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Whole-Home Remodeling

When the kitchen, the bathrooms, the wiring and the floor plan all need work, doing it as one project costs less than doing it as four. We take houses down to the studs and put them back together.

The typical whole-home job around here is a 1950s or 1960s house that has never really been touched. Small closed rooms, one bathroom, a kitchen shut off at the back, galvanized supply lines, an undersized panel and original single-pane windows. Doing that piecemeal means paying to open the same walls three times. With the walls already open, it is the moment to re-plumb, rewire, insulate and rethink the plan — and to deal with what a Bay Area house of that age tends to need underneath, like bolting the sill plates and bracing the cripple walls. We put all of it on the table at the start so you can decide what is in and what waits.

Older stock takes a different hand. Victorians and Craftsman houses in the Los Gatos Almond Grove, Santa Clara’s Old Quad, Naglee Park and the Rose Garden have detail worth saving — casing profiles, built-ins, doors, stair parts — and the right move is usually to repair and match rather than strip it out. We mill and build that work ourselves, which is what makes matching possible at all. Eichlers need the opposite kind of care: keep the post-and-beam lines and the glass, and deal honestly with the slab, the radiant tubing and the fact that there is no attic to hide anything in.

What’s included

A full walk-through of the existing house — structure, foundation, panel, plumbing — before a scope gets written
Floor plan redesign, with the drawings and engineering to support it
Re-plumbing to replace galvanized supply and old cast iron waste lines
Rewiring and electrical service upgrade where the existing panel is undersized
Foundation repair, sill bolting and cripple-wall bracing where the house needs it
Insulation, drywall, windows and exterior doors
Kitchen and bathrooms built into the same schedule instead of as separate jobs
Custom cabinets, built-ins and trim milled in our shop and matched to original profiles
One schedule, one crew lead and one person you call about all of it

Why R Twyns Construction

We are a family-run licensed general contracting and remodeling company (CSLB #896811), building in the South Bay since 2007. Tim Reynolds owns the company and his VP Ben runs the work, so the people who price your job are the people who are on it. The cabinets and finish carpentry come out of our own shop, which is what an older house needs when nothing in it is square. And we tell you what a job actually involves before you commit to it — the load-bearing wall, the drain line, the permit — rather than after the walls are open.

Comprehensive Scope of Our Remodeling Services

Do we have to move out?

For a true down-to-the-studs remodel, usually yes, at least for the stretch when the plumbing, wiring and heating are out of service. For a partial whole-house job we can sometimes phase it and keep part of the house livable. We tell you which one you are looking at before you sign, because planning for it is cheaper than discovering it.

Is the foundation work necessary or is it an upsell?

It depends on what we find. Plenty of older Bay Area houses were built before sill bolting and cripple-wall bracing were standard, and if the crawlspace is already open for plumbing, that is the cheapest it will ever be to address. If your foundation is fine, we will say so. We will show you what we are looking at rather than asking you to take it on faith.

Can you match the trim in our 1920s house?

Usually. We run our own carpentry shop, so we can take a piece of original casing or base off the wall, match the profile and mill new stock to it. Same with built-ins and door and window casings. That is a large part of why people bring us older homes in Willow Glen, Naglee Park and the Almond Grove.

How do we keep the budget from running away?

We cannot promise a number that never moves, and you should be wary of anyone who does — there are things behind a sixty-year-old wall that nobody can see from the driveway. What we can do is investigate early where we are able to, price from real drawings instead of a sketch, and put every change in writing before the work happens, not after.

What should we check before hiring anyone for a job this size?

License, insurance and the way the contract is written. We hold CSLB #896811 and have been at this since 2007 — look the number up yourself and confirm the status. Then read the payment schedule. Payments tied to milestones you can walk out and see are a better sign than a large deposit up front.

Serving the South Bay and the Peninsula

Ready when you are.

San Jose, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Los Gatos and Sunnyvale — plus Mountain View, Redwood City, Campbell, Saratoga, Los Altos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Hollister, across Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and San Benito counties.

Call (408) 313-6764 Request an Estimate

Mon–Fri 8:00–4:30 · CSLB #896811