Home Remodeling Contractors in Palo Alto, CA

One team handles the design, the permits and the construction. Nothing gets built in your house until you’ve walked through it as a rendering and told us it’s right. Kitchens and baths, second stories, backyard ADUs, decks, and renovations that take on the entire house.

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Family-owned since 2012 · General building contractor, CSLB #1068557 · Bonded and insured

The Team Behind Your Palo Alto Remodel

Two-story work in Palo Alto runs down one of two tracks, and picking the track is a planning decision rather than a design preference. An upper-floor addition of 150 square feet or more gets measured against the city’s Objective Design Standards, the checklist in force since February 2025, and Individual Review is the discretionary route you elect when a design has to step outside that checklist. That choice belongs at the start, because reversing it once drawings exist means redrawing them and starting the clock again.

The rendering comes before the demolition. We build your room on screen first, down to the cabinet fronts, the tile pattern and the exact spot the island sits, and no material gets ordered until you’ve walked it and approved it. Design and field crews here answer to one company, so the person who drew the plan is accountable for what gets framed.

Design and Build on One ContractYou Approve the Model First You Approve the Model First Estimates Are Free and Itemized

What changes when the drawings and the build come from the same company.

Why Palo Alto Homeowners Bring Us In

What changes when the drawings and the build come from the same company.

Drawings and Construction Under One Roof

Hire us and you’ve hired the designer, the draftsman and the builder in a single contract. Nobody bills you for a coordination meeting, and nobody has a second firm to point at when a date moves.

The Cheapest Time to Change Your Mind

An island shifts three feet in the model for the cost of a designer’s afternoon. The same shift after rough plumbing costs a trade callback, a revised drawing and a change order. We render early so you spend your indecision where it’s free.

One Bathroom or Every Room in the House

A powder room, a kitchen, a second floor, a backyard ADU, a renovation that reaches the studs everywhere. Same crew and same standard of finish, whatever the square footage.

We Read the City's Rules Before We Draw

Two-story standards, protected-tree permits, historic routing, flood-zone elevation. Palo Alto stacks more of these than its neighbors, and each carries its own timeline. Knowing which ones land on your parcel shapes the design instead of derailing it in month two.

A Project Manager Who Doesn't Rotate Off

One manager carries the job from your first walkthrough through the final fix. Call the number and you reach someone who already knows what’s behind your walls.

Our License Number, Out in the Open

General building contractor, Class B, CSLB #1068557. California requires a licensed contractor once a job reaches five hundred dollars of labor plus materials, so collect a number from every bidder and run it through the state’s license lookup.

What We Do

What We Build for Palo Alto Homeowners

Inside the house, out in the yard, and everything the permit set covers.

Kitchen Remodeling

Cabinet layout, counters, an island scaled to how you cook, and the circuits your appliances need sitting behind it. Kitchens are our strongest suit, Eichler kitchens included, where the room opens onto the living space and a duct has nowhere discreet to go.

Our kitchen remodels →

Bathroom Remodeling

Curbless entries, glass showers, vanities that float clear of the floor, and tile work that doesn’t announce its age after a few winters. Turning a tub nobody uses into a shower somebody uses daily is one of the jobs we get called for most.

Bathroom projects →

Room Additions

Another bedroom, an office with a door on it, a wider family room, a full upper floor. What the lot allows, what the foundation carries and how the city handles two-story work set the outline that the design then has to live inside.

Adding on →

Home Remodeling

The whole house, from demolition through the last coat of paint. That takes in the invisible two-thirds as well: rewiring, repiping, changes to the framing, and a separate permit riding on each.

Full-house renovation →

Deck Builders

The weather here lets a back yard earn its keep long past summer. We frame and surface outdoor rooms in boards and hardware that handle the sun, the winter rain and steady traffic without needing an annual rescue.

Decks and patios →

ADU Construction

The city clears an 800-square-foot detached unit on any eligible lot, and its own local standards raise that ceiling to 900 square feet for a one-bedroom or 1,000 for two bedrooms and up. Owners put them to work as rentals, as a place for a parent who wants their own key, or as the studio the spare bedroom was never going to be. Filing and code compliance sit with us.

Backyard units →

Service Area

Where We Work Around Palo Alto

Palo Alto sits on the county line, and so does our work: south and east into Santa Clara County, north and west across San Mateo County.

Areas served

Palo Alto Stanford Menlo Park Atherton Los Altos Mountain View Portola Valley Woodside Redwood City San Carlos Sunnyvale Cupertino Santa Clara

Our office: 710 Lakeway Drive, Suite 200, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.

What a Palo Alto Remodel Has to Work Around

oseph Eichler built roughly 2,700 houses in Palo Alto across 32 tracts, more than he built in any other city. Post-and-beam framing, glass across the back elevation, radiant tubing cast into the slab. Cut that slab and you’re tracing tubing before anything else happens. Add a basement and the house gets braced, lifted clear and set on a new foundation, which retires the radiant heating for good.

Some tracts carry a Single Story Overlay, capping the roof at 17 feet and the house at one habitable floor, so square footage there has to come out of the ground floor or the back yard. Trees narrow the options further. Since the 2022 ordinance rewrite the city protects most mature trees from 15 inches in diameter up, native oaks from 11.5, and removal takes a permit from Urban Forestry.

Houses on the Historic Inventory route to a historic planner, with Professorville the one district where interior work comes into scope too. Every parcel sits in a mapped flood zone, and in the special hazard areas the lowest floor has to clear flood elevation, which rules out a basement. Electric, gas and water all run through Palo Alto’s own utility, the only full municipal set in California, on the utility’s schedule rather than yours.

Professorville Crescent Park Old Palo Alto Midtown Barron Park College Terrace Greenmeadow Green Gables Fairmeadow Charleston Meadows Palo Verde Duveneck/St. Francis Ventura

How a Project Runs With Us

Consultation

A visit to the house, tape measure out, questions asked, and an honest answer about what your number buys. Costs nothing, and nobody leaves a contract on your table.

Design & Planning

Layouts get resolved, finishes get chosen, and the scope lands on paper with enough specificity that the build has nothing left to guess at.

3D Rendering

The model reaches you before anything is ordered, which makes it the only stage where a change of heart is free. Take your time with it.

Permits & Construction

Drawings go to the city, we carry them through plan check, book the utility work the job calls for, and hand over a build schedule that stays current.

Final Walkthrough

Last visit, both of us, list in hand. Anything short of right goes on that list, and the project stays open until the list is empty.

Recent Projects, Start and Finish

Three we wrapped up around the Peninsula, in the original photographs.

San Mateo Kitchen Remodel

Raised-panel cabinets, dark speckled granite and a tumbled-stone backsplash that ate every bit of light in the room. All of it came out. In its place: flat-panel white cabinetry, a quartz island with marble veining carried over the edge to the floor, slab backsplash run up the wall behind the range, and gray plank flooring across the level. The double ovens stayed on their wall, now set into a run of full-height cabinetry.

See both photos →

San Bruno Kitchen Remodel

Dark stained oak cabinets, brown speckled counters, a tile backsplash and a pair of white wall ovens. Now the cabinets are deep green with brass pulls, white quartz wraps the peninsula, and a set of French doors opens the room onto the back lawn.

Open the gallery →

Menlo Park Full Home Remodel

A vaulted living room lined in dark tongue-and-groove, dark paneling below the windows, worn carpet underfoot. The framing stayed and the rest went: white walls and ceiling, beams refinished in a warm red, wide-plank oak floors, and the stone fireplace held in its original spot, its stonework no longer climbing all the way to the ridge.

Before and after →

Reviews From Palo Alto and the Peninsula

FAQ

Is a Second Story Allowed on My Lot?

Not on every one. Some Palo Alto tracts carry an overlay that holds the house to a single habitable floor, and your parcel’s zoning settles the question before design starts. We check it first and tell you straight if the answer is no, rather than selling you drawings that can’t be built.

Do You Work on Eichlers?

Yes, and we price them for what they are. The framing, the glazing and the heating all behave differently from a standard ranch, and a crew that hasn’t opened one before will find that out on your dime. We put those conditions in the estimate instead of issuing change orders in week two.

Will a Protected Tree Stop My Addition?

Stopping a project outright is rare; reshaping one is common. We get an arborist’s read during design and shape the footprint around what has to stay, and if a removal permit turns out to be the only route, you’ll hear it then rather than after you’ve paid for a foundation.

Can We Stay in the House During Construction?

For a single bathroom or a bedroom addition, usually yes. We seal the work zone and keep the dust inside it. A kitchen taken to the studs or a full renovation is harder, since you’d be without cooking and sometimes without plumbing for weeks, and we’ll tell you which one you’re facing before you sign anything.

What Does a Whole-House Remodel Run Here?

Our full-home renovations generally land between $140,000 and $400,000, and construction usually takes somewhere between three and six months. The spread is that wide because finish level and structural scope drive the number harder than square footage does, and the itemized estimate shows you which lines are moving it.

What Happens on the First Visit?

We measure, look behind the finishes where we can, ask what you want the space to do, and talk about money without dancing around it. The estimate that follows is itemized, costs nothing and obligates you to nothing. Call (408) 637-6142 or email info@wavesremodelingca.com to book a time.

Ready to Talk About Your Palo Alto Project?

Get us out to the house. We’ll walk the rooms, say plainly what a proper job of it involves, and price it line by line. The estimate is free, it’s yours, and you’re welcome to hand it to the next bidder for comparison.

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