Custom remodels in Summerlin

Two permitting authorities

The City of Las Vegas and Clark County run separate plan review, separate submittal portals and separate inspection scheduling. Drawings prepared for one are not ready for the other.

If a contractor works mostly on the county side and assumes the process carries over, the mismatch surfaces in plan check, weeks after the drawings were paid for.

Design review, in parallel with the permit

Most Summerlin villages review exterior work: elevations, materials, colors, roof lines, walls, hardscape. Approval is a prerequisite for starting, and clients are often surprised by how much authority the committee has over color and massing.

We submit for design review while the building permit is in plan check rather than after. Running them in sequence instead adds weeks.

The older villages

The established villages went up through the 1990s and early 2000s. Those houses were built well for the brief they had, and the brief has changed: kitchens closed off from living space, original plaster that wants proper repair rather than another skim coat, aluminum sliders, electrical service sized before anyone ran a second oven and a car charger.

Most of our Summerlin work is that kind of remodel. The C-17 plaster license matters here, because a new opening in a thirty-year-old wall either matches the existing texture or advertises itself for the life of the house.

Hillside lots on the west side

West Summerlin trades flat ground for elevation and views. Expect an engineered pad, retaining that forms part of the architecture, drainage designed for water that arrives all at once, and a review committee with opinions about your view corridor.

Get the grading and geotechnical work in hand before the floor plan is settled. Plans drawn the other way round get drawn twice.

What the ground costs you

Caliche sits within a few feet of the surface across most of Summerlin. It behaves like soft rock, not soil, so anything below grade meets it: footings, a pool, a basement, a trench for a new gas line to an outdoor kitchen.

The practical effect is that excavation is priced by what comes out rather than by the hole. We get a number for that early, because it is the single line most likely to move a budget after the drawings are done.

Living in the house while we work

Most Summerlin remodels happen in occupied houses. That changes sequencing more than it changes scope. One kitchen, one working bathroom, dust barriers that come down at the end of the day, and trades scheduled so the house is habitable each evening.

Staying in the house also lengthens the schedule, and NeXGen says so at the estimate rather than letting you discover it in month three. If you would rather move out and compress the program, that is usually the cheaper of the two.