Our Remodeling Process
Five clear steps from first contact to final walkthrough — and a plain account of what happens between them.
How It Works
From Vision to Reality
Tell Us About Your Project
Take our free estimate form or schedule a call. Share your style preferences, budget range, and timeline so we can start planning your perfect renovation.
Design & Planning
We schedule an in-home consultation to measure your space and discuss your vision. Our team creates 3D design renders and guides you through material selection — so you can see your renovation before it begins.
Detailed Proposal
You receive a written scope of work with a price, a timeline and a payment schedule. On a fixed-price contract the number you sign is the number you are invoiced, and only three documented things can change it — a change you ask for, a selection above an allowance, or a concealed condition — each priced in writing and signed before that work goes ahead. See the terms.
Construction
Your dedicated project manager oversees every detail. Expect regular progress updates, clean job sites, and a team that respects your home and your schedule.
Final Walkthrough
We walk through every detail together, agree the punch list in writing, and close it out. Your workmanship is covered by our 1-year warranty; the products we install carry their manufacturers' warranties on their own terms.
What the five steps leave out
Five boxes on a page make a renovation look tidier than it is. Below is the same sequence with the parts that actually decide whether a project goes well — where the money gets committed, where the schedule gets lost, and what your part of the job is.
The walkthrough is the estimate
A number given over the phone is a range, not a price, and we will say so. What makes an estimate real is standing in the room: seeing where the plumbing stack runs, what the floor does when you walk across it, whether the panel has spare capacity, how the crew will get materials in and debris out. That visit is free and it is where most of the useful questions get asked. Bring the images you have saved, including the contradictory ones, and bring whoever else has a vote.
Scope first, selections second
Scope is what gets demolished and what gets rebuilt: walls, floors, structure, and where water and power end up. Selections are what you pick — tile, fixtures, cabinets, counters, lighting, hardware. Scope has to be settled before a price can mean anything; selections can follow, carried as written allowances in the contract until you choose. Choose above an allowance and you pay the difference; choose below it and the difference comes back to you. Either way the number is in writing before anything is ordered.
Permits and approvals run in parallel, not after
The building permit comes from your town or your county, depending on whether your address sits inside town limits. On top of that, a historic district, an island design review board, or a neighborhood architectural review committee may have to approve anything that changes the outside of the house. These bodies meet on their own calendars, and a submittal that misses a meeting waits for the next one. We stage the submittal alongside design rather than after it, so approval time overlaps with drawing time instead of following it. Our approval guides cover the boards we submit to, and each town page names the permitting authority for that town.
Who is actually in your house
Southeastern Renovation holds the contract and runs the schedule. The trade work — plumbing, electrical, mechanical — is performed by licensed trade subcontractors, and those trades pull their own trade permits under their own licenses and meet their own inspections. You still have one contract and one point of contact. Ask us at any point who is scheduled for a given week and you will get a straight answer.
Ordering long-lead items early
Cabinets, windows, specialty tile and appliances are the usual causes of a stalled job, and almost always because a decision was still open when the schedule needed it closed. During design we identify which items have the longest lead time on your specific project and drive those decisions first. A choice you would rather defer is fine; a choice deferred past the point where it blocks the trades is what turns a schedule into guesswork.
Concealed conditions, when they happen
Rot behind a shower wall, wiring that is not to code, a plumbing run that has to be replaced, a structural problem nobody could see with the wall closed. When we find one we stop, photograph it, price the repair as a change order, and wait for your signature before proceeding. We will not pretend those repairs are free, and we will not discover them on the final invoice. This is one of the three documented exceptions to a fixed price and it is the only one you cannot control.
Living in the house while it happens
Most of our clients stay put. That is workable, and it works better when it is planned: which door the crew uses, where materials are stacked, how dust barriers are set, when the water goes off, and where you will make coffee for the weeks your kitchen is a job site. We would rather have that conversation before day one than improvise it on day three. Tell us about the dog, the baby's nap window, and the room you take calls in.
Closeout and the punch list
At the end we walk the job together and write the punch list down rather than trading it back and forth by text. It gets closed out, and the workmanship carries a 1-year warranty from there. If something in that year is on us, call Jared directly at (843) 718-8177. Keep the signed contract and any change orders; every change order references the contract and shows the running total, which is how you hold us to the number.
Where to go from here
Look at the services we build to see which one describes your project, read the cost guides to understand what drives a budget by scope tier, or find your area on the town pages. If you want to see what other homeowners said about working with us, the reviews page is the place. When you are ready, send three fields and Jared will follow up. SC License CLG.127339.