Guide
Longer than the framing makes it look, and the calendar splits into parts only some of which a builder controls. This page walks the phases in order, names which clock each one runs on, and says what moves the date. It promises no month count, because a date promised before the plans and plan check are settled is a guess.
I am Sebastian Moreno Rivera, the owner of Build And Decor Construction. The schedule you get from me is built from your plans, and it changes in writing when something moves.
The structural look and the lot reading come first. Design and engineering follow: your architect draws the new floor and the stair, your structural engineer designs the load path, and energy compliance documents ride with the set. This phase runs on decisions. Every selection made early, windows, the stair location, the bath layout, is a correction cycle avoided later.
Inside the City of Los Angeles the plans go to LADBS through ePlanLA. Corrections come back, we answer them, and the permit issues when the set is clean. A complete submittal goes through fewer cycles, and on a complicated lot a preliminary plan check meeting with a plan check engineer answers questions before they become corrections. A Historic Preservation Overlay Zone adds its own review before plan check, and a hillside determination can add a step. I never promise approval dates, because the City sets them.
Structural work below first: new footings, shear walls and hold-downs, with the foundation inspector signing the steel before concrete is placed. The weather structure goes up. The roof comes off in sections, only the covered section ever open, each section framed and dried in the day it is opened. Then the new roof, the windows, and the rough trades, plumbing, electrical and mechanical, each inspected before it is covered. Insulation, drywall and texture. Finishes: flooring, trim, paint, fixtures. The final inspection closes the permit, and the new square footage lands on the property record.
Plan check corrections. A soils report on a hillside lot. The rain season, which sets when the roof can safely come off; when the forecast is wrong the tear-off waits and the crew runs other scope that week. Selections not made when the trade needs them. A stair moved after framing, which is a rebuild. Living in the house, which adds phasing. Inspections, which are scheduled, not summoned. Each is a known thing, and the schedule names it.
A stage-by-stage schedule with the written scope, built from your plans. An update in writing at every inspection. The loud weeks named before they arrive. The dry-in moment planned weeks out. The full picture of the project is on the second-story additions page, and the site's page on the kitchen, bath, addition and rebuild calendars is how long a remodel takes.
Send me your address and two or three photos of the house. I send back a feasibility read in writing: what the zoning allows above your roof, what the lot adds, what a house of its age and type usually needs to carry a new floor, and a simple massing sketch of the new floor on your house. I read every request myself.