How I started a renovation company at 19 and what I learned since
I was 19 years old when I filed the paperwork to start Wright’s Renovations. I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t have investors. I had a truck, a set of tools my dad taught me to use, and about $2,000 in savings from doing odd jobs through high school in Ypsilanti. That was 2021, and if you had told me then that we’d be running six crews across Washtenaw County, Wayne County, and Oakland County by 2025, I would have asked what you were drinking.
But that’s what happened. And the story of how we got here matters because it shapes every decision we make about how we run projects, how we treat people, and why we do things the way we do. This is the actual story, mistakes included.
The first project and the lesson that stuck
My first real project was a bathroom renovation for a family friend in Ypsilanti. Small scope: new tile, new vanity, replace the tub surround. I bid it at $8,000 because that’s what I thought it should cost. I didn’t account for the rotten subfloor under the tub. I didn’t account for the galvanized plumbing that crumbled when I tried to connect the new fixtures. I didn’t account for the three trips to the supply house for materials I should have ordered in advance.
That $8,000 bathroom cost me $11,500 to build. I ate the difference because I had given the homeowner a price and I was going to honor it. Lost $3,500 on my first project. But I finished it, it looked good, and the homeowner told her neighbor. The neighbor called me about a kitchen project. That kitchen led to another bathroom. Those two bathrooms led to a basement project, which led to two more kitchens. Within six months, I had more work than I could handle alone.
The lesson from that first bathroom has driven every pricing conversation since: know what’s behind the walls before you quote the job. Now, before we price any kitchen renovation or basement finishing project, we do a thorough pre-construction assessment. We check the plumbing, the electrical, the structural condition, and the moisture levels. We want to find the surprises before they find us, because surprises during construction cost three times what they cost during planning.
Growing pains and the decision to go design-build
By 2022, I had three guys working with me. We were doing kitchens, bathrooms, and basements mostly in Ann Arbor and the surrounding area. The work was good, but something kept bothering me. Homeowners would come to us with plans drawn by someone else, and half the time those plans had problems. Cabinets spec’d for a wall that wasn’t plumb. A kitchen island sized for a showroom, not for the actual kitchen. Tile layouts that didn’t account for the offset between the existing floor and the new floor.
I kept thinking: what if we designed the projects ourselves? Not because we’re smarter than architects, but because the people building the project should have a say in how it gets designed. So I brought on our first designer. She’d been working at a residential architecture firm in Ann Arbor and was tired of drawing plans that contractors would butcher in the field. The fit was immediate.
Going design-build changed everything. Our estimates got more accurate because the design team and the build team were talking to each other daily. Our timelines shortened because we could pre-order materials during the design phase. And our clients were happier because they had one phone number to call for any question, whether it was about the countertop edge profile or the construction schedule. We moved from being a good crew with tools to being a company with a process.
Building a team, not just a crew
The hardest part of growing this company has been finding and keeping good people. Michigan’s skilled trades shortage is real. Every contractor in Southeast Michigan is competing for the same carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and tile setters. The ones who are good have more work than they can handle. The ones who are available aren’t always good.
My approach has been simple: pay well, treat people with respect, and give them work they can be proud of. Our lead carpenters are W-2 employees, not 1099 subs. They get health benefits, paid time off, and a predictable schedule. In an industry where most crews bounce between contractors week to week, that stability matters. We’ve had guys turn down higher hourly rates elsewhere because they know they’ll have consistent work with us and won’t get stiffed on a paycheck.
Katherine Anderson runs our operations. She’s the reason projects stay on schedule and budgets stay on track. Will Sujek handles sales and client relationships. He’s the guy who sits with you at the kitchen table and translates your Pinterest board into a realistic scope and budget. Together with our project managers, designers, and field crews, we’ve built a team that can handle everything from a bathroom tile job to a full second-story addition.
What 500 projects teach you about renovation
As of this writing, we’ve completed over 500 projects across six Michigan counties. Each one taught us something. Here are the patterns I see after doing this for several years.
First, scope creep is the number one budget killer. A homeowner starts with a new vanity and mirror. Then they want to replace the tub. Then they want heated floors. Then they want to move the toilet. Each addition is reasonable on its own, but together they triple the original budget. We combat this by building the full wish list during design, pricing all of it, and then letting the homeowner decide what fits their budget before we start.
Second, Michigan weather affects every exterior project. For deck construction, home additions, and exterior renovations, we build the weather into the schedule from day one. The frost line in Southeast Michigan is 42 inches, which means foundations for additions and decks have to go deep. We don’t pour concrete when it’s below 25 degrees. We don’t frame in heavy rain. Homeowners who plan their projects around the weather, starting exterior work in April or May, save money and get faster timelines.
Third, the projects that go best are the ones where the homeowner is involved but not managing. You should know what’s happening in your renovation every day. You should see photos. You should get budget updates. But you shouldn’t be the one deciding which order the trades work in or whether the electrician should come before the plumber. That’s what a project manager does, and it’s why our team includes assigned PMs for every project over $40,000.
Our service area and why it looks the way it does
We serve six counties: Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, and Monroe. That covers everything from Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti to Birmingham, Plymouth, Novi, Canton, Northville, and Livonia.
The reason we don’t go further is simple: our crews drive to the job site every day. A project in Howell is 40 minutes from our shop. A project in Monroe is an hour. Once you’re past an hour of drive time, you’re burning too much labor cost on windshield time. Keeping our service area tight means our crews spend their time building, not driving. It also means I can visit any active job site in under an hour if something needs my attention.
Each part of our service area has its own personality. The older homes in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have plaster walls, narrow doorways, and Michigan basements with stone foundations. The suburban homes in Canton and Novi are mostly 1980s and 1990s construction with larger footprints but builder-grade finishes. The affluent markets in Birmingham and Northville have homes with higher-end original materials and homeowners who expect perfection. We’ve worked in all of them enough to know what we’ll find before we open the first wall.
What matters to us beyond the build
I want to address something that might sound sappy but is important to me. This company exists inside a community. The guys on our crews live in the same towns where we work. Their kids go to the same schools as our clients’ kids. When we finish a mudroom addition or a basement wet bar, we’re not just collecting a check. We’re building something that families use every single day, in neighborhoods where our people also live.
We participate in local charity events. We hire locally. We buy materials from Michigan suppliers whenever the price and quality match what’s available elsewhere. None of this is unusual for a small business in Michigan, but it’s worth saying because it shapes the kind of company we are. We’re not optimizing for maximum revenue. We’re optimizing for work we can be proud of, in a community we care about, with a team that wants to be here.
Where we’re going from here
I started this company to do honest work for people in my community. That hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the scale. We went from one guy with a truck to six crews with a full design team, project management infrastructure, and a shop in Ypsilanti. The goal for the next few years is not to grow as fast as possible. It’s to grow as well as possible. To take on more complex projects like whole-home renovations and commercial build-outs. To expand into services like smart home integration and outdoor living spaces that our clients have been asking about. And to keep the quality standard that got us here in the first place.
If you’re reading this and you’re thinking about a renovation somewhere in Southeast Michigan, I hope this gives you a sense of who we are. We’re not a franchise. We’re not a national brand with a local office. We’re a company started by a kid from Ypsilanti who learned to swing a hammer from his dad, made every rookie mistake in the book, and built something he’s proud of. The work speaks for itself. Take a look at what we’ve built and see if it’s what you’re looking for. If it is, give us a call.
The projects that shaped how we work
A few projects stand out as turning points. Early in 2023, we took on a full kitchen gut-remodel in a 1920s Tudor in Ann Arbor. The homeowner wanted to open the kitchen to the dining room, add a walk-in pantry, and replace every surface. When we opened the wall between the kitchen and dining room, we found a steel I-beam that previous owners had notched to run ductwork through. That beam was carrying the entire second floor. A notched beam is a compromised beam.
We stopped work, brought in a structural engineer the same day, and designed a repair that involved sistering a new beam alongside the damaged one. The homeowner never saw a change order for the structural fix because we had built a contingency into the original bid for exactly this kind of discovery. Old Ann Arbor homes hide things, and after that project, we started budgeting 10% to 15% for unknowns on any home built before 1960.
Another project that changed our thinking was a basement egress window installation in an aging-in-place renovation in Livonia. The homeowner was converting her basement into a bedroom suite with a assigned office space for her son who was moving home after college. Michigan code requires an egress window in every basement bedroom, and the window well needed to be deep enough for emergency exit. What we found during excavation was a buried concrete patio slab from a previous deck that nobody knew about. Added two days to the dig. But because we build those kinds of discoveries into our schedules for older homes, the project still finished on time.
The details that separate good work from great work
I obsess over details. Cabinet doors that close silently because we install soft-close hinges on every single door, not just the ones at eye level. Shower tile where the grout lines align from wall to wall and the cuts at the edges are all the same width. Under-cabinet lighting wired to a dimmer so you can cook at full brightness and then drop it to ambient when company comes over.
These details cost a little more in labor. A soft-close hinge is $3 more per door than a standard hinge. Aligning grout lines takes 20% more time than letting the tile fall where it falls. But those details are what separate a renovation that feels like a renovation from one that feels like it was always there. That’s the standard I hold our crews to, and it’s the standard I want people to see when they walk through a Wright’s project.
We’ve been experimenting with sunroom additions and screened porch conversions over the past year. Michigan homeowners are spending more time outdoors, and they want transitional spaces between inside and outside that work for more than just summer. A four-season sunroom with radiant floor heating extends your usable outdoor season by three months. We’re also seeing demand for home offices and loft conversions that didn’t exist before 2020. The work keeps evolving, and we keep learning.
