A Hundred Years of Decisions Behind Those Walls
If you own a home in Grant Park, you probably already have a feel for what you’re dealing with. Maybe it’s a Craftsman bungalow from the 1920s with a kitchen that was laid out for a completely different way of living. Maybe it’s a Victorian near the park with plaster walls and cast iron plumbing that’s been in the ground since before your grandparents were born. Maybe it’s one of the smaller cottages or shotgun houses where you love the neighborhood but the square footage just isn’t there yet.
Whatever the situation, here’s the reality: renovating a Grant Park home isn’t the same as remodeling a house that was built twenty years ago. The homes here have history, they have character, and they have a hundred years of decisions behind those walls that you won’t fully understand until somebody opens them up. That’s the work we do.
NewSong Renovations is a home remodeling company built around exactly this kind of project. Kitchen remodel, bathroom renovation, whole-home remodel, additions, you name it. We’re a design-build remodeling contractor, which means we handle the design and the construction under one roof, with one team, from the first conversation to the final walkthrough. And we’ve been doing it in neighborhoods like Grant Park long enough to know what’s coming before the demo starts.
Grant Park spans over a hundred years of construction, which means the house you’re living in could have been built anywhere from the 1880s to last year. Each era left behind a different set of conditions, and understanding what you’re working with is the first step toward a renovation that actually holds up.
The Victorian-era houses near the park, the Queen Anne homes with the turrets and the ornate woodwork, those were built with balloon framing. That’s continuous studs running all the way from the foundation to the roof. Original plaster walls. In a lot of cases, knob-and-tube wiring that was never fully replaced. Cast iron plumbing. Brick pier foundations that have been sitting in Georgia red clay for well over a century. These are beautiful homes, but when you start opening walls in a house like this, you need to be ready for what you find.
The Craftsman bungalows from the 1910s through the 1930s are the most common house in the neighborhood. Platform framing, plaster over wood lath, those deep front porches with exposed rafter tails, built-in cabinetry that was just how they did things back then. Foundations are typically stacked brick piers or poured concrete piers. These homes were well built for their era. But “well built in 1925” and “ready for a modern family” are two different conversations.
Then you’ve got the shotgun houses and smaller cottages, mostly 800 to 1,200 square feet. A lot of buyers come into these knowing they’re going to need a home addition or a second-story addition just to get the space they need. The room-to-room layout has to be rethought before the house works for how people actually live now.
If your home was built before 1940, here is what you should expect to find when the walls come open. Knob-and-tube wiring that has to be replaced. Cast iron drain lines with 80-plus years of corrosion. Lead paint on every surface if it was built before 1978. Possible asbestos in insulation and floor tiles. Termite damage in the framing. Georgia sits in one of the highest-risk regions in the country for subterranean termites, and a house this age has had decades of exposure without anyone knowing what was happening inside the walls. Rotten subfloors under bathrooms and kitchens. Foundation drainage that was either inadequate from the start or has failed over time. For houses of this age in Grant Park, we build in a contingency of 15 to 20 percent above the base construction estimate. That’s not pessimism about the house. That’s what a hundred years of Georgia weather and deferred maintenance reliably produces.
A kitchen remodel in a Grant Park Craftsman bungalow starts in a different place than a kitchen remodel in a newer home. The walls are plaster over lath, not drywall. The floor may slope because the pier-and-beam foundation has settled unevenly over decades. And the plumbing and electrical are behind walls you can’t just open casually, because what you find behind them is going to determine how far the scope expands. So kitchen renovation here usually begins with a structural question: is the floor level, are the joists sound, can the existing plumbing even support the layout you want? Those answers shape the design before anybody picks out a countertop.
Bathroom remodeling works the same way. In a home with one original bathroom, the subfloor has been absorbing moisture for decades. Cast iron drain lines may be partially blocked with a century of buildup. So a bathroom renovation here is fundamentally a systems project. You’re not redoing the bathroom. You’re replacing what’s in the floor and behind the walls, and the new bathroom is what you get at the end of it.
Whole-home renovation is where everything comes together. You’re bringing electrical up to modern code across the entire house, replacing plumbing that’s at the end of its useful life, insulating walls and attics that were never insulated, and making the layout changes that turn a series of closed-off rooms into something that flows the way families actually live. A whole-house remodel of this scope is the most common project we take on in Grant Park, because the homes deserve it and doing it halfway doesn’t hold up.
Home additions and second-story additions are common on the single-story bungalows and cottages where the lot just doesn’t give you room to expand outward. Adding up is often the only option for gaining the bedrooms and bathrooms a family needs without leaving the neighborhood. And the historic district regulations, which we’ll get into below, control what an addition can look like from the street. So that has to be part of the design from day one.
Basement finishing in Grant Park depends on what kind of foundation you’re working with. Homes on pier-and-beam foundations with crawl spaces don’t have basement space to finish. But Grant Park has sloped lots with partial below-grade space, and those homes can gain real livable area if the moisture situation is handled first. The first question is always moisture. If you don’t solve the water issue first, nothing else you do down there is going to last.
Exterior renovation on Grant Park homes usually means porch restoration, siding repair or replacement, window upgrades, roofing. Porch renovation on a Craftsman bungalow means working with tapered columns, exposed rafter tails, and brick pier supports that may need structural attention before any cosmetic work starts. And because of the historic district, every exterior remodel has to go through the Certificate of Appropriateness process before you can pull a permit. Screened porch additions follow the same rules.
Interior renovation beyond kitchens and bathrooms means opening up floor plans, removing walls, restoring hardwood floors, and reconfiguring layouts that made sense in 1920 but don’t anymore.
For the right lot and zoning, an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) can add rental income, guest space, or multigenerational housing. Grant Park’s lots are modest, but some, especially corner lots and lots with alley access, can support a detached structure.
And then there’s historic home renovation, which in Grant Park isn’t really a separate category. It’s the context for nearly everything we do here. The homes here demand a renovation contractor who understands how they were built, what’s changed over a hundred years, and how to bring them forward without losing what makes them worth keeping.
The reason design-build matters for all of this is simple. The person helping you plan the kitchen layout is the same team that opens the walls and deals with what’s behind them. When we find termite damage in the subfloor joists during a bathroom renovation, we don’t send a change order to a separate architect and wait two weeks. We assess it, talk to you about it, and keep the project moving.
Grant Park is a City of Atlanta local historic district, designated in 2000 and expanded in 2003. What that means for you as a homeowner is this: any exterior change visible from a public street requires a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission before you can get a building permit. That adds 30 to 60 days to your permitting timeline, and it’s not something you can skip.
The regulations get specific. Siding materials, roofing materials, foundation treatments, window sizes, porch configurations, driveway widths, roof pitch minimums, garage placement, deck locations, chimney placement. All of it is governed by the Grant Park Historic District Regulations in Chapter 20K of the Atlanta code. A few examples to give you a sense of the detail: vinyl siding is permitted but stacked stone is not. Asphalt shingle roofing is fine but the front facade has to have a minimum 6-in-12 roof pitch. No garage entrances on the front facade. No black asphalt driveways. No off-street parking in the front yard. Individual window units can’t exceed 28 square feet.
Interior remodeling doesn’t require UDC review. You can gut a kitchen, rebuild every bathroom, replace all the plumbing and electrical, and reconfigure the whole interior layout without going through the historic district process. But the moment your renovation touches the exterior, new windows, porch work, an addition, a roof replacement, you need the COA first.
Here’s where working with a design-build remodeler makes a real difference. If your designer draws a rear addition with a beautiful roofline and your builder prices it out, but nobody checked whether the roof pitch meets the 6-in-12 minimum or whether the window proportions satisfy the 15-to-40-percent fenestration requirement, the UDC is going to send you back to redesign. That costs time and it costs money. When design and construction are under the same roof from the beginning, those regulations get accounted for before the first drawing is finalized. Not after.
Most historic Grant Park homes sit on pier-and-beam foundations with brick piers. And those foundations are sitting in Georgia’s Piedmont red clay, which is a montmorillonite clay that expands by as much as 10 percent when it gets saturated and contracts during dry periods. Atlanta gets about 52 inches of rain a year, well above the national average. So you’ve got this seasonal cycle of expansion and contraction pushing against foundation walls year after year after year.
Horizontal cracks in the foundation are the visible evidence. They’re common in Grant Park homes, and they don’t just mean the house is old. They mean the soil is actively moving. Foundation work here can range from leveling and shimming piers all the way up to full foundation replacement with steel beams, sister joists, CMU retaining walls, and interior perimeter drain systems. That’s not rare for homes this age on this soil. It’s part of what renovating here involves.
The mature tree canopy adds another consideration. Grant Park has large oaks and magnolias protected under Atlanta’s tree ordinance, which was overhauled in 2025 with a 6-inch diameter-at-breast-height threshold for protection. Root protection zones limit where you can place additions, dumpsters, and construction equipment. Removing a mature tree requires a permit. So your site plan has to account for the trees before the design is finalized, not after someone shows up with a backhoe.
Grant Park’s lots are narrow by suburban standards, and the houses sit close together on most streets. Front porches sit close to the sidewalk. Mature trees fill the front and back yards. The historic district restricts driveway width to 10 feet in the front yard and prohibits front-yard parking. Alley access exists on some blocks but not all.
What that means for a renovation is that construction logistics need actual planning before a single tool gets unloaded. Where materials get staged, how a concrete truck accesses the site, where the dumpster goes without landing on a root protection zone or a neighbor’s property. These aren’t theoretical concerns. They show up in your schedule and your cost. If your lot has no alley access, everything comes through the front or side yard, which can mean hand-carrying materials past a protected oak on every supply run.
NewSong Renovations is a design-build contractor. Design, budgeting, and construction happen under one process with one team. You’re not hiring an architect, waiting for plans, sending those plans out for bids, picking a remodeling contractor, and then hoping the two of them communicate. You’re working with us from the first conversation through the final walkthrough.
We require that homeowners move out during major renovations, and we’re straightforward about that from the first conversation. In a Grant Park Victorian or Craftsman home where you’re opening walls, pulling plaster, replacing electrical and plumbing, and generating the kind of noise, dust, and debris that comes with real structural work, living in the house during construction isn’t safe and it isn’t fair to your family. Other renovation companies will tell you they can work around you. What that actually means is a longer timeline, compromised quality, and your family living in a construction zone for months. We don’t do that.
The process starts with a conversation, not a quote form. We want to understand what you’re trying to accomplish, what the house actually needs, and whether we’re the right fit for this specific project before anyone talks about numbers.
Ready to talk about your Grant Park home?
Whether you’re working out what a full renovation involves on a Craftsman bungalow that hasn’t been touched in decades, or you own a Grant Park home and want to understand what a targeted update would take, that conversation starts with the house. We’ll give you an honest read on what the structure needs, what the scope is likely to include, and whether we’re the right team for it.
“Project was extremely well managed and finished on time and (drumroll) under budget. If quality is an important factor to you, I'd highly recommend NewSong.”
“David was on site nearly every single day for six months and quickly became like family. His attention to detail and commitment to quality was second to none.”
“What a great experience! Our project was completed on time, very close to budget, and exceeded our expectations! Weekly emails kept us up to date on the progress.”
“Newsong delivered us exactly what we wanted with super high quality work and in the timeframe promised. We are thrilled with our renovation!”
“What a smooth experience. No bad surprises, yet lots of finesse on small items I would have never thought of. Newsong Renovations surpassed all my expectations.”
“They exceeded all expectations. From planning to final completion, David and Gabe were true partners — completed ahead of schedule and under budget.”
Schedule your appointment today and take the first step toward transforming your home with expert remodeling services.
Schedule a Call