Whole-Home Transformation
This is the project we point people to when they ask what a complete interior remodel actually looks like. Rather than describe it, we filmed it — the whole house before demolition, and the whole house again once the last fixture was set. Both walkthroughs are below, uncut.
The house had good structure and a great lot, and almost nothing else working in its favor. Saltillo tile ran through the main living areas. A brick kiva fireplace ate the corner of the living room. The kitchen was closed off behind a wall, and a dark-stained oak wet bar sat in an alcove under a blue accent wall. Small punched windows and narrow aluminum sliders faced a pool that the house barely acknowledged.
The brief was simple to say and involved to execute: open it up, lighten it, and make the backyard feel like part of the house. What follows is what that took.
Watch a whole home come apart and come back
We filmed this house before demolition and again after the last fixture was set. Both walkthroughs are uncut — switch between them and see the same rooms.
After — one continuous run of wide-plank oak, the dividing wall gone, a quartzite waterfall island, and floor-to-ceiling glass that finally puts the pool in the room.
Scope of Work
- Full interior demolition of flooring, cabinetry, fixtures and the masonry fireplace
- Removed the wall dividing the kitchen from the main living space
- Enlarged exterior openings for floor-to-ceiling sliding glass walls to the pool deck
- New kitchen: full-height slab cabinetry, quartzite island and perimeter counters, integrated appliances
- Walk-in pantry built out with floating shelves and a deep prep counter
- Wide-plank engineered oak flooring throughout the living areas
- Complete lighting redesign — recessed cans, linear under-cabinet LED, pendant drops
- New interior doors, casing, baseboard and flat-finish drywall throughout
- Bathrooms reworked with new vanities, tile and fixtures
Materials & Finishes
- Flooring
- Wide-plank engineered white oak
- Cabinetry
- Full-height slab-front, light oak finish
- Countertops
- Book-matched quartzite, waterfall island edge
- Backsplash
- Full-height quartzite slab, veined to match
- Island
- Undermount sink, brushed-gold gooseneck faucet
- Appliances
- Integrated cooktop, stacked double wall ovens
- Glazing
- Black-framed floor-to-ceiling sliding glass
- Lighting
- Recessed LED, linear task strips, pendant drops
- Walls
- Level-4 smooth drywall, flat white
How it gets built
The sequence matters as much as the selections. Work done out of order is the most common reason remodels run long.
1 — Walkthrough and documentation
Before anything is touched we film and photograph every room. It settles disputes about what was there, it gives the design conversation a shared reference, and on a house like this it becomes the 'before' half of the story. The footage at the top of this page is that first pass.
2 — Demolition and structural opening
Interior finishes come out first — tile, cabinetry, the fireplace masonry. Removing the kitchen wall and widening the exterior openings is the point where a remodel stops being cosmetic. Anything carrying load gets temporary support and a properly sized header before the old framing comes out.
3 — Rough mechanical, electrical and plumbing
With the walls open, plumbing gets relocated for the new island and bathroom layouts, and the electrical is largely rebuilt: recessed lighting layout, dedicated circuits for the ovens and cooktop, and low-voltage runs for under-cabinet LED. This is the stage that gets inspected before anything closes up.
4 — Drywall, doors and trim
New board, taped to a smooth level-4 finish because flat paint and raking desert light are unforgiving of anything less. New interior doors, casing and baseboard go in ahead of flooring.
5 — Flooring and cabinetry
Engineered oak runs continuously through the living areas with no thresholds — a big part of why the space reads as one room. Cabinet boxes are set and scribed level, then the slab fronts are hung and aligned. Full-height cabinetry is far less forgiving than standard uppers; the reveals have to be consistent across the whole run.
6 — Stone templating and fabrication
Counters are templated only after the cabinets are set. The quartzite was slab-matched so the island waterfall and the backsplash carry the same veining — that requires laying out the cuts across the slab before fabrication, not after.
7 — Finish, fixtures and punch list
Appliances set and levelled, plumbing trim installed, lighting aimed, paint touched up. Then a walkthrough where the homeowner lists anything they want corrected, and we correct it before calling the job done.
Project Gallery
Design Notes
Two decisions did most of the work here. The first was continuous flooring — one material, no transitions, running from the entry through the kitchen and out to the glass. Nothing makes a house read as larger for less money.
The second was glass. Trading small punched windows for floor-to-ceiling sliders is not a cheap change; it involves structural headers and new exterior openings. But it converts a pool the house ignored into the view from the main living space, and in Arizona that is the entire argument for indoor-outdoor design.
The kitchen deliberately stays quiet. Light oak slab fronts, no hardware breaking the vertical lines, appliances integrated behind panels. The one place we let it speak is the quartzite — book-matched across the island waterfall and up the backsplash, so the stone reads as a single continuous piece of material rather than three separate surfaces.
