

Yes, we run whole-home projects on hillside parcels in the Burbank Hills and Verdugo foothills as well as properties in the Rancho equestrian district, and both carry overlays a flat Valley-floor property does not — grading and fire-hardening rules on hillside lots, and horse-keeping zoning near the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in the Rancho. We confirm which apply to your specific parcel during the feasibility and design stage so the permit path is planned correctly from the outset. On a hillside property, a whole-home scope that touches exterior walls, windows or roofing can also trigger Chapter 7A wildland-urban-interface fire-hardening requirements — ignition-resistant materials and vent detailing — on top of the standard Title 24 energy review every remodel here goes through.

Yes, we run whole-home remodels across the East San Fernando Valley, including Toluca Lake, North Hollywood, Glendale, Studio City and Sun Valley, on the same design-build, fixed-scope basis. What changes across the boundary is the permitting authority — North Hollywood is a City of Los Angeles neighborhood permitted through LADBS, Glendale is its own independent city with its own building department, and Toluca Lake is split between Burbank and Los Angeles depending on the address. Wherever your house sits, the process and the standards the work is built to stay the same, and the number to call is (747) 350-1456.