We’re going to start this one with a humblebrag, because we can’t help it.
Fort Worth Magazine has named 6th Ave Homes its Best Home Builder & Remodeler four years running.
That still feels kind of wild to say out loud. We didn’t start this company chasing awards. We started it because Jamey and Jimmy, best friends and neighbors, bought an old house on their street that was headed for the bulldozer and brought it back to life. We started it because Jimmy left his career as a Fort Worth police detective and brought a “show up early, do what you said, treat people right” ethic to construction. We started it because we genuinely love this work: the homes, the families, the moment when somebody walks back into a house that used to feel broken and goes, “Wait, this is the same place?”
But the award isn’t really the story. The story is what it takes to be good at this, and what every homeowner should look for in a remodeling team, whether they end up hiring us or somebody else. Because choosing a remodeler is one of the highest-stakes decisions you’ll ever make about your home, and most people don’t really know what to look for.
So let’s dig in. Less about the award. More about what actually matters.
Remodeling Is Mostly About Trust
When you boil it down, hiring a remodeling company isn’t really about hiring trades or coordinating a project schedule. It’s about handing over the keys to your house (sometimes literally) and trusting a group of people you barely know to come into your most personal space, take it apart, and put it back together better.
That’s a wild act of trust. And it’s why “best remodeling company” can’t really be measured in square feet built or projects closed. It has to be measured in something more human: did the people who hired this team feel taken care of? Did they get what was promised? Did the work hold up after the crew left?
That’s the standard we hold ourselves to. And it’s the standard you should hold any remodeling company to before you sign anything. Because the difference between a remodel that becomes a great memory and a remodel that becomes a horror story usually has nothing to do with the budget. It has everything to do with the team.
What “Best” Actually Looks Like in a Remodeling Company
Remodels go sideways in a few familiar ways, and there are some patterns in what separates a great team from a mediocre one. Here’s what to actually look for.
A real, written scope of work. Not a sketch on a napkin. Not a verbal “we’ll figure it out as we go.” A real, line-by-line scope that spells out what’s being done, with what materials, by when, for what price. If a contractor can’t produce that before they start, walk away. The fuzziness at the start is where the cost overruns and disputes get baked in.
Transparent pricing. This is a big one for us. We bill Cost Plus: the real cost of materials and labor plus a transparent markup. You see what’s material and what’s our fee. No padded line items, no mystery bids. Watch out for a single big number with no way to see what’s inside it. That gap is where margin gets hidden and trust gets eroded.
A design plan before the hammers swing. This deserves its own paragraph. Most “remodeling problems” are actually decision problems. The contractor framed something assuming one layout, the homeowner pictured another, and now there’s a wall in the wrong place and somebody’s eating the cost. A real remodeling team doesn’t start tearing things out until the plan is fully designed, drawn, and signed off on. Pretty much every remodeling horror story starts with someone demoing before they have a plan.
Communication that doesn’t disappear. Project managers who answer texts. Updates that come weekly without you having to chase them. Bad news delivered early, not buried. A great team treats communication as part of the job, not an annoyance.
A team that owns problems. Things go wrong on every renovation. Always. The plumbing turns out to be different than expected. A wall is more load-bearing than the drawings showed. Materials get backordered. The question isn’t whether problems happen. It’s how the team handles them when they do. Great teams own it, communicate it, propose options, and keep moving. Mediocre teams hide it, blame somebody, and try to charge you for it.
The team you’re going to actually work with. A lot of remodeling companies have great salespeople. They sit at the kitchen table, charm you for an hour, and disappear the day the contract is signed. The crew you actually deal with is somebody else entirely. Ask up front: who is going to be running my project? When can I meet them? Are they an employee of yours or a sub? The answer to those questions tells you a lot.
