10 min read
Last updated October 2026
Most people who call us about a high-end remodel are not short on ideas. They have a folder of them. What they are short on is a way to tell which of those ideas will still feel worth it in year seven.
A home reads as luxury when the expensive decisions are the ones you touch every day. Materials and square footage are the easy part, and they are the part every remodeler will happily sell you. The difference shows up in whether the primary suite is laid out around how two people actually get ready on a Tuesday morning, whether the patio is usable in July, and whether the finishes were chosen as one set rather than one at a time. Money buys materials. Planning is what makes them feel like they belong to you.
Every remodeler in this valley will tell you about quality. I stopped leading with it a long time ago, because quality is like breathing. It is not an achievement. It is the minimum, and nobody congratulates themselves on breathing. You will never notice the extra shim behind an upper cabinet. You will notice whether the room works at six in the morning.
You've put this off for years. We get it. Usually not because of the money, but because nobody wants to hand a stranger the keys to the house they worked their whole life for and hope it goes well.
So this is the list of eight features, written the way we would talk through them at your kitchen table. What each one involves, what moves the cost, and who should skip it.
A whole-house remodel in the Phoenix area runs from about $150,000 to $1 million and up. Our own work starts at $75,000, which rules us out for smaller projects and we would rather say that here than in a first meeting. Where a project lands inside that range comes down to one question more than any other: are you moving walls and plumbing, or working inside the footprint you have. Material selections, structural conditions, and the level of finish also affect the final investment.
Labor, materials, and trade availability can all change between phases. If you are planning work in stages, ask your remodeler to price each phase using current conditions rather than assuming today's estimate will hold.
Two things we do not do, and you should ask about with anyone you are considering. We do not use allowances, which are placeholder prices for decisions nobody has made yet. And we do not carry contingency funds. Both let a number look finished when it is not, and the gap between the placeholder and the real selection is how most surprise overruns actually happen. When something nobody could have seen turns up behind a wall, it becomes a written change order with a photograph, with the scope and price documented before you approve the additional work. If we made the mistake, we absorb it.
The design work is where the real number gets settled. Our Project Development Agreement is typically five percent of the midpoint of your investment range, or $15,000 to $25,000 on larger projects that need engineering and architectural plans. It is paid, it is non refundable, and it credits toward your project when you build with us. At the end of it you have a fixed price in writing before a nail is driven. The full sequence is on our remodeling process page.
| Feature | What moves the cost | Who should skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Primary suite | Whether you expand the footprint or reconfigure inside it | Anyone whose current suite is already big enough and just dated |
| Spa bathroom | Moving plumbing, slab work, steam or sauna equipment | Households where one person wants it and the other does not |
| Grand entryway | Structural changes, stair rebuilds, glazing | Single-story homes with a short entry run |
| Home gym | Flooring, mirrors, ventilation, electrical | Anyone who currently pays for a gym and enjoys going |
| Outdoor living | Shade structure, kitchen utilities, cooling | Lots with no shade, unless you are ready to build some |
| Home office | Whether you convert a room or add one | Anyone who works from the house two days a month |
| Casita or ADU | Detached new build versus garage conversion | Lots where setbacks or easements eat the buildable area |
| Wine cellar | Cooling, insulation, custom racking | Collections under about 200 bottles |
Our read after more than 500 completed remodeling projects. Every house argues with a list like this somewhere.
We say primary suite rather than master suite now, and so does most of the industry.
The suites we build at this level usually carry four zones: sleeping, a walk-in closet sized for two people who do not want to negotiate, a place to sit that is not the bed, and the bathroom. The sitting area is the one people are most skeptical about beforehand and most attached to afterward. It is where the coffee happens before anyone else is up.
What moves the cost is whether you expand or reconfigure. Borrowing from an adjacent bedroom or a hallway keeps you inside the existing roof and foundation, which is far less expensive than adding on. Building out means foundation, framing, roof, and mechanical, and in Phoenix it means setbacks. Setbacks, lot coverage, and review requirements depend on the parcel's zoning and the proposed work. Verify them with the applicable city before assuming an addition will fit.
Three things, in our experience, and none of them is size.
The first is a curbless shower with a linear drain, which reads as calm because your eye is not stopped by a step and a shower pan. The second is separating the wet zone from the getting-ready zone, so the steam and the mirror are not fighting each other. The third is lighting, which is the single most common regret we hear about. Overhead cans light the top of your head and nothing else. Vanity lighting at face height changes how the room feels more than the tile does.
Beyond that, the options are real: a freestanding tub, a steam shower, a sauna, heated floors, a slab you picked in person.
The number that decides your cost here is whether the plumbing moves. Phoenix homes are built on slab, so relocating a drain means cutting concrete, and that one decision separates a modest bathroom investment from a large one. Our bathroom remodel cost page publishes what that adds. The construction schedule depends on the scope, inspections, and material lead times once the design is settled.
More than its square footage suggests, because it is the only room in the house that everyone passes through every time.
The work here is usually structural rather than decorative. Removing a wall between the entry and the living space, opening a ceiling, widening a stair run, adding glazing that brings light deep into the house. A door swap is a door swap. It will not do what people are hoping for.
Stairs are the one on this list I will argue about. A staircase project we completed won NARI Contractor of the Year at the local, regional, and national level in 2019, in the Residential Interior Element category. Stairs are hard. They are structural, they are geometric, they are the first thing a guest touches, and there is nowhere to hide a mistake.
Sometimes, and we would rather tell you when it is not.
The gyms that get used have three things: daylight or at least a window, real ventilation, and enough ceiling height to stand on a box or press overhead without thinking about it. The ones that become storage rooms are the ones tucked into a windowless space because that room was available.
Ask yourself an easy question. Do you go to a gym now, and do you like going? If you do, a home gym often replaces a habit that is already working. If you do not go, and the reason is the drive and the parking and the hour, then the room removes the obstacle. We will not name equipment brands, because we do not sell them and we have no relationship worth passing along as advice.
Shade first. Everything else second.
An outdoor kitchen with no shade over it is a beautiful appliance collection you use four months a year. A covered patio with a ceiling fan, a misting line, and west exposure handled with a solid roof rather than a lattice will extend the usable season by months. Get that right and the rest is choosing equipment.
If you are building an outdoor kitchen, the utilities are the cost: gas, water, drain, and enough dedicated circuits for a refrigerator and an ice maker that will both work harder here than the manufacturer assumed. Attached shade structures are part of the house for permit purposes, which means the same setback rules apply.
This is the feature that changes how a house is used more than any other on the list, and it is the one most often cut first when people start trimming.
Not the spare bedroom at the end of the hall, in most cases.
The room that works is the one with a door, a window, and a wall you can put a desk against without sitting with your back to the entry. Sound matters more than people expect. An office sharing a wall with the laundry is a problem you will notice on every call.
The bigger question is convert or add. Converting an existing room is fast and keeps you inside the footprint. Adding is the answer when you need a separate entrance, which is worth thinking about if clients or employees come to the house. That decision has the same cost shape as any addition, and our home addition cost page walks through it.
This is the section of the original article that aged fastest, because the law changed underneath it.
Arizona updated its accessory dwelling unit laws beginning in 2024. The current Arizona statute (A.R.S. § 9-461.18) establishes requirements for covered municipalities, but eligibility, unit size, setbacks, and permitting must be checked against the current law and the local zoning code before design begins.
What this means in practice is that a casita went from a discretionary approval you had to argue for to something much closer to a permitted use. Cities can still be more generous than the state floor, and several here are.
ADU requirements differ by city. Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Tempe, Gilbert, and Paradise Valley may apply different local review processes and zoning rules. Check the city's current ordinance and the parcel's zoning before planning a casita.
Paradise Valley has a different local approval context than larger cities covered by the state ADU statute. Confirm current town rules before planning a casita there.
A word on our own experience, because it matters here. We have built attached casitas and additions with kitchenettes, and that is direct experience. We have not built a detached ground-up ADU. What we bring to that is 25 years of design-build work, more than 500 projects, and deep research into the current law. Our ADU guide for Phoenix covers the rules in full. Plan for design, permit review, and construction as separate stages. The timing depends on the city, the lot, and whether the casita is a conversion, an addition, or a new detached building.
Less space than people assume, and more insulation.
A cellar is a sealed, insulated, cooled room. The cooling unit and the vapor barrier are the actual project. Racking is the part you see. If you are storing fewer than a couple hundred bottles, a cooled cabinet does the same job for a fraction of the cost and we will tell you so.
The best one we ever built was a closet
It was the storage space under a staircase in a home we remodeled. We put a chiller in it, ran split face brick up the walls, lined the ceiling in redwood planks, and wrapped racking around the entire room, including the low space under the stair landing where the ceiling drops to about four feet. A custom iron door went on the entry.
Four feet into the room, one of the racking units holds two drawers for openers and stoppers. Lorrie and I replaced those two drawer fronts with custom fronts branded with the family's last name. They did not know until the final walkthrough.
The chiller is engineering. The drawer fronts are the reason they still send me photos.
Not all eight belong in your house, and a remodeler who tells you otherwise is selling.
If the gym is the one you want anyway, build the gym. It is your house and that is okay. I would just rather you hear the argument before you spend the money than after.
Home gyms and wine cellars can be less useful than expected when they do not match your existing habits. The one most often cut that should not be is outdoor living, because in this climate it is the feature that changes daily life the most for the money.
If you are weighing several of these at once, doing them together can reduce duplicated design, mobilization, and disruption costs, though phasing may still be the better choice for your household. Mobilization, design, and permitting get paid once instead of twice, and in Phoenix there is no off-season to absorb a gap, so a second start is a second start at current prices. Our remodeling cost hub and our whole-house cost page lay out how that math works.
Content last updated: October 2026
A whole-house remodel can take several months of construction after design and permitting. Bathroom and casita schedules vary with scope, structural work, inspections, and selections. Ask for a project-specific schedule once the plans are developed rather than relying on a generic timeline.
A design-build team handles design and construction under one roof, which means the person drawing it is accountable to the person building it. Larger structural work still brings in an engineer, and some projects need a licensed architect. We coordinate that rather than handing it to you.
Some more reliably than others. Some improvements may appeal to future buyers, but resale value depends on the neighborhood, local demand, project cost, and the quality of the work. A casita may offer flexibility for guests or family; rental use depends on applicable rules. Wine cellars and gyms are personal rather than financial. We would build them because you want them, not as an investment argument.
Often, yes, and it depends on plumbing more than project size. Losing your only bathroom forces a move out in a way that losing a kitchen does not. Some projects require temporary relocation during demolition, utility interruptions, or flooring work. Confirm the living arrangements in the project plan.
Our work starts at $75,000. Below that we are not the right fit, and we will point you somewhere better rather than stretch.
Every house on this list can be built by someone. The question is whether the person building it will tell you which of these eight you should not do, and whether the price you agree to is the price you pay. Ask whoever you are considering how many allowances are in their number, and who pays when the mistake is theirs. You are entitled to both answers in writing. We are Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, a design-build firm in Scottsdale serving greater Phoenix since 2001. One team. One price. No surprises. You can also read what Phoenix homeowners say in our Google reviews.
Scott Hochuli is the founder of Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team and the author of Crush Expectations. Pronounced Ha-Cue-Lee, he has been remodeling Phoenix homes since 1992 and founded the company with Lorrie in 2001. He is a past president of the Greater Phoenix chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and holds Arizona contractor license ROC 173428. Lorrie is Allied ASID and leads design, working to the planning standards published by the National Kitchen & Bath Association. Since 2001 the Hochuli team has completed 500+ remodels across Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, and the surrounding valley. Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team · 2501 N. Hayden Rd, Suite #102, Scottsdale, AZ 85257 · (602) 451-0323 · Google reviews.
Scott Hochuli : Aug 28, 2026, 11:52:45 AM
Who picks the materials in a remodel? Three ways it works, what allowances cost you, and how a Phoenix design-build team settles selections during...
Lorrie : Aug 18, 2026, 8:06:02 PM
Phoenix bathroom remodel ideas that fit how you actually live. What's worth the money on showers, vanities, tubs, tile, and lighting, and what to...
Scott Hochuli : Aug 28, 2026, 11:30:40 AM
Choosing remodeling materials? Sort every choice by how hard it is to undo. A Phoenix design-build team on where to stay safe and where you can have...
