Whole House Remodeling in Bountiful, Utah
Kitchen Remodeling
Theater Room Remodeling
Bathroom Remodeling
ADU’s
Whole house remodeling Bountiful Utah homeowners consider usually starts as a kitchen project and grows. That is not indecision. The median Bountiful home was built in 1973, which means the typical house here is roughly 53 years old, and in a house that age the wiring, the plumbing, the windows, the insulation and the floor plan all reach the end of their useful life within a few years of each other. Fixing one room at a time means opening the same walls twice and paying for the same demolition twice. Ironwood Custom Builders reworks the whole house as one project instead: one design, one permit through Bountiful City, one crew, one schedule, and one number you approve before demolition. It is the same coordinated approach behind our custom homes and our whole house remodeling work across the Wasatch Front, applied to the mature neighborhoods on Bountiful’s East Bench, Canyon Crest, Val Verda and North Canyon.
A whole house remodel is also the project where sequencing matters most. Structural work, mechanical rough-in, and envelope upgrades have to happen in the right order, and every one of them is behind drywall. Get the order wrong and you are paying to undo finished work.
Why Bountiful Homes Specifically Need This
Bountiful is one of Utah’s oldest communities. Perrigrine Sessions settled here on September 27, 1847, making it the second settlement in the state after Salt Lake City. The name Bountiful came in 1855 and the city incorporated in 1892. But the housing stock tells a different story than the settlement date: about 4 percent of homes predate the 1940s and another 4.2 percent went up by 1949, while the great majority filled in during the postwar decades as Bountiful became Salt Lake City’s established bench suburb. The median build year lands at 1973.
That single date carries specific, documented consequences for anyone remodeling here.
Aluminum branch circuit wiring.
Between roughly 1965 and the mid-1970s, single-strand aluminum was substituted for copper in residential branch circuits because copper prices spiked. The Consumer Product Safety Commission found that homes wired with pre-1972 aluminum wire are 55 times more likely to have one or more connections reach what it calls Fire Hazard Conditions than homes wired with copper, and the failures worsen slowly over decades while the circuits still work normally. Roughly 1.5 million American homes were built with it. Bountiful’s median build year sits inside that window. If your house has it, the remedy is a full rewire or pigtailing every outlet, switch and junction box, and either one is dramatically cheaper with the walls already open for a whole house remodel than as a standalone job.
Lead paint.
Lead paint was banned from residential use in the United States in 1978. A 1973 house is very likely to have it under later coats, typically on trim, doors, windows and baseboards. This is not a reason to avoid remodeling, but federal rules govern how the work is done, and sanding or scraping without containment is what actually creates the hazard.
Asbestos-containing materials.
Residential materials manufactured before about 1980 commonly contained asbestos: popcorn ceiling texture, vinyl floor tile and its adhesive, duct wrap, and pipe insulation. Intact material is generally left alone. Material being demolished is not, and it has to be identified before demolition rather than discovered during it.
Original supply and drain lines.
Galvanized steel supply lines and cast iron drains from this era are at or past the end of their service life, corroding from the inside and reducing flow. Replacing them means opening walls and floors, which is exactly what a whole house remodel already does.
Compartmentalized floor plans.
Closed kitchens, formal dining rooms nobody uses, single-sink bathrooms, and no room that functions as an office. In Bountiful, where 47.7 percent of residents 25 and over hold a bachelor’s degree or higher and the average commute is 22.8 minutes to downtown Salt Lake City, the missing home office is one of the most common reasons homeowners call us.
The reason all of this argues for whole house rather than room-by-room is simple: five of those six items live behind the same drywall. Doing them together is one demolition, one permit, one inspection sequence, and one mobilization instead of five.
Whole-house design and sequencing.
We design every room’s scope together upfront, kitchen, bathrooms, basement, and any structural or layout changes, so the plumber, electrician, and finish crews move through the house in the right order instead of returning to redo work.
Structural and layout changes.
Many Lehi homes benefit from opening the main floor, relocating a laundry room, or reworking a stair. We handle the structural assessment and engineering for changes that touch load-bearing walls anywhere in the house.
Kitchen and bathrooms as part of one plan.
Rather than treating the kitchen and bathrooms as separate jobs, we design them together so finishes, fixtures, and style stay consistent across the entire home.
Basement and additional living space.
If your scope includes finishing or reworking a basement, that work is sequenced into the same project rather than scheduled as an afterthought.
Systems upgrades.
Whole-house projects are the natural point to update electrical panels, plumbing lines, and HVAC systems that are original to the home, since walls are already open throughout the house.
Whole-house permitting.
We manage every permit the project requires through Lehi City and Utah County as one coordinated submission rather than a separate permit per room.
Project management.
One Ironwood project manager runs the entire job and is your single point of contact from the first design meeting to the final walkthrough, across every room and every trade.
What an Ironwood Whole House Remodel in Bountiful Covers
Design and floor plan reconfiguration.
We start with how you actually use the house, then move walls to match. In Bountiful’s ranch and split-level stock that usually means opening the kitchen to the living space, converting a formal dining room into usable square footage, and finding a real office. Structural assessment and engineering are ours to handle, not yours to coordinate.
Full electrical.
Service panel upgrade, rewiring, code-compliant circuit counts, and modern outlet and lighting layouts. If aluminum branch wiring is present, this is where it gets resolved permanently.
Full plumbing.
Replacing original supply and drain lines, relocating fixtures to suit the new plan, and sizing for a household that uses far more simultaneous hot water than a 1973 household did.
HVAC.
Right-sizing equipment for the remodeled floor plan and improved envelope rather than reinstalling what was there. An oversized furnace in a newly insulated house short-cycles and costs more to run.
Envelope and energy.
Insulation, air sealing, and window replacement. Utah moved to the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code on July 1, 2026, and a whole house remodel is the one realistic opportunity to bring a 1973 envelope substantially past where it started.
Kitchen and bathrooms.
Both handled inside the same project and the same schedule rather than as separate engagements. See our kitchen and bathroom work for the standard we hold.
Basement.
Bountiful’s East Bench lots were built into the grade, so walkout and daylight basements with natural light and separate entrances are common here, which makes them unusually finish-ready. Rolling the basement finish into the whole house scope avoids a second permit and a second mobilization.
Hazardous material handling.
Pre-demolition assessment for asbestos-containing materials and lead paint, with containment and disposal handled by the appropriate licensed specialists rather than discovered mid-demolition.
Additions, where the footprint is the limit.
When reconfiguration alone cannot produce the space, we design and build additions that match rooflines, exterior materials and interior finishes so the result reads as original construction. Second-story additions over original single-level ranches are common in Bountiful.
Project management. One Ironwood project manager runs the entire job and is your single point of contact from the first design meeting to the final walkthrough.
What a Whole House Remodel Costs in Bountiful
A whole house remodel is priced by scope, not by square foot, because two houses of identical size can differ by a factor of three depending on how much moves.
The variables that drive the number most in Bountiful are how many walls are structural, whether the house needs a full rewire or pigtailing, whether original galvanized supply and cast iron drain lines are being replaced, how much asbestos and lead abatement the pre-demolition assessment turns up, whether windows and insulation are in scope, whether you are adding square footage or only reworking what exists, and your finish tier.
For scale on the upper end, Ironwood’s Fergusson Residence in Bountiful was a phased addition and remodel with a project cost of $980,000, which included resolving a driveway that reached a 27 percent slope. That is a large, complex project rather than a typical one, but it shows the range Bountiful’s bench lots can reach once site conditions enter the picture.
For reference on individual scopes within a whole house project, Ironwood’s published Bountiful figures are $45,000 to $95,000 for a full kitchen, $18,000 to $45,000 for a primary bathroom, and $35,000 to $75,000 for a full basement finish. A whole house remodel is not simply those numbers added together, since shared demolition, one permit and one mobilization remove real cost, but they give you a sense of the components.
You get a complete itemized estimate for your specific house before any work begins, built on your actual conditions rather than an average. Request a free estimate or use our remodel pricing tool to get a working number for your Bountiful home. Our guide to budgeting a Utah home remodel covers how we build these numbers.
Why Bountiful Homeowners Choose Ironwood
Bountiful City permitting, not Davis County.
This trips up contractors from the valley. Bountiful operates its own building department at 795 South Main Street, and permits are submitted through the city’s CityInspect portal. Davis County only issues permits for unincorporated land. Residential single-family plan review runs at 10 percent of the permit fee, inspections are scheduled by phone rather than online, and the counter runs a four-day week, Monday through Thursday. Our project managers work inside that process rather than learning it on your job. Utah also moved to the 2024 International Building, Plumbing, Mechanical, Energy Conservation and Existing Building codes on July 1, 2026, with the Residential Code remaining on the 2021 edition.
We have built here before.
The Fergusson Residence was a full addition and remodel in Bountiful, including regrading a dangerously steep driveway. Bench lots come with slope, retaining and drainage questions that flat valley lots do not.
A real number before you commit.
A whole house remodel is the project where mid-course budget surprises do the most damage, because you cannot easily stop halfway. Our pre-construction process is detailed enough that surprises are rare, and you approve a line-item scope rather than a range.
One project manager across every trade.
Structural, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, envelope and finishes, plus the permit, all through one person. On a whole house project this is the single largest difference between a nine-month job and an eighteen-month one.
Award-winning craftsmanship.
Ironwood has been recognized across nearly every category of the Parade of Homes, and the crews that build our custom homes are the crews that rebuild your house.
On-time, on-budget guarantee.
Our on-time, on-budget guarantee means we build a schedule we can hold, and you hear from us the week something changes rather than at handover.
How Your Bountiful Whole House Remodel Unfolds
- Free consultation and walkthrough. We visit your Bountiful home, look at the floor plan, the panel, the visible plumbing and the envelope, discuss how you want to live in the house, and provide an initial estimate. Schedule yours.
- Assessment and design. Structural review, engineering where walls are coming out, and a pre-demolition assessment for asbestos-containing materials and lead paint. The design and the fixed scope and price get locked here.
- Permitting. We submit through Bountiful City’s CityInspect portal and manage plan review comments through to issuance.
- Demolition and abatement. Selective demolition with any required abatement handled by licensed specialists under containment before the trades come in.
- Structural and rough-in. Framing changes, then electrical, plumbing, and mechanical rough-in, with inspections at each stage. Insulation and air sealing follow.
- Finishes and final walkthrough. Drywall, flooring, cabinetry, tile, trim, fixtures and paint, then a detailed walkthrough before we call it done. See what past clients say in our reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a whole house remodel worth it on a 1970s Bountiful home?
Usually yes, and the reason is timing rather than sentiment. The median Bountiful home was built in 1973, so wiring, plumbing, windows, insulation and floor plan are all reaching end of life in the same period. Five of those six live behind the same drywall, so addressing them together means one demolition, one permit and one mobilization instead of five. The bones of Bountiful’s postwar homes are generally excellent, and the bench locations and Davis School District boundaries are difficult to replace by moving.
Do I need a permit for a whole house remodel in Bountiful, and does it go through Davis County?
You need a permit, and it goes through Bountiful City, not Davis County. Bountiful operates its own building department at 795 South Main Street and takes applications through its CityInspect portal. Davis County only permits unincorporated land. Residential single-family plan review runs at 10 percent of the permit fee, and inspections are scheduled by phone rather than online. Ironwood handles the application, plan review comments and every inspection.
Does my Bountiful home have aluminum wiring, and does it have to be replaced?
It might. Single-strand aluminum branch circuit wiring was used from roughly 1965 to the mid-1970s, which brackets Bountiful’s 1973 median build year, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission found homes with pre-1972 aluminum wire are 55 times more likely to have connections reach Fire Hazard Conditions than copper-wired homes. It can be resolved by a full rewire or by pigtailing copper leads at every outlet, switch and junction box. Either is far cheaper during a whole house remodel than as a standalone job. We identify it during assessment rather than after demolition.
What about asbestos and lead paint in an older Bountiful home?
Both are likely in a house of this era. Lead paint was banned from residential use in 1978, and residential materials made before about 1980 commonly contained asbestos in popcorn ceilings, vinyl floor tile and adhesive, and duct and pipe insulation. Intact material is generally left undisturbed. Material in the demolition path is assessed before work starts and handled under containment by licensed specialists, which is why the pre-demolition assessment happens during design rather than on day one of demolition.
Can I live in the house during the remodel?
Sometimes, and it depends on scope. A phased approach can keep part of the house habitable, which is how the Fergusson Residence in Bountiful was run. Once the whole house is being rewired and replumbed at once, moving out is usually faster and cheaper overall. We give you both options with the cost and schedule difference spelled out so it is your call.
