Best Remodeling Company in Fort Worth — 3 Years Running. Here's What That Actually Means.
We're going to start this one with a humblebrag, because we can't help it.
6th Ave Homes was just named Fort Worth Magazine's "Best Remodeling Company" for the third year in a row.
That still feels kind of wild to say out loud. We didn't start this company chasing awards. We started it because Jamey kept stumbling into bad contractor experiences as he flipped houses and figured there had to be a better way. We started it because Jimmy left his career as a 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?"
Three years of being named the best at it by our own city is something we don't take lightly.
But honestly, 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
We've seen a lot of remodels go sideways over the years — projects that started somewhere else and came to us mid-stream, projects clients tried to manage themselves, projects that got abandoned by the original contractor. 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 on most renovations — meaning we share what every line item actually costs, plus a clear management fee. You see the lumber bill. You see the plumbing bid. You see what the cabinetmaker quoted us. Most of our competitors don't do that. They give you a single big number and you have no idea 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 horror story we've ever had to fix started with someone demoing before they had 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. The number of remodels that go bad because the contractor stops returning calls is staggering. 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.
Why We Built It This Way
When Jamey and Jimmy started 6th Ave, they had both been on the receiving end of bad contractor experiences. The kind where the timeline triples, the price doubles, the communication evaporates, and you finish the project hating your house. They wanted to build the opposite — a company where the people doing the work would be people they'd be proud to send to their own mom's house.
That meant building it as a team, not a roster of subs. We have full-time construction project managers, designers, draftsmen, and trade leaders on staff. They go to lunch together. They come to the same Christmas party. They walk into your project as a unit, not a hodgepodge of strangers who met that morning.
It also meant designing the company so that design and construction talk to each other. Most remodeling companies have construction in-house and outsource design (or vice versa). At 6th Ave, both live under the same roof. Your designer and your construction lead are sitting two desks apart. They walk your project together. They solve problems together. Nothing falls through the cracks because there are no cracks — it's one team.
And it meant being a one-stop shop. Brokerage, lending, design, construction. Because most remodeling decisions are also financial decisions, and most financial decisions are also real estate decisions, and trying to coordinate four different companies through a major life change is exhausting. We do all of it under one roof so you don't have to.
That structure is the whole reason we keep getting named "best." Not because we're perfect (we're not). But because we built the company to make doing right by the homeowner easier than doing wrong by them.
The People Behind the Award
The other thing we want to say — because this is the only time we're going to get to brag about the team in a public-facing post and we're not going to waste it — is that this award belongs to them.
Our construction project managers, who walk job sites every single day, catch problems before they become problems, and treat every house like it's their own. Our designers, who spend hours sweating over the right tile pairing or the right cabinet pull because they know it matters. Our draftsmen, who turn dreams into buildable plans. Our guides (we don't call them agents because the word doesn't capture what they do), who walk families through the biggest financial decisions of their lives with grace and patience. Our office team, who keep the lights on and the texts answered and the schedules tight.
And the families who trust us. Because the actual work — the real work — is helping people make their homes feel like them. We've gotten to do that hundreds of times now, in old craftsman bungalows and 1950s ranches and big new builds and tiny powder rooms. Every one of those projects mattered to the family who lived there, and we've never wanted to forget that.
This award means a lot to us, but not because of the trophy. It means a lot because it's a kind of feedback. A signal from our city — from the people who've lived through projects with us — that we're building the kind of company we set out to build.
What This Means If You're Thinking About a Project
If you've been daydreaming about a renovation, an addition, a kitchen redo, or a new build, here's the simplest version of our pitch: come talk to us before you commit anywhere.
We do free walk-throughs and free estimates. We'll come look at your house, listen to what you're trying to do, and tell you honestly what's possible and what it would actually cost. No pressure. No pushy follow-up. If we're the right team for your project, we'll show you why. If we're not, we'll be the first to say so — and we usually know who else might be a good fit.
That's the level of service we want every homeowner to expect from a remodeling company, regardless of who they hire. Real conversations. Real numbers. Real care.
To our clients, our team, our city — thank you for cheering us on. Thanks for trusting us with your homes. We're celebrating this one, feeling really grateful, and getting back to work tomorrow.
Meet up. Team up. Glasses up. And if you're thinking about a project, come find us — we'd love to help you make something good.
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Ready to start the process of finding or creating a home that feels like you? Get started here.