Whole-home remodels in Arlington Heights
Two houses side by side here can hide very different wiring and plumbing. We open a few walls before we price.
Our work · Arlington Heights Whole-Home Remodel
Design, drawn and built
What a whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights involves
Good street, good bones, and a floor plan drawn for how families lived a generation or two ago. That is the house we take on. Walls come out, the primary suite finally shows up where there never was one, and the kitchen stops being a corridor everyone has to walk through.
Design, drawings, permits and the build, on cost-plus billing so you can watch the budget as it moves rather than reading about it afterward. You keep the house you chose. It just stops arguing with you.
In Arlington Heights
The variable in a whole-home remodel here is not the plan, it is which fifty years you happen to own. One house on the block still has its original systems behind the plaster and the one next door had them replaced fifty years ago, and those two carry very different budgets for the same set of drawings. Nothing about that is readable from the curb.
Design and drafting, in house
The drawings come from the people who have to build them
Plans, elevations and selections are done here, by the team that will be on site — so the thing you approve on paper is the thing that gets built, and the number under it is real.
The construction set
Every room dimensioned, every window and door scheduled, ceiling heights called out — the drawing a plan reviewer stamps and a framer builds from.
The room in 3D
How the rooms connect once the wall between them is gone — drawn to scale, not sketched.
The selections
Stone, tile, timber and cloth, chosen together and seen in daylight before anything is ordered.
Renovating in Arlington Heights
What the houses here actually ask for
1920s–1950s
Craftsman bungalows and Tudor cottages from the 1920s and '30s beside mid-century houses that have been updated since — a genuine mix rather than one era, on oak-shaded streets.
The ground on this side of town is thin over limestone, close enough to the surface that excavation is a real line item and seasonal movement mostly is not. Above it, three decades of building practice share the same streets.
- Median lot
- 6,250 sq ft
- Median house
- 1,508 sq ft
- Built before 1940
- 57%
50 ft wide by 130 deep — and a third are narrower than 50
which is why so much of the work here is finding room, not finishing it
567 in the 1920s and 434 in the 1930s, out of 1,971 houses
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-01
The ground rules in Arlington Heights
No historic overlay on most blocks. Hillcrest, on Tremont, is the exception.
Arlington Heights as a whole is not one of Fort Worth's fourteen local historic districts, so on most blocks nothing you do to the front of the house needs a Certificate of Appropriateness. The exception is Historic Hillcrest, a designated district on a stretch of Tremont Avenue, and nothing at the curb tells you that you are in it. We pull the parcel before we draw.
A-5 One-Family~50%
- Min lot
- 5,000 sq ft
- Min width
- 50 ft
- Max coverage
- 50%
- Front yard
- 20 ft
B Two-Family~26%
- Min lot
- 5,000 sq ft attached / 7,500 detached
- Min width
- 50 ft
- Max coverage
- 50%
- Front yard
- 20 ft
A third of the lots are under the 50-foot minimum width
678 of 1,971 measure narrower than the 50 feet A-5 requires, which makes them nonconforming lots of record — legal to build on, but the side yards and the buildable width are the constraint on every addition here. It is the first thing to check, and it is not something the zoning map tells you: it comes from the parcel.
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-01
What it runs in Arlington Heights
$150,000–$750,000
a smaller house taken cosmetic-plus at the low end, down to studs on something large at the top.
Ranges for a whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights, not a quote. Before there are drawings, a range is the only honest number anyone can give you — the spread between a high and a low bid on the same job is routinely 20% or more. We bill cost-plus, so when there is a plan you see the actual materials, labor and subcontractor costs, plus our overhead and profit, rather than a single figure with the unknowns padded into it.
What moves it
- What is behind the walls. Two houses with identical floor plans can carry very different budgets depending on the age and condition of the wiring, plumbing and ductwork — and none of that is readable from the curb, which is why we walk the whole house before we price anything.
- How much of the plan is actually structural. Some of the walls in the way are holding up the house and some are not, and that difference is often the biggest swing in the budget. The answer comes from the framing, not the floor plan, and an engineer confirms it before anything comes down.
- Square footage, straightforwardly. This is the one service where the range is mostly a size range.
- Whether you live in it. Phasing a remodel around an occupied house adds time and protection work that an empty one does not need.
- Per square foot
- $100–$300
- How long it takes
- 5–12 months
- Fort Worth permit fees
- $1,200–$4,000
- Carry a contingency
- 15–20% of budgeton a down-to-studs remodel, the number we would not thin out
The bath · Built by 6th Ave Homes
Arlington Heights Primary Suite Addition Step inside this one →What we'd actually do here
The moves that matter in Arlington Heights
Every neighborhood rewards something different. These are the three that come up on almost every whole-home remodel we take on.
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Open one wall in each system's path
The cheapest way to find out which era you own is a few exploratory openings — a panel, a wall cavity, a section of floor — done before the plan is priced rather than during demolition.
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Moving a drain means trenching rock
Relocating a kitchen or adding a bath here means cutting limestone under the slab rather than digging soil. Plumbing relocation gets priced off the ground, not off the fixture count.
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Budget for undoing the last remodel
Previous work is where the surprises live — a dropped ceiling over good framing, a bath moved without moving the stack. We price the removal, not just the build.
How it works
A whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights, in three steps
The people who draw it, price it, and build it share a hallway — which is why the plan you fall in love with is the plan that actually gets built.
Meet Up
We walk the house, listen to how you actually live in it, and talk honestly about budget before anyone draws a line.
Team Up
Our designers and drafting team put a real plan on paper — layout, selections, and a number you can build around.
Glasses Up
We build it, keep you in the loop, and hand back a home that feels like you. Pour something good.
Both numbers, one conversation
Remodel it, or buy the one you actually want?
The location and the trees are why people stay on this side of town. Whether this particular house is worth the work is a different question, and it deserves a real number on each side.
What the work would cost
Priced by the people who'd build it.
Design, drafting and construction, in house.
What it'd sell for as-is
Valued by the agents who sell this market.
6th Ave Homes is a licensed brokerage.
A remodeler can price the work. An agent can price the house. We do both.
We can price both sides, which almost nobody can. Our drafting team will tell you what your house will and won't give up, our builders price the work off those drawings, and our agents can tell you what it's worth as it stands. Sometimes the honest answer is that the house you're describing is already for sale two streets over. We'd rather say that than sell you a remodel that never quite gets there.
Our work in Arlington Heights
Arlington Heights Whole-Home Remodel
Whole-Home Remodel
In Arlington Heights, the bones were good but the layout fought the family at every turn. The 6th Ave Homes design and construction teams reimagined the whole home so it finally works the way they live, and every room is waiting in the gallery.
See the whole project
From the Arlington Heights Whole-Home Remodel — see the full gallery
Not our first time on these streets
More of our work in Arlington Heights
The neighborhood
The Army left the streets and sewers. The houses went up on them.
H.B. Chamberlin platted Chamberlin Arlington Heights in 1890 and built a resort hotel on the hill near Merrick and Bryce to sell it. The Panic of 1893 killed the venture and the inn burned the next year. Then in 1917 the Army took roughly two thousand acres of the same ground for Camp Bowie, and when the camp closed in 1919 the landowners got it back with streets, sewers and utility lines already in.
Camp Bowie Boulevard is the northern edge and it is still paved in Thurber brick, laid in 1927 and carrying a state historical marker since 1978. Fire Station No. 18 has been running at Camp Bowie and Carleton since October 1923 — the oldest working station in the city and the last of the bungalow-style stations. The neighborhood association throws it a birthday party.
The old businesses stayed, and not as nostalgia. They are why the boulevard still works as a main street instead of a through road, and why somebody renovating a house here buys the cake, the groceries and the burgers within a mile of it.
The Kimbell, the Amon Carter, the Modern, the Botanic Garden, Will Rogers and Dickies Arena are all a few minutes east. People here hold memberships instead of making a day of it, and they walk to the Stock Show rather than parking for it.
What's around it
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Fire Station No. 18
The neighborhood throws its fire station a birthday party every October. It has earned them since 1923.
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Camp Bowie Boulevard
The brick is the point. It is why this stretch still reads as a boulevard and not a highway.
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Kincaid's Hamburgers
A 1946 grocery whose head butcher started grilling burgers in the back in 1964.
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Roy Pope Grocery
Still the one people mean when they say the store. On Merrick since 1943.
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Veterans Memorial Park
Where the neighborhood remembers the camp it was built on, at Camp Bowie and Crestline.
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Historic Hillcrest
A designated city historic district on one stretch of Tremont Avenue. It is inside the neighborhood and invisible from the curb, which is exactly the problem.
- Camp Bowie Boulevard
- Crestline Road
- Bryce Avenue
- El Campo Avenue
- Tremont Avenue
- Clover Lane
- Merrick Street
- Hillcrest Street
- Carleton Avenue
- Birchman Avenue
- Tulsa Way
- Montgomery Street
What that means for your whole-home remodel
A whole-home project here is usually a 1920s bungalow or English cottage somebody already added onto once, badly. The work is untangling it — getting the wet rooms off the exterior masonry, putting the kitchen where a kitchen goes now, and making a hundred years of additions read as one house instead of three.
Another whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights
The rooms, up close
Before you start
A whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights: the questions worth asking first
The answers that change a Arlington Heights project are usually the ones nobody asks until the drawings are done. We work through these first.
Nearby and related
- Home Additions in Arlington Heights
- Whole-Home Remodel in Aledo
- Whole-Home Remodel in Berkeley Place
- Whole-Home Remodel in Mira Vista
- Whole-Home Remodel in Mistletoe Heights
“Wonderful experience working with 6th Avenue Construction + Design! LB created a beautiful and timeless living space for us that reflects our personalities and taste. She has endless resources, creativity and energy from start to finish. I would choose to work with 6th Avenue again and again and again! In fact, I think it just might be time to buy a another house, just for the opportunity to keep working with 6th Avenue!”
Do I need historic approval to remodel in Arlington Heights?
On most blocks, no. Arlington Heights as a whole is not one of Fort Worth's fourteen local historic districts, so exterior work follows the standard city residential permit path. The exception is Historic Hillcrest, a designated district on a stretch of Tremont Avenue, where exterior changes need a Certificate of Appropriateness. We check the parcel before we draw. Private deed restrictions are a separate matter from city zoning and worth confirming for your own block — no city overlay is not the same as no restriction.
Why do bids on houses that look alike come back so differently?
Because they aren't alike underneath, and the differences are all in the parts nobody photographs. Panel capacity and whether the wiring was ever fully replaced. Whether there is ductwork or a system that was added to a house built without one. Whether the floor sits on piers or a slab, and what has happened to it since. Any one of those moves a number further than the finish schedule does, and none of them are visible on a walkthrough. So the real question to ask about a low bid is which of them it assumed rather than checked.
Can we do it in phases?
Sometimes, and sometimes phasing costs more than it saves. Anything sharing mechanical systems or structure wants to happen in one pass. A detached scope, a later addition, a backyard, those phase cleanly. We will draw the whole plan either way so that phase one does not have to be undone.
What happens to the parts of the house we already love?
They stay, and they set the vocabulary for everything new. Original floors, a stair rail, the trim profile, a fireplace. Telling us what you would be sad to lose is the most useful thing you can do on the first walkthrough.
Best Home Builder & Remodeler
Fort Worth MagazineFort Worth Chamber Small Business of the Year4.7 stars from 91 Google reviews as of September 2026
Thinking about a whole-home remodel in Arlington Heights?
Tell us about the house and the room that isn't working. We'll walk it with you, tell you what we'd do with it, and put a real number on it — before anyone signs anything.