Portland Whole-Home Renovation: Cost, Process & Timeline (2026)
Budget bands, realistic durations, permit reality, and how character homes get modernized without losing what makes them worth keeping.
Quick Answer
A whole-home renovation in Portland starts around $250,000 and commonly runs to $750,000 or more. Expect 6–10 weeks of design, 6–16 weeks of permitting depending on the jurisdiction, and 6–10 months of construction. Price is driven mostly by whether you move walls and systems: finish-level refreshes sit at the bottom of the range, while structural reconfiguration, full mechanical replacement and abatement in a pre-1960s house push it to the top.
Masters Construction (also listed as Masters Construction Group) is a design-build general contractor serving Portland, Lake Oswego, West Linn, and Vancouver, WA.
A whole-home renovation is a different animal from a room remodel. You are not replacing finishes; you are re-deciding how the house works — where the kitchen sits, whether the primary suite belongs upstairs, whether the 1920s plumbing and the 1970s panel survive another decade. This guide covers what that actually costs in the Portland metro in 2026, how long each phase takes, what the permit offices will and won't do quickly, and how we handle the specific problems of older Portland houses.
Everything here reflects completed projects across Portland, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Dunthorpe and Vancouver, WA. Nothing in it is a national average.
What does a whole-home renovation in Portland cost?
Whole-home renovations at Masters Construction start at $250,000. There is no meaningful ceiling — the number tracks scope, square footage and how much of the house's skeleton you touch. Three bands cover most projects we price:
- $250,000–$400,000 — finishes and systems refresh. The floor plan stays. You get new kitchen and bathrooms, flooring, paint, lighting, updated electrical and plumbing where it's failing, and often window replacement. Typical for a 2,000–2,800 sq ft house in sound condition.
- $400,000–$750,000 — layout changes plus kitchen and baths. Walls come out, the kitchen moves or opens, a main-floor primary suite gets carved out, mechanical systems are replaced wholesale rather than patched. Structural engineering is involved. This is where most of our whole-home work lands.
- $750,000 and up — structural work, an addition, or a full gut. Foundation reinforcement, a second-story build or a rear addition, all systems replaced to the meter, envelope and insulation rebuilt, high-end millwork and stone throughout. Common on larger Dunthorpe, Portland Heights and Lake Oswego properties.
What drives the price up or down?
Square footage matters less than people expect. The variables that actually move a whole-home budget, roughly in order of impact:
Structural change. Removing bearing walls, adding openings, reinforcing a foundation or supporting a new floor above requires an engineer, a beam, temporary shoring and inspection. A single structural opening can add $15,000–$40,000 depending on span and load path.
Systems replacement. Rewiring a knob-and-tube house, replacing galvanized supply lines, running new ductwork into a house that never had it, upgrading to a 200-amp panel — these are invisible in the finished photos and are frequently the largest single line on an older-home renovation.
Kitchen and bathroom count. Every wet room is its own mini-project. A house with a kitchen and three full baths carries roughly twice the fixture, tile and plumbing cost of one with a kitchen and one and a half.
Finish level. Semi-custom cabinetry and quartz versus full-custom millwork and single-block stone can swing a whole-home budget by $100,000 or more without changing a single wall.
Abatement. Lead paint and asbestos in pre-1980 homes require licensed handling, containment and disposal. Budget for it as a real line item, not a footnote.
How long does a whole-home renovation take, phase by phase?
Design: 6–10 weeks. We measure and draw the house as it actually exists, develop the plan in 3D, and resolve structure, mechanical routing and selections together. You walk the model before anything is built. Whole-home work sits at the top of this window because every decision interacts with another.
Engineering and permits: 6–16 weeks. Structural work goes to an engineer; drawings go to the jurisdiction. Portland BDS review on a structural residential remodel commonly runs 10–16 weeks; smaller jurisdictions can be faster. We start long-lead orders during this window rather than after it.
Construction: 6–10 months. Demolition and abatement, structure, rough mechanical/electrical/plumbing, inspections, insulation and drywall, millwork and tile, finishes, fixtures, final inspections.
Walkthrough and punch list: 1–3 weeks. Written list, dates against each item, nothing closes until the list closes. Full detail on how the phases run is in our design-build process.
How do you modernize a 1900–1960s Portland house respectfully?
Irvington, Laurelhurst, Alameda, Eastmoreland, Portland Heights and Dunthorpe are full of houses worth keeping. The work is to make them perform like new construction without making them look like it.
Behind the walls, the list is consistent: knob-and-tube wiring that has to be fully replaced rather than spliced around; galvanized supply piping that has corroded to a fraction of its bore; unreinforced foundations and unbolted mudsills that need anchoring and often shear panel; balloon framing with no fire blocking; and lead paint or asbestos in flooring mastic, duct wrap and siding that requires licensed abatement before demolition proceeds.
On the visible side, the discipline is matching. We profile the existing trim and have it milled rather than substituting a stock approximation. We keep window proportions and muntin patterns consistent across old and new openings, because a modern picture window in a 1924 elevation is the single fastest way to make a house look remodeled. Where a new opening is required, we detail the beam flush so the ceiling plane reads continuous.
The result should be a house that is quieter, warmer, safer and better-lit, where a visitor cannot tell where the original stops and the new begins.
What surprises come up, and how do you plan for them?
On a full renovation, demolition always finds something. The common ones: rot at wet walls and around failed flashing; undersized or notched framing from previous remodels; a wall that turns out to be bearing; buried junction boxes and unpermitted prior work; foundation cracking or settlement that was hidden behind finished basement walls; and asbestos in places the survey didn't reach.
We control it three ways. First, exploratory openings during design wherever we can make them — a small hole now is cheaper than a change order later. Second, a stated contingency: we recommend holding 10–15% beyond the contract price, at the upper end for pre-1980 homes. Third, process: anything we find comes to you as photographs, a priced option and a decision, before work resumes. You will not learn about it from an invoice.
Should you live in the house or move out?
For a whole-home renovation, we recommend moving out. Living in a house with no functioning kitchen, intermittent water and heat, daily dust and inspection traffic is genuinely hard, and it slows the job: crews work around occupied rooms, materials get staged in three places, and phasing adds weeks.
There are exceptions. Large houses with a separable wing, a finished basement with its own bath, or an existing ADU can support staying. If moving out is not possible, we phase the work deliberately — typically structure and the main level first, secondary spaces second — and price the phasing openly so you can compare it against the cost of a rental.
Most clients who move out for a 7-month job tell us afterward it was the right call. Very few who stayed say the same.
What do permits look like in Portland, Lake Oswego, West Linn and Vancouver?
Portland (BDS): the most involved of the four. Structural residential permits require stamped engineering, full drawing sets and often multiple review cycles; historic and conservation district overlays in neighborhoods like Irvington add design review. Plan for 10–16 weeks and build that into the schedule from day one.
Lake Oswego: generally faster than Portland on comparable scope, but sensitive to tree removal, slope and the sensitive-lands overlays that cover a lot of desirable lots. Early confirmation matters more than review speed.
West Linn: similar timelines to Lake Oswego, with slope and geotechnical issues common on hillside properties.
Vancouver, WA and Clark County: the City of Vancouver and Clark County are separate jurisdictions with separate processes — which one you're in depends on the address, not the mailing city. Review is often quicker than Portland for equivalent work.
We identify the jurisdiction and the likely review triggers at the consultation, prepare the submittal ourselves, and manage the review cycles. You do not stand in a permit line.
How do you turn an older house into a forever home?
Most of our whole-home clients are not planning to sell. That changes the priorities from resale-safe to livable-for-decades.
Main-floor primary suite. The single most valuable change in an older two-story house. It usually comes from a rear bump-out, absorbing a back bedroom and a porch, or capturing an underused formal dining room. Done well, it removes stairs from daily life without making the house feel like it was adapted.
Aging in place, detailed invisibly. Blocking in bathroom walls for future grab bars, a curbless shower, a 36-inch main-floor door width, lever hardware, rocker switches at reachable heights, and at least one no-step entry. None of these read as medical when they're designed in from the start.
Indoor-outdoor connection. Wide glazed openings to a covered outdoor room extend the usable house by a room and a half for most of the Portland year. More on that in our indoor-outdoor living guide.
Light and thermal comfort. Insulation, air sealing, better glazing and a right-sized heating and cooling system do more for how a house feels day to day than any finish decision.
Frequently Asked
Frequently Asked Questions
What homeowners ask us most about this work.
From $250,000. A finishes-and-systems refresh that keeps the floor plan typically runs $250,000–$400,000; layout changes with a new kitchen and baths run $400,000–$750,000; structural work, additions or a full gut start at $750,000. The final number depends on structural change, systems replacement, the number of wet rooms and the finish level.
Talk Through Your Project
Tell us about the house and we’ll walk the site, talk through scope, and give you a realistic range — no obligation.
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