Whole-Home Renovation in Arlington, TX

Arlington grew up fast, and it grew up mid-century. When the General Motors plant opened in 1954 and Six Flags followed in 1961, a town of a few thousand became a city of tens of thousands inside a single decade — and most of that first wave of houses is still standing. Neighborhoods like Woodland West, dating to 1962 with its pond and mature trees, and the older blocks near downtown and UTA are full of solid ranch and mid-century homes with good bones and dated everything. A few miles west, Interlochen's larger 1970s and '80s customs face the same reckoning at a different scale. All of them are better candidates for one coordinated whole-home renovation than for another decade of one-room-at-a-time fixes.

Why a whole-home approach here

Taking a house all at once lets us sequence the invisible work — foundation, framing repairs, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation — before anyone touches finishes. That order matters in a 1960s Arlington ranch, where opening a wall for a new kitchen almost always turns up cloth-era wiring or galvanized supply lines that have to be dealt with anyway. Doing it as a single project means the state-licensed electricians and plumbers on the crew pull their trade permits together, the systems are designed to work as a whole, and you're not paying to reopen the same walls twice.

The ground under the slab

Arlington sits on Tarrant County's transition from Eagle Ford shale to the Grand Prairie clays — expansive soil that swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the reason older homes here get sticking doors by late summer and brick cracks that keep coming back. There's little sense spending on wide-plank floors and new cabinetry over a foundation that's still moving, so a real renovation confirms elevations, grading, and drainage first, then builds the finishes on a house that's holding still.

Budgeting the permit up front

A gut renovation carries a large building permit, and Arlington attaches a real cost to it early. The city charges a non-refundable plan-review fee equal to 35% of the building permit fee on every single- and two-family residential permit, and your application isn't even considered received until that fee is paid at submittal. On a whole-home job that's a number worth planning for, not discovering — so we fold it into the permit budget and file through the city's Arlington Permits portal (ap.arlingtontx.gov), with Planning & Development Services at 101 W. Abram Street.

One team that owns the whole house

Texas licenses the trades but not a statewide residential general contractor, so the real question is who coordinates all of them and stands behind the result. That's the heart of design-build: one accountable team from demolition to final walk-through, with the state-licensed electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs the work requires folded into a single plan. The Remo Guys is a design-build remodeler based in Allen, insured and bonded, working across Arlington and the wider metroplex since 2019 — and we treat that single point of accountability as the whole point. The city's Planning & Development Services line is 817-459-6502.