Doing a whole house is less about what you spend than about what order you spend it in. Get the sequence wrong and you pay for the same work twice.
Everything inside the walls, first
Anything that runs through a wall or a floor — plumbing, wiring, ducting — goes in before a single surface is finished. It is obvious written down and it is the thing people most often reverse, usually because the visible work is what feels like progress.
Then the messy trades, top to bottom
Ceilings, then walls, then floors. Dust falls. Anyone who finishes a floor before the ceiling above it is done will finish that floor twice.
Where painting sits
First coats early, final coat late. Trim, doors and skirting get their last coat after the floors are in and the furniture is back, because that is when they take the knocks.
The two mistakes
Ordering finishes before the rooms are measured as-built. Rooms in older houses are rarely square, and a worktop cut to a drawing rather than to the room is an expensive piece of stone.
And starting outside while inside is open. If the roof, gutters or siding need work, they come first — there is no sense finishing a ceiling under a roof you are about to disturb.
If it is being done in stages
Most people do it in stages, and that is sensible. The order still holds; it just spreads out. We will tell you which stages have to stay together and which can wait a year.
Home remodeling covers how we run it. Finished work is on our Facebook page.
