Whole-house timelines,
plan check included.

The realistic range

Whole-house renovations in LA typically run 4 to 12 months start to finish: 6 to 12 weeks for design, material selection, and permitting, followed by 8 to 16 weeks of active construction for a mid-size project — longer for larger scopes or anything hitting standard plan check across the board.

Why it's four permits, not one

A full house remodel typically generates four separate active permits — building, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical (HVAC) — each with its own inspection sequence that has to happen in the right order before the next phase of construction can start. This is the part that's easy to underestimate from the outside: it's not "the permit," singular, it's four parallel processes that all have to stay in sync with the actual construction schedule.

How a delay in one becomes a delay in everything

Trade sequencing is unforgiving. If a permit for one phase slips, the crew scheduled for the next phase doesn't just wait around — skilled subcontractors in LA are in high demand, and a framer or electrician delayed by a permitting holdup may already be committed to their next job by the time your permit clears. That single delay doesn't just cost you the days the permit was late; it costs you however long it takes to get that trade back on your schedule, which compounds through every phase that follows.

What adds extra layers on top of the baseline

Coastal zones, hillside properties, and historic districts each impose their own additional review layer on top of standard plan check — every one of them adds real weeks, not days, and they're easy to miss if you're scoping a project against a generic timeline instead of your specific address and zone.

What this means for your project

We sequence whole-house projects around the permit reality, not the construction fantasy — submitting all four permit types with enough lead time that trade scheduling doesn't get caught flat-footed by a plan-check delay, and building in buffer specifically at the handoff points between trades, where a cascading delay actually starts. It's the difference between a 6-month project and an 10-month one on paper that looked identical at the start.