Making a 1920s Bungalow Work for the Family Living in It
If you own a home in Oakhurst, you probably already know you’re not leaving. The schools, the walkability, the village feel, the front porch you can sit on and watch the neighborhood go by. And you’re working out how to make the house match the decision you made to be here, because the 1924 Craftsman bungalow you bought for the school district wasn’t built for the family you’re trying to fit into it.
Home renovation in Oakhurst starts with two questions that don’t come up the same way everywhere else. The first is whether to renovate the bungalow at all, because on the same street where you’re looking at a $700,000 renovation, someone just put up a $1.5 million new build. The second is what the City of Decatur’s green building ordinance means for your specific scope, because a full gut renovation of an Oakhurst bungalow almost always crosses the 50 percent threshold that triggers green building certification. That requirement doesn’t get discovered at the permit counter on a well-run project. It gets planned for at the beginning of the design phase.
NewSong Renovations is a design-build renovation company working on home remodeling in Oakhurst. The Craftsman bungalows that need full systems replacement while the front porch and the built-ins and the character of the house stay intact. The renovation decisions that have to account for tight lots, grade changes, no alley access, and a green building requirement before the design gets finalized. A home remodel on a house this age starts with finding out what’s actually in there, before the scope gets set and before anyone commits to a budget.
Oakhurst developed as a streetcar suburb in the early 1900s, and the homes that define the neighborhood are the Craftsman bungalows from the 1910s through the 1930s. Brick exteriors, front porches with tapered columns, built-in cabinetry, exposed rafter tails, platform framing, plaster over wood lath, brick pier-and-beam foundations sitting in Piedmont red clay.
You know the house. You walked through it and you saw the bones and the original floors and the built-ins that no new construction is going to replicate. That’s why you’re here.
But here’s what’s behind those walls. Knob-and-tube wiring that was never fully replaced, or was partially replaced in ways that left the old wiring in place behind new surfaces. Cast iron drain lines with a century of buildup. Lead paint on every surface built before 1978. Possible asbestos in floor tile and pipe insulation from any mid-century updates. Termite damage in the framing, because Georgia subterranean termites have had a hundred years of access to these walls without anyone knowing what was happening inside them. Rotten subfloor under bathrooms and kitchens where moisture has been working in silence for decades.
And then there’s the foundation. Oakhurst sits on hilly terrain near the Eastern Continental Divide, so a lot of these lots have significant grade changes from front to back. What looks like a flat lot from the street may have a four or five foot drop at the rear. That grade change affects the foundation conditions on the downhill side, where clay soil that’s saturated with water is pushing against the foundation wall season after season. The brick piers that looked stable on the inspection may have movement behind them that doesn’t show up until the walls open.
For homes in this condition, we build in a contingency of 15 to 20 percent above the base construction estimate. On a sloped Oakhurst lot where the foundation has been managing clay soil movement for a hundred years and the systems haven’t been touched in decades, the walls open with things nobody saw coming. The contingency is what responsible planning looks like on a house this age on terrain like this.
A kitchen remodel in an Oakhurst Craftsman bungalow starts with a question that’s specific to sloped lots: what is the floor actually doing. On a lot with a four-foot grade change front to back, the pier-and-beam foundation has been settling unevenly for a hundred years, and the floor that looks level when you’re standing in it cooking isn’t. The plumbing that needs to move is behind walls that haven’t been opened since Coolidge was president. Kitchen renovation here means a structural assessment before any design conversation. What are the joists doing. What’s the subfloor condition on the downhill side. What’s behind the walls where the new layout wants to go. And then the kitchen gets designed around what the house can actually support, not around a rendering made before anyone looked at what was underneath.
Cast iron drain lines corroded from the inside. Subfloor wicking moisture through failing grout for fifty or sixty years. A bathroom remodel here is a drain replacement and subfloor project that ends with a new bathroom. Skipping the subfloor work to save money means doing it again in five years, and the second time around it’s more expensive because now you’re tearing out a bathroom renovation you just paid for.
A whole-home renovation in Oakhurst means new electrical throughout, new plumbing, insulation in walls and attics that were built without it, and a floor plan reconfigured for how a family actually lives now rather than how a family lived in 1924. A whole-house remodel at this scope is also where the green building requirement comes in. If the renovation value exceeds 50 percent of the home’s fair market value, Decatur requires certification under an approved green building program. The most commonly used are EarthCraft and LEED. That requirement changes what insulation you can use, what windows you can specify, how the mechanical systems get designed. It has to be part of the design from the first conversation, not something that gets figured out at permitting.
Home additions on Oakhurst’s tight lots take more design work than additions on open lots. These aren’t half-acre lots with room to move. A typical Oakhurst lot runs narrow, with setbacks on both sides, a rear setback, and lot coverage maximums that limit how much of the lot can be covered by structure. So the addition footprint has to be designed around what the lot actually allows, not around what the family wants in the abstract. Bump-outs, dormer additions, rear extensions that maintain the Craftsman proportions from the street: these are the solutions that work here. A second-story addition is often how a family gets the bedrooms and bathrooms they need without blowing the setbacks. And because most Oakhurst lots have no alley access, everything comes through the front or side yard, which means the site plan has to account for how materials get in and debris gets out before the design gets finalized.
Basement finishing on the sloped lots in Oakhurst is viable. A home with a four-foot grade change from front to back may have partial below-grade space at the rear that can become real living area. Get the moisture situation right first. Basement remodeling on a sloped lot where the uphill side is putting clay-saturated soil pressure against the foundation wall requires waterproofing and drainage work before anything else happens down there.
Exterior renovation on an Oakhurst Craftsman means roofing, porch restoration, siding or paint, and window replacement or restoration. Porch renovation on these homes, restoring original columns and railings or screened porch additions at the rear, gets planned as part of the exterior scope. Interior renovation beyond kitchens and bathrooms means original hardwood floor restoration, plaster wall repair, and reconfiguring room relationships that made sense in 1924 but don’t now. For the right lot configuration, an ADU adds rental income or family space. And historic home renovation in Oakhurst, without a formal historic district overlay for most of the neighborhood, still means making decisions that respect the Craftsman character that makes these houses worth what people are paying for them.
City Schools of Decatur is the reason most families are in Oakhurst. Not the only reason, but the anchor. And it changes the renovation calculation in a specific way.
A family that bought an unrenovated bungalow for the school district isn’t going to leave the district to get more space. They’re going to add a second-story addition, reconfigure the floor plan, or gut-renovate the house to get the bedrooms and bathrooms they need. The cost of the renovation gets weighed against the cost of leaving the school district, and that comparison almost always comes out in favor of staying.
The design phase is where a family finds out what that full scope actually costs before they commit to it. On a tight Oakhurst lot with grade changes and no alley access, what a renovation can accomplish and what it costs to accomplish it aren’t obvious from a walkthrough. They become clear once someone who knows what they’re looking at has looked at it.
On some streets in Oakhurst, you can stand in front of a 1922 Craftsman bungalow and look two houses down at a five-bedroom contemporary that went up three years ago. The bungalow might be listed at $650,000 unrenovated. The new build sold for $1.6 million. And a family trying to decide between them needs to understand what each path actually involves.
Renovating the bungalow means new electrical, new plumbing, new insulation, kitchen and bathrooms rebuilt from scratch, floor plan reconfigured, possibly a second-story addition to get the bedrooms. The green building certification if the scope crosses the threshold. Six to twelve months of construction. And at the end of it, a home with original hardwood floors and built-in cabinetry and a front porch that no new construction is going to replicate, on a street where those things hold value.
Buying the new build means a finished house, a warranty, and a layout designed for how people live now. It also means $1 million to $2 million, and a house that looks like every other new build on the street.
During design, we assess the bungalow’s structure, establish what the renovation is going to cost, and give you a real number to compare against the alternative. Some families go through that process and renovate. Some go through it and buy new. Either way, the decision is made with actual information rather than assumptions about what the bungalow renovation would involve.
Oakhurst lots are tight and the streets are narrow. The neighborhood was designed around a trolley system, not around construction equipment. What that means for a renovation project is that logistics need planning before a tool gets unloaded.
Most Oakhurst lots have no alley access. Everything comes through the front or side yard: material deliveries, equipment, dumpsters, subcontractor vehicles. A concrete truck that needs to reach the rear of a sloped lot on a narrow street needs to be measured and routed in advance. Show up without doing that and the truck can’t turn around, the delivery doesn’t happen, and the schedule slips for something that took five minutes to prevent.
The mature tree canopy adds another layer. Decatur’s tree ordinance requires a pre-application meeting with the city arborist before any permit involving tree removal or root zone disturbance. On a tight Oakhurst lot where a protected oak is sitting in the path of where the addition needs to go, the tree comes before the design, not after.
NewSong Renovations is a design-build contractor. Design, budgeting, and construction move through one process with one team. In Oakhurst, that integration matters from the first conversation because the decisions that get made during design, about lot constraints, about the green building requirement, about what the addition can actually look like given the setbacks and the tree canopy, determine whether the project is buildable before anyone commits to a budget.
A remodeling contractor who prices a job from a walkthrough and starts drawing plans without checking the setbacks, the lot coverage, and the green building threshold is going to find out what the lot actually allows when the permit application comes back. At that point the design may need to be reworked, and the budget the homeowner agreed to no longer reflects the project that can actually be built.
We require that homeowners move out during major renovations. In an Oakhurst bungalow where the entire house is the job site and the scope includes pulling plaster, replacing systems, and potentially opening the roof structure for a dormer addition, there’s no version of living through it. The project moves faster and the work is better when the house is empty.
We start with a conversation about the house, the lot, and what the renovation needs to accomplish. In Oakhurst, that conversation also covers whether the scope is likely to trigger the green building requirement and what that means for the design.
Ready to talk through your Oakhurst home?
If you’re working out whether to renovate the bungalow or buy new, the design phase is how you get a real answer instead of an assumption. If you’ve already decided to renovate and you want to understand what it actually involves on a tight Oakhurst lot with a century-old structure, that’s where we start. Either way, the conversation begins with the house and the lot, not with a scope you haven’t verified yet.
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“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.”
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“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.”
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