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The Cleveland Renovation Planning Guide.
What renovations in these houses cost, how long they take, and the nine decisions that drive your budget.
A PLANNING GUIDE FOR CLEVELAND'S EAST SIDE
Nobody in this market will tell you. So we wrote it down — what a significant renovation of an older east-side home really costs, how long architectural review takes, and the nine decisions that set your budget before anyone picks up a tool.
19 pages. No charge. No sales call attached.
- How a renovation budget is built — the five buckets, and why cost-per-square-foot is close to useless for planning work in an older home.
- Published market benchmarks — national median spends for kitchens and bathrooms, and resale return data, drawn from independent surveys and cited. Calibration, not a quote.
- The old-house premium — the six conditions common in pre-war east-side homes that national cost studies do not contain, including knob-and-tube wiring, the federal lead-paint rule, and what happens the day a plaster wall opens.
- The nine decisions that drive your budget — in rough order of how much they move the number, with the trade-off spelled out for each.
- A realistic schedule — why construction is usually less than half the calendar, what the ten-to-fourteen-month arc of a renovation looks like, and the three sequencing rules that save the most time.
- Architectural review in the eastern suburbs — Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, Chagrin Falls, Gates Mills, Hunting Valley and Bratenahl. Meeting cadences, submission deadlines, what triggers review, and where a single missed deadline costs you a full cycle. Every figure cited to the municipality's own published material.
- A budget worksheet you can fill in — fourteen hard-cost lines, four soft-cost lines, furnishings, carrying costs and contingency. Plus five questions to ask of your own numbers afterward.
- Our fees, and the projects we take — the $450 consultation, how the $5,000 retainer works, and the total project cost we start at.
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Tell us about the home.
Every project starts the same way: thirty minutes on the phone, no charge and no pitch. You tell us about the house and what is not working in it, and we tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it. Most of our clients come back afterwards — for the next room, or the next house, or the one by the lake. We would rather begin something that lasts than close something that does not.
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