Whole-home renovation in Littleton, CO
Our shop, our crews, and most of our projects are all in town.
What's behind the walls in a Littleton home — two very different answers
Littleton is the one city in our service area where the year your house was built changes the entire renovation. Around Historic Downtown and Ketring, the homes are old enough for the classic problems: knob-and-tube wiring in the pre-1940 stock, which any renovation that opens the walls has to bring up to current code and which many insurers won’t cover; galvanized-steel supply lines corroding from the inside out; cast-iron drains at the end of their life; and, in anything pre-1980, possible asbestos, with lead paint likely below 1978. These are careful projects — the character is the reason people buy here, so the work is modernizing the bones without erasing the house.
South toward Southbridge and the Columbine-area subdivisions, the problem inverts. These 1980s-and-later homes have modern wiring and sound structure, but they’re squarely in the polybutylene window: gray plastic supply pipe manufactured from 1978 through mid-1995 and installed in millions of homes, which degrades internally and can rupture without warning. Nothing requires you to replace it — but a whole-home renovation is the moment to, because the walls are already open and a failure later floods the house you just finished.
We name the risks at the consultation, not in a change order. Older homes hold unknowns — the job is pricing them honestly and carrying a realistic contingency, not promising there won’t be any.
What a Littleton whole-home renovation actually changes
In the downtown and Ketring homes, the transformation is spatial: opening a chopped-up floor plan, reworking a small kitchen into the heart of the house, and finding a primary suite where there wasn’t one — all while the exterior and streetscape stay true to the neighborhood. The electrical service usually needs upgrading before it can carry a modern home, and that’s a line item, not a surprise.
South Littleton renovations are about cohesion and finish level: oak cabinetry and laminate throughout, a peninsula where an island belongs, a garden tub nobody has touched in a decade, and rooms that read as separate projects from separate decades. Designing the whole house at once is what makes it feel like one home rather than a patchwork — and with sound structure underneath, these projects price and schedule more predictably.
Permitting your Littleton renovation
Permits run through the City of Littleton’s Building Division at the Littleton Center on West Berry Avenue via eTRAKiT, with a plan-check fee of 65% of the permit fee when drawings are reviewed, plus use tax and the Arapahoe County open space tax. A Littleton permit must be commenced within 180 days and expires 365 days after issuance unless the Building Official extends it — on a whole-home project, that’s a real sequencing constraint we plan around. And because Littleton spans Arapahoe, Jefferson, and Douglas counties, we confirm your address is inside the city before filing.
We renovate homes throughout Littleton. Weighing your options for space? We also build home additions in Littleton and handle basement finishing in Littleton, and everything we do locally is on our Littleton remodeling page.
Whole-home renovation FAQs — Littleton
Newer doesn’t mean immune. Homes built from 1978 to about 1995 are in the polybutylene window — gray supply pipe that degrades from the inside and can rupture without warning. Ironically it’s often a bigger plumbing risk than an older home’s galvanized line, because it fails suddenly.
Once a permitted renovation opens the walls, that wiring has to come up to current code. Many insurers won’t cover it either. We plan and price the rewire into the scope rather than discovering it halfway through demolition.
We sequence to prevent it. A Littleton permit must be commenced within 180 days and expires 365 days after issuance regardless of activity unless extended by the Building Official — which is exactly why a whole-home renovation here needs a real schedule from day one.
Let’s build something right here in Littleton.
Send a note about your project, your timeline, and your budget — we’ll set up a free in-home walkthrough, usually within a few days. You’re a neighbor, not a lead.