Home Remodeling & Renovation Company Ormewood Park

There’s a good chance you already know the Sears kit homes. Maybe you’re living in one. Maybe you’re about to buy one. These are the houses that somebody’s great-grandparents ordered from a catalog, had shipped by rail, and assembled by hand on a lot in Ormewood Park. They’ve been standing ever since. A hundred years later, they have real bones. The Craftsman bungalows and Victorian-era frames on those same streets have the same quality. Built to last, and they did. What they also have is a hundred years of other people’s decisions in those walls. Wiring that was added in three different decades. Plumbing that was never fully replaced. Subfloors that absorbed moisture for years without anyone fixing them. You won’t know what’s in there until somebody opens it up. And that’s where the renovation conversation really starts.

That’s the work we do. NewSong Renovations is a design-build home renovation and home remodeling company. Home remodel, kitchen remodel, bathroom renovation, whole-home renovation, additions. We’ve been in enough of these houses to know what’s coming before the demo starts. One renovation contractor, one process, from the first conversation to the keys.

Here’s what that looks like in Ormewood Park specifically.

The Homes Here and What’s Behind Their Walls

Ormewood Park’s building timeline is written in its houses. The Queen Anne frames went up first, when the trolley line came through in the 1890s. Then Craftsman bungalows, shotgun houses, small brick bungalows. And then the homes that make Ormewood Park distinctive: Sears Roebuck catalog kit homes from the 1910s and 1920s.

The Sears homes deserve a moment. These were prefabricated houses ordered by mail, shipped by rail, and assembled on site by the buyers themselves or local carpenters. Ormewood Park has one of the better concentrations of them in Atlanta. Numbered lumber, pre-cut components, detailed assembly instructions. The IKEA furniture of their era, except the product was a house.

And it did last. But “built to last in 1922” and “ready for how you live now” are two different conversations.

Every one of these older houses was built the same way. Platform framing, brick piers, plaster over wood lath. Single-pane windows. Mechanical systems that haven’t been touched since Eisenhower was president, or were only partially updated and left incomplete. The Sears kit homes follow the same pattern, with one advantage: the standardized plans mean the layout is documented before you open the walls. But the materials are just as old, and what you find behind them is going to be the same.

You bought this house because something about it was worth it. The character, the neighborhood, the bones. That’s real. And here’s what else is real: we’ve been inside enough of these houses to tell you what’s in there before we open the walls. Knob-and-tube wiring, original or partially replaced and left incomplete. Cast iron drain lines that have been in the ground since the house was new and are running out of time. Lead paint throughout if it was built before 1978. Possible asbestos in the floor tiles and insulation. Termite damage in the wood framing. Georgia’s subterranean termite problem is real, and a house that’s been standing since 1922 has had a long time for the damage to accumulate. Rotten subfloor under bathrooms and kitchens where moisture found its way in and stayed. The mail-order origin of a Sears kit home doesn’t change what a hundred years in Georgia does to wood and pipe and wire. And so for homes of this age, we build a contingency of 15 to 20 percent into the estimated construction cost. That reflects what we find when we open these walls, not what we hope to find.

If you’re in a post-war cottage or brick ranch from the 1950s or 1960s, the conditions are different: slab foundations in some cases, different framing, electrical panels not sized for modern load. The surprises are still there, just not a hundred years’ worth.

The modern infill townhomes and contemporary single-family homes near the BeltLine corridor are a different conversation. We’ll get to that.

Remodeling and Renovation Services in Ormewood Park

A kitchen remodel in a 1920s Ormewood Park Craftsman or Sears kit home starts with a structural question, not a design question. The floor has been settling unevenly for a hundred years. The walls are plaster over lath. The plumbing is cast iron. And the original kitchen layout was built around a 1920s household. No dishwasher, no refrigerator footprint. So before anyone picks out countertops, we’re asking: is the floor level, are the joists sound, can the drain lines handle the layout? Kitchen renovation here means answering those questions first.

Bathroom remodeling and bathroom renovation in a Sears kit home or Craftsman bungalow usually starts with a single original bathroom that was never designed to handle a modern family. The subfloor’s been absorbing moisture for decades, so by the time someone opens that floor up, you’re often replacing joists before you touch the tile. Cast iron drain lines may be partially blocked with a century of buildup, and galvanized supply lines are past their useful life. So a bathroom remodel in a house this age isn’t primarily a cosmetic project. You’re replacing systems. You happen to get a new bathroom out of it.

And then there’s the whole-home renovation. If the house hasn’t been touched in fifty years, you’re not doing a kitchen. You’re doing all of it. Electrical end to end. Plumbing replaced because the cast iron is done. Insulating walls and attics that went up in an era when nobody thought about it. Reconfiguring a floor plan that was laid out for a family with one car and no home office. The larger lots here also mean there’s often room to expand the footprint as part of the same project, so a whole-house remodel sometimes becomes a whole-house remodel plus an addition.

Home additions are common on the bungalow and cottage lots where the footprint isn’t enough. The lots in Ormewood Park are bigger than what you get in most intown neighborhoods, so there’s often room to expand outward before the conversation turns to going up. Going up with a second-story addition is always an option if the lot doesn’t give you room to go back. But here, you usually have room to go back first.

Basement finishing or basement remodeling depends on the foundation type. Pier-and-beam homes with crawl spaces don’t have basements to convert. But homes on sloped lots with partial below-grade space or daylight basements can pick up real usable square footage. And before any of that, the first question is moisture. A basement you can’t keep dry isn’t finished space, it’s a problem with carpet on it.

Exterior renovation here means porch restoration, siding repair or replacement, window upgrades, roofing. No historic district overlay, so those are your decisions. Window style, siding material, roofline. No design board, no COA, no 30 to 60 day wait. Your call.

Opening up the floor plan is almost always part of it. These houses have walls that made sense in 1920 and don’t anymore. Sometimes you pull one and it’s not load-bearing and it’s straightforward. Sometimes it’s load-bearing, and then you’re putting in a beam. Either way, the original hardwood floors under whatever was laid on top of them are worth restoring where they survived. That’s interior renovation in its most straightforward form.

If your lot and zoning work out, an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) is worth thinking about. The lots here are big enough that it’s actually feasible in a way it isn’t in most intown neighborhoods. And proximity to the Southside Trail makes a well-sited ADU attractive to renters.

All of this is historic home renovation. And the Sears kit home adds something specific to the mix: the standardized plans mean the framing layout is documented and predictable before you ever open a wall. That’s not always true in custom-built homes of the same era. It’s one less unknown.

When we open a wall in an Ormewood Park bungalow and find termite damage in three joists and a drain line that’s 40 percent blocked, the project doesn’t stop. We figure out what it means, tell you what it adds to the scope, and keep the job moving.

Permitting in Ormewood Park

You’re pulling permits through the City of Atlanta. Accela Citizen Access system, standard building permit review runs 10 to 20 business days. Same process as everywhere else in intown Atlanta.

What’s worth knowing here: Ormewood Park doesn’t have a local historic district overlay. There’s no Certificate of Appropriateness requirement, no Urban Design Commission review, no materials restrictions from a historic overlay. If your renovation touches the exterior (new windows, siding replacement, a roofline change, an addition), you go straight to standard building permit review. No additional 30 to 60 day design review process sitting between you and your permit.

The standard triggers still apply. If your renovation exceeds 50 percent of the home’s assessed value, the project is subject to full code compliance review, which can expand scope. Atlanta’s tree ordinance protects any tree 6 inches in diameter or larger. You need a survey and protection plan before a permit gets issued if your work could affect them. If your project disturbs an acre or more of soil, stormwater management requirements kick in.

One more thing for homes near the Southside BeltLine Trail corridor: BeltLine overlay zoning may apply, which can affect setbacks, density, and height limits. If your lot is in or near the overlay zone, that’s worth confirming before design gets too far along.

Foundation and Soil in Ormewood Park

The soil here is the same Piedmont red clay that runs under all of intown Atlanta. It expands when it’s wet, contracts when it dries, and Atlanta gets around 52 inches of rain a year. So that cycle has been working on these pier-and-beam foundations for a hundred years.

The older homes here sit on stacked brick piers, and after a hundred years on this soil, you start to see the same patterns in all of them. Horizontal cracks in foundation walls are the visible evidence of soil movement. They’re common, and they don’t just mean the house is old. They mean the soil’s actively moving underneath it. Foundation work ranges from leveling and shimming individual piers to sister joists, retaining walls, and interior perimeter drain systems. You don’t know which one you’re dealing with until someone gets under the house and looks. On a home this age, that’s not unusual. That’s just what a proper assessment tells you.

The bigger lots here actually help with this. More yard means more room to manage where the water goes, more options for running drainage away from the foundation, and more space to bring equipment in when the foundation needs real work. It doesn’t solve every problem, but it helps.

There’s also flood risk to consider. Intrenchment Creek runs near the neighborhood, and homes in lower-lying sections closer to the creek carry real flood risk. If your lot is in one of those areas, stormwater management isn’t an afterthought. You figure that out during design, before anything gets built. Getting the drainage right during a renovation isn’t extra. It’s what keeps the foundation work from needing to be redone.

Renovation vs. New Construction in Ormewood Park

This is a neighborhood where the teardown question actually comes up. You can see it on the streets. Contemporary townhomes sitting right next to 1920s bungalows. The BeltLine access, the bigger lots, the walkability. Developers have been paying attention here.

So if you own a home here, or you’re buying one, the question sometimes comes up: is it worth renovating the existing structure, or does it make more sense to tear down and build new?

Here’s the reality. A full renovation on a pre-war bungalow in Ormewood Park (gut the electrical, replace the plumbing, new HVAC, structural repairs, full floor plan reconfiguration) is a real investment. The costs can get close to new construction on a comparable footprint. We’ve had this conversation with homeowners here. Someone buys a bungalow because the neighborhood is right and the price made sense, and then they get into it and start wondering if they should have just torn it down. We get it. So that’s what the design phase is. We look at the foundation, the framing, the mechanicals. We tell you what a real renovation costs. Not a guess. A real number based on what’s actually in there. Sometimes the bones are good and renovation is obviously the right call. Sometimes what we find changes the math. Either way, you’re deciding with real information instead of assumptions you made from the curb.

How We Work

NewSong Renovations is a design-build remodeling contractor. These are hundred-year-old houses. Every wall you open could change the scope. And so having design and construction under one roof isn’t a convenience or a marketing line. It’s how you handle the wall that opens up with three rotted joists and a drain line that’s 40 percent blocked, without the project stopping while an architect and a contractor argue about who owns the problem. You’re not hiring an architect and then finding a remodeling company to execute what they drew, hoping the two stay aligned. One team, start to finish.

We require that homeowners move out during major renovations. In a bungalow or kit home where you’re opening walls, pulling plaster, replacing electrical and plumbing, and running demo through rooms people are trying to sleep in, the noise and dust don’t stop at the end of the workday. They accumulate. And after enough weeks of that, how someone feels about the project stops being about the work and starts being about their life. We’ve seen it. We don’t take on projects where the family stays in the house, because we’re not willing to let someone’s exhaustion become a five-star review problem.

Ready to talk about your Ormewood Park home?

If you own a bungalow or kit home in Ormewood Park and you’re trying to figure out what a renovation actually involves, that conversation starts with the house, not with a quote. We’ll look at what you’re working with, give you an honest read on what the scope is likely to include, and tell you whether we’re the right fit.

Schedule a conversation with our team.