Farmington Hills remodeling for colonials and quad-levels
Farmington Hills filled in between the mid 1960s and the mid 1980s, and the houses show it. Brick colonials with a two-story foyer. Quad-levels with a half flight up to the bedrooms. Long ranches spread out under mature oaks. Framing is sound and the basements are dry, so most of the budget here goes into layout instead of repair.
The peninsula, the desk nook and the wall behind them
The kitchen from this era is easy to recognize. A peninsula juts into the room to split cooking from a small breakfast table. Beside the refrigerator sits a desk nook with a shallow drawer and a phone jack still in the wall. Wall cabinets stop short under a soffit running the length of the room. Behind the peninsula, a wall closes the whole arrangement off from the family room and its fireplace. Removing that wall starts almost every kitchen remodeling project in these subdivisions.
Ceilings are eight feet, which decides how the opening gets built. A dropped header eats headroom and reads as a leftover wall, so the beam usually goes flush inside the floor system, with point loads carried down to the basement and onto a footing. That detail belongs in the estimate from day one, because it is the difference between a clean opening and a soffit you will look at for the next twenty years across all of our Oakland County work.
The desk nook rarely survives. It becomes a tall pantry, a coffee and beverage run, or the landing spot for a wall oven that used to sit in a bank of cabinets. Once the soffit comes off, the ductwork inside it either moves or gets rerouted through the joist bay above, and the wall cabinets go to the ceiling. New countertops and backsplash tile land last, after the layout is settled.
The formal living room at the front is the other unused room in these plans. Nobody sits in it. Framed by a cased opening off the foyer, it converts easily into a home office, a music room or a first-floor bedroom, and it does so without touching the roof or the foundation. That is the cheapest square footage anyone in this city already owns.
Kitchens opened to the family room
Take the peninsula out, run a real island across the space it occupied, and the two rooms start working as one. Island length is set by the walking clearance on both sides, not by the drawing, so we lay it out in tape on the floor before cabinets get ordered. An island with seating on the family room side gets used far more than one with a second sink nobody wanted.
Primary bathrooms without the corner tub
Pulling the tub deck frees a corner roughly five feet square and the shower grows into it. A curbless entry, a bench, a linear drain and tile to the ceiling change the room more than any fixture swap. Our primary bathroom remodeling page walks through the sequence, and general bathroom renovation work follows the same order.
Basements that were never finished
Poured walls, decent height, a dry slab and thirty years of storage. That is the standard lower level here. Basement finishing in one of these houses adds a family room, a guest bath and often a wet bar or kitchenette without disturbing the exterior at all.
Additions under the tree canopy
Lots run large and wooded, which usually leaves room to build off the back rather than up. A four-season room addition off the family room is the common ask, insulated and ducted so it works in February. Larger home addition projects start with a site plan and a look at where the trees and the septic field sit.
Decks, patios and the grade out back
The original deck off the slider is usually twelve by fourteen, pressure treated, and floating four feet above a yard nobody walks into. Bringing it down to grade as a paver terrace, with a roofed section and low-voltage lighting, turns it into a room the family uses. See our patio and deck work.
Why the garden tub comes out first
Ask a homeowner here what bothers them about the primary suite and the answer arrives fast. The corner tub is enormous, the fill takes ten minutes, and it has been used twice since 1987. Meanwhile the shower next to it is thirty-two inches wide with a framed glass door and a soap dish set into the tile. Reallocating that floor area is the single best return in the room.
Five things get looked at during the first visit to one of these bathrooms:
- Whether the tub deck hides a supply loop that has to be capped inside a wall, not under the platform
- Where the vent stack sits relative to the toilet, since moving it drives the demolition plan
- Vanity height, usually thirty inches, and whether the mirror and lighting can move up with it
- Subfloor condition at the shower pan and along the wall the tub deck was fastened to
- Whether the exhaust fan actually terminates outside the roof or just into the attic
Getting a Farmington Hills project on the calendar
The shop sits on Platt Road in Ypsilanti, about thirty-five miles south of here, which puts a crew on site at the start of the workday and keeps material runs practical. Interior permits move at a reasonable pace. Anything that changes the footprint takes longer, so review time gets built into the schedule before demolition rather than discovered halfway through it.
Drawings, selections, pricing and construction all sit with one team under our design-build approach, so the proposal number reflects what the crew will actually find behind the plaster. If you want to see how a project moves week to week, our build process lays out each stage and who is responsible for it.
Nearby markets are not the same market. The older city of Farmington sits fully surrounded by the township and runs to 1920s through 1950s stock on narrow lots, while West Bloomfield to the north is lake country with walkout lower levels. Office hours are half past eight to half past four, Monday through Friday. Reach the office at (734) 540-0347 and we will get a measure on the calendar.
Contracting done Wright, from the peninsula wall to the lower level.
