01Whole home
We put off the whole house for years because we couldn’t picture living through it. Akram walked us through every stage before it started, and each week went the way he said it would.
Whole homes · 01 · The whole house, renovated as one
Whole-Home Renovations in Hamilton
Home renovations in Hamilton treat the whole house as one project. Finishes are carried through every room together, so no room is finished and then reopened for another trade.
- Licensed builder
- WSIB
- Years building
- 15+
- Houses completed
- 300+
What’s included
What’s included
in a whole home.
A renovation takes in layout, structure, services and finishes, planned as one sequence in that order. When the job includes the outside, it joins at the end.
Layout changes and open-concept conversions
Before any beam or pipe goes in, the whole floor plan is worked out: which walls are taken out, and how the rooms open to each other.
Structural work: load-bearing walls and beams
Under a building permit, a beam sized to the wall’s load goes in where the wall was. It stays open for inspection until sign-off.
Electrical, plumbing and HVAC, coordinated
A room is closed only after rough-ins across the entire house are inspected. The builder books the trades and holds the schedule.
Insulation, drywall, flooring, trim and paint throughout
Each finish gets one sweep of the whole house, so no room is finished only to be opened again for the next trade.
Siding and windows, as part of the whole
The exterior is not left for a second project. If the job takes in the outside, its siding and windows get done in the same project.
How it runs
The whole frame,
stage by stage.
Rooms and whole houses share five stages in an identical order, and one builder answers for each.
- 01
Permits
The building permit for the walls and structure that move, filed before any wall is opened.
- 02
Structure
House-wide, walls are taken out, beams installed, and the new layout framed.
- 03
Trades
The trades share the open walls for rough-in, in an order the builder sets. Inspections follow.
- 04
Finishes
Flooring, trim and paint follow insulation and drywall, and each runs through every room together.
- 05
Handover
The final inspection follows the last room, then the finished house is handed over.
Why Hanna Homes
Why one builder
for all of it.
A job over an entire house rests on certain points, and one builder ties it all together.
Layout, structure, services and finishes are sequenced on a single plan, so a room is not opened a second time for the next trade.
Finishes go over inspected work only. The beams are set and stay open until inspected, and drywall waits for that to be done.
The builder decides who goes in when, since wiring, pipes and ducts meet inside open walls, so inspections can follow.
Before any trade is booked, the material in the plan’s opened walls and ceilings is examined, then a finding is factored into the sequence of rooms.
Start with a call.
Client reviews
Their house,
their words.
Whole homes and single rooms, in the words of the people who live in them.
02Whole home
We bought an older house knowing it needed everything. Akram was straight with us from the first visit about what was worth keeping. Every room is new to us now, and it still feels like the house we fell for.
03Kitchens
The crew covered the floors and cleaned up at the end of every day, which mattered with two kids at home. The new kitchen is the room everyone ends up in now. Worth every week of takeout.
04Custom homes
Building a new house was the biggest decision we’ve ever made, and it never felt rushed. We walked the site most Saturdays and always knew exactly where things stood.
05Basement apartments
We turned the basement into a unit for my mother-in-law. She has her own entrance and her own kitchen, and we still get Sunday dinners. The paperwork I was dreading turned out to be the part I thought about least.
06Additions
We needed more room but didn’t want to leave the street. The second storey went on over the summer, and from the sidewalk you’d think the house was always built that way.
07Bathrooms
One bathroom is a small job for a builder, but they treated it like the whole house. The tile lines up, the door finally closes properly, and they finished the week they said they would.
08Knockdown & rebuild
Our old bungalow wasn’t worth saving, so we took it down and built new on the same lot. They kept the neighbours in the loop from demolition to the final walk-through. We love coming home to it.
09Basements
The basement used to be storage and a furnace. Now it’s a family room the kids actually want to be in. A clear quote, no surprises, and the site was swept every night.
10Kitchens
Third builder we spoke to, and the only one who returned every call. When we changed our minds about the island halfway through, they made it work without any drama.
01 / 10
Projects
Selected work,
inside and out.
Two whole homes and three rooms, each one finished: a bungalow, a new house, a kitchen, a bath and a basement.
01Whole-Home Renovations
A bungalow, renewed in limewash.
Windows run floor to ceiling, brick is limewashed, with an oak door to a limestone forecourt and cedar under the eaves.
01 / 05
Gallery
From the street
to the basement.
Each service has pictures, from street to basement. Any one opens whole with a tap.Kitchens, bathrooms and basements follow the street views of whole homes. Open a picture to see all of it.
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13 pictures: Whole homes · Kitchens · Bathrooms · Basements
Service area
Within an hour
of Burlington.
Towns we build in
- 01BurlingtonHaltonHome base
- 02HamiltonHamiltonby Hwy 403, 15 min, 18 km by road, approximately
- 03OakvilleHaltonby the QEW, 20 min, 24 km by road, approximately
- 04AncasterHamiltonby Hwy 403, 25 min, 28 km by road, approximately
- 05MiltonHaltonby Hwy 407, 30 min, 30 km by road, approximately
- 06MississaugaPeelby Hwy 407 and Hwy 403, 30 min, 41 km by road, approximately
- 07CambridgeWaterloo Regionby Hwy 8 and Hwy 5, 45 min, 51 km by road, approximately
- 08KitchenerWaterloo Regionby Hwy 6 and Hwy 401, 55 min, 72 km by road, approximately
And anywhere else inside the line.
Common questions
Common questions
in Hamilton.
What Hamilton homeowners ask about whole-home renovations: what it costs, how long it takes and what the city asks for.
The price follows the walls. In Hamilton every wall that moves, structural or not, is permit work, so drawings and a City permit go into the job before demolition starts. After that, the cost depends on how far the layout and structure change, how many beams go in and how many trades run through the house. Any figure waits until the layout is settled.
Check the house's heritage status first. On a designated property the City will not release a building permit until the Heritage Permit is approved, and that decision sits ahead of everything else. After the permit come the structural work, the trades, the finishes and the inspections, in that order. No duration is given before the plans exist, because the scope decides the length.
Yes, nearly always, because a whole-home job moves walls, touches structure or changes plumbing, and each of those is permit work in Ontario. Hamilton adds a zoning check, since no permit is issued for a project that breaks the property's Zoning By-law. Hanna Homes files the application and books the inspections that follow.
Any wall is a candidate; what it carries decides the method. A plain partition and a structural wall are both permit items for the City, and only the structural one needs a beam, sized to carry what the wall held and set under inspection. Hanna Homes finds out which kind each wall is before it is cut.
Hanna Homes coordinates the plans and the building permit application with the City, then arranges the inspections as the work reaches each stage. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC are coordinated by the builder as well, so you hire none of those trades yourself. A Heritage Permit, where one applies, is a separate application that has to be approved first.
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Get a free estimatePeople also ask
Before you build,
people in Hamilton ask.
What people in Hamilton search before whole-home renovations, answered for the town.
Every room is treated as one project. That means layout changes, structural work on load-bearing walls and beams, coordinated electrical, plumbing and HVAC, and insulation, drywall, flooring, trim and paint throughout. In Hamilton a permit comes first, and a designated house needs its Heritage Permit before even that.
Five: plans and permits, structure, the trades, the finishes, then the final inspection and handover. One builder answers for each stage, working from Burlington, a 15-minute drive away.
Ask who files the permits, who answers for the trades on site, and who checks whether the house is designated before the scope is set. Hanna Homes is a licensed builder and coordinates the permits and the trades on every job.
Good to know
Good to know
about whole-home renovations in Hamilton.
What changes the work in Hamilton: the rules, the houses and the ground.
Home renovation permits in Hamilton
Among the interior alterations on Hamilton's building permit list are adding or removing walls, whether load-bearing or not, and beams and lintels. For a whole-home renovation that puts drawings and a City building permit into the scope before demolition starts, and an open-concept layout is planned around them. Inspections follow at set stages as the structure, the trades and the finishes go in.
Zoning comes into it too. The City permits only a project that complies with the property's Zoning By-law, so size, setback and location limits are read against the lot before drawings are final, and a plan that breaks them is sent for a variance first. A renovation that adds floor area or changes the outline of the house is where that matters most.
Whole home renovation in Hamilton: what the job includes
A whole home renovation covers layout changes and open-concept conversions, structural work on load-bearing walls and beams, and electrical, plumbing and HVAC coordinated by the builder. Insulation, drywall, flooring, trim and paint then run through every room together. Siding and windows are part of the job where the outside of the house is included. One builder answers for all of it, in the same five stages whatever the size of the house. Hanna Homes is a licensed builder, and the crew works the whole City of Hamilton from Burlington, including Ancaster, Dundas, Stoney Creek, Waterdown and Flamborough.
Home renovation contractors in Hamilton: cost and timing
Three things set the price: how far the layout and structure change, how many trades the plan needs, and how much drawing and permit work the changes bring with them. In Hamilton the third grows with each wall that moves, since the City lists adding or removing walls as permit work. The finishes carried through every room come last, and they are priced once the layout is fixed. Time follows the order of the work. Permit review comes first, then structure, then electrical, plumbing and HVAC before the walls close, then the finishes and the final inspection. A designated house puts a Heritage Permit decision at the front, and that one is the City's to make.
Renovating an older house in Hamilton
Start with the house's heritage status, because it changes the order of the job. Hamilton has over 240 individually designated properties and seven Heritage Conservation Districts, which include another 360 properties. On a designated property the building permit waits for the Heritage Permit. Inside a district, a Heritage Permit is also needed for exterior alterations, construction and demolition. For a whole-home renovation that matters most where siding or windows are part of the job, since both change the outside. Work kept to the inside of a house in a district is a separate question, and it is worth asking the City before the scope is set.
Other services
Other services,
same builder.
The other whole-home jobs we take on, with the same builder from the first call to handover.
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Get a free estimate
Walk us throughthe whole house.
Send a floor plan, or a list of the rooms in the job, with the walls you would like gone marked on it.
Licensed builder
Burlington, Ontario
15+ years
Building
300+ houses
Completed