The Right Scope Depends on Which VaHi House You're In
You bought a house in Virginia-Highland because you know what this neighborhood is. The walkability, North Highland Avenue with Murphy’s and Atkins Park Restaurant, the school options, Piedmont Park, the BeltLine. What you’re working out now is what it actually takes to get the house to where you want it. The honest answer in VaHi depends entirely on which house you’re in. Craftsman bungalows, English cottages, Tudor Revival homes from the 1920s and 1930s: each one is a different project. What’s behind the walls determines the real scope, and the walls here don’t all tell the same story.
VaHi has a wider range of house types than most intown Atlanta neighborhoods. Craftsman bungalows alongside English cottages and Tudor Revival homes from the 1920s and 1930s, homes with steeply pitched multi-gable rooflines, decorative brickwork, arched doorways, and small-paned windows that don’t look like anything built before or since. These are architecturally distinctive houses, and the renovation considerations are different from a standard bungalow. Getting them right means knowing what you’re working with before the demo starts.
NewSong Renovations is a design-build home renovation and home remodeling company. Kitchen remodel, bathroom renovation, whole-home renovation, additions, historic restoration. One renovation contractor, design through construction.
Here’s what renovation looks like in Virginia-Highland.
Virginia-Highland developed between 1905 and the mid-1930s, and the houses tell you what decade they came from. The earliest Craftsman bungalows went up along the streets where the trolley used to run: deep porches, exposed rafter tails, hardwood floors, platform framing, brick pier-and-beam foundations. These are well-understood houses. We’ve been in enough of them to know what’s behind the walls before we start.
Then there are the English cottages and Tudor Revival homes from the 1920s and 1930s. This is what makes Virginia-Highland different from most intown Atlanta neighborhoods. These homes were built with more complexity and more care than the standard bungalow. Steeply pitched rooflines with multiple gables. Decorative brickwork with arched doorways. Half-timbering details. Small-paned windows throughout. These are homes where the architectural details are what make the house worth what it’s worth, and getting the renovation right means knowing what you’re looking at when you’re working on them.
The Tudor and English cottage homes typically have higher-quality construction than the bungalows of the same era. The framing is more complex. The masonry is decorative and structural at once. The roofline creates more potential failure points: every valley, every gable intersection, every chimney penetration is a place where water can find its way in if the flashing isn’t right. We’ve been in enough of these houses to know that the roof is almost always the first conversation.
You bought this house for what it is. The details, the proportions, the neighborhood. Here’s what the walls are carrying. For any pre-war Virginia-Highland home, the conditions behind the walls follow the same pattern. Knob-and-tube wiring throughout the original construction, or partial updates that left the old system in place. Cast iron drain lines that have carried water since before anyone alive can remember. Lead paint on everything predating 1978. Possible asbestos in floor tiles and insulation. Termite damage in the wood framing. Rotten subfloor under kitchens and bathrooms. So when the walls come open in a VaHi bungalow, the budget conversation has to account for all of that. For pre-war homes in VaHi, we build a contingency of 15 to 20 percent into the estimate. That reflects what we find when the walls come open.
On the Tudor and English cottage homes specifically, add masonry-specific conditions: deteriorated mortar joints that let moisture into the wall assembly, spalling brick on exposed facades, and moisture intrusion paths through the decorative brickwork that may have been working their way into the structure for years. The masonry assessment is part of the foundation and envelope evaluation before any renovation work is scoped.
Kitchen renovation in a Virginia-Highland bungalow starts before the design does: structural questions first. Is the pier-and-beam floor level enough to tile? Are the joists sound? Can the drain lines support the layout? Those questions get answered when the floor comes up, not when the plan gets drawn. In a house this age, the kitchen remodel starts with those answers, not with the design.
Kitchen renovation in a Tudor or English cottage is a different conversation. These homes often have kitchens in rear wings or service areas that were designed around domestic service arrangements from the 1920s. The ceiling height is wrong for a modern kitchen. The room proportions reflect a way of living that doesn’t exist anymore. Reconfiguring it for how a family actually uses a kitchen now is a design challenge that goes well beyond cabinet selection.
Bathroom remodeling and bathroom renovation in a Virginia-Highland home starts below the tile. The subfloor has been absorbing moisture for decades. Cast iron drain lines with decades of service life behind them. The bathroom remodel is a systems project before it’s anything visible. In the Tudor homes, original tile work (encaustic tile floors, decorative border tile, period fixtures) is worth preserving where the condition allows. Replicating it when it’s damaged is expensive but worth understanding as an option before deciding to replace it entirely.
Whole-home renovation in Virginia-Highland covers the full range. On the unrenovated bungalows: pulling the electrical end to end, replacing the plumbing, insulating walls and attics that were never insulated, reconfiguring floor plans built for a different century. A whole-house remodel on a 1920s bungalow here is the same full rehabilitation it is anywhere in intown Atlanta. On the Tudor and English cottage homes, the whole-home renovation adds layers the bungalow doesn’t have: repointing deteriorated masonry, repairing or replacing complex roofline elements, restoring decorative details, and doing all of it without losing what makes the house what it is.
Home additions in Virginia-Highland typically go to the rear. The original lots were platted at 50 feet wide with 25-foot front setbacks, so there isn’t much room to expand on the sides. What room there is usually runs toward the back of the lot. Second-story additions are an option on bungalows where the existing structure can support the load, but on the Tudor and English cottage homes, adding a second story is a more complex design challenge because the roofline is already multi-gable and the addition has to fit within that existing complexity.
Basement finishing or a basement remodel is relevant where Virginia-Highland’s topography creates below-grade space. The neighborhood has elevation variation that some lots take advantage of. Moisture assessment comes first, always.
Exterior renovation in most of Virginia-Highland requires no UDC review. We’ll get into the Atkins Park exception below. Window replacements, siding repair, porch restoration, roofing: standard building permits for most VaHi homes. On the Tudor and English cottage homes, exterior renovation includes masonry repair and repointing, which requires skilled masons who understand historic lime mortars and the difference between repair work that lasts and repair work that causes more problems than it solves.
Interior renovation beyond kitchens and bathrooms includes floor plan reconfiguration, restoring original hardwood floors, and in the Tudor homes, preserving or replicating original detail: exposed ceiling beams, decorative tile, built-in shelving, ornate millwork. None of it goes through the UDC for most VaHi homes. That’s the Atkins Park exception, not the rule.
An ADU (accessory dwelling unit) on the right Virginia-Highland lot is worth evaluating. The historic alley system that once served rear garages still exists on some blocks. Where alley access survives, a carriage house conversion or detached ADU is more feasible than on lots without rear access. A well-positioned ADU in VaHi has genuine rental appeal given the neighborhood’s walkability and BeltLine proximity.
Historic home renovation is the entire scope of work in Virginia-Highland. These houses have been standing for a hundred years. They made it through everything the neighborhood went through. Renovating them well is how you make sure they’re still standing in another hundred years.
Virginia-Highland has a layered preservation situation, and it matters which block you’re on.
Most of Virginia-Highland has no City of Atlanta local historic district designation. No UDC review, no Certificate of Appropriateness for exterior work. Standard building permits for exterior changes. This covers the vast majority of VaHi homes.
Atkins Park is different. The small sub-neighborhood of St. Augustine Place, St. Charles Place, and St. Louis Place between North Highland Avenue and Briarcliff Road is a designated City of Atlanta local historic district. Atkins Park homeowners need a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission for any exterior change visible from a public street, before a building permit is issued. The additional permitting time runs 6 to 10 weeks.
If your property is in Atkins Park: every exterior decision (windows, siding, roofing, porch elements, addition massing) goes through the UDC. The Atkins Park district includes Colonial Revival, Craftsman, and Tudor Revival homes, and the material and design requirements are specific to those styles.
If your property is in the rest of VaHi: exterior decisions are yours to make without design board review. The National Register listing doesn’t restrict what you do. It makes you eligible for tax credits if you choose to follow preservation standards in your renovation. The Georgia 25 percent state historic tax credit for certified rehabilitation is available to VaHi homeowners for qualifying work, capped at $100,000 per principal residence. For a substantial renovation on a VaHi home, that credit changes the financial picture enough to be worth researching before scope is set.
The design-build model matters here for Atkins Park homeowners in the same way it matters in any local historic district. When we’re in the design from the beginning, the window specification we draw is one we know will clear the Atkins Park UDC. The addition proportions are sized to pass on the first submission. That’s the difference between a 6-week permitting timeline and a 12-week one.
The renovation conversation in VaHi runs along a few specific lines.
The first is the Tudor or English cottage restoration. Someone bought a 1928 English cottage in VaHi because nothing else looks like it, and now they’re trying to figure out what it actually takes to bring it forward. The answer is: it’s more work than a standard bungalow renovation. But what you end up with is a house that new construction money can’t produce. The masonry has to be repointed properly. The roofline has to be addressed before any interior work makes sense. The original details are worth preserving where the condition allows. And the whole thing has to be understood as a system before anyone starts pulling it apart.
The second is the teardown question. In VaHi, where lot values are high and new construction is active, a homeowner who bought an unrenovated bungalow or cottage has a real choice. We’ve had this conversation. Someone gets into the renovation scope and wonders whether starting over makes more sense. Here’s what we tell them: on a VaHi lot, renovation and teardown-rebuild can both pencil out, but they produce completely different things. A well-executed renovation on a 1920s Tudor gives you something no amount of new construction money can buy. The original masonry, the original roofline, the relationship to the street that took a century to develop. The renovation-versus-teardown decision should be made with a real cost picture of both options, not with an assumption about which one is simpler.
The third is the addition and reconfiguration on a bungalow that’s too small. VaHi’s lots are narrow: 50 feet wide with 25-foot setbacks. The addition almost always goes to the rear. The design challenge is adding square footage without losing the proportions that make the bungalow what it is. That question gets answered in the design phase, by someone who knows what the house can carry and what will look right from the street.
The person who hires an architect, gets drawings, and brings in a general contractor finds out the window specification is wrong after submission in Atkins Park, or the addition proportions don’t work with the Tudor roofline, or the masonry repair was done with the wrong mortar and is now causing more damage than what it replaced. Having design and construction under one roof means those problems get caught in the design phase, not in the field.
Virginia-Highland sits on Atlanta’s Piedmont red clay, the same montmorillonite soil that expands when saturated and contracts when dry. Atlanta gets enough rain to keep that cycle running year-round, and it’s been working on these foundations since the first homes went up in 1905.
The foundation picture in VaHi varies by housing era and style. Craftsman bungalows from the 1910s and 1920s typically have brick pier-and-beam foundations: stacked brick piers, wood sill plates, floor joists over a crawl space. A hundred years of that cycle leaves its marks on the foundation: horizontal cracking in the brick piers, floors settling in one direction, doors that stick through summer and free up in winter. These are manageable conditions when they’re assessed and addressed before the renovation work begins.
The Tudor and English cottage homes from the 1920s and 1930s may have different foundation approaches. Some were built on early poured concrete perimeter foundations rather than standard pier-and-beam. The heavier masonry construction of these homes puts more load on the foundation than a wood-frame bungalow, so the same foundation conditions can produce different outcomes. The foundation assessment on a Tudor home in VaHi is a different evaluation than on a Craftsman bungalow next door.
The alley system also affects foundation assessment on some lots: rear yards with alley access may have different drainage patterns and soil conditions than enclosed rear yards. Where alleys have been absorbed and paved over, that impermeable surface can affect where water moves during heavy rain events.
For any VaHi renovation, the foundation gets assessed before the design is set. What’s under the house shapes what can be built above it. On the Tudor homes, the masonry construction puts more load on the foundation than a wood-frame bungalow, so the assessment has to account for that.
NewSong Renovations is a design-build remodeling contractor and renovation company. In Virginia-Highland, where we’re working on some of the most architecturally complex houses we take on, and where a homeowner in Atkins Park has a completely different regulatory situation than one two blocks away, we need to be in the design from the start.
When we’re working on a Tudor cottage in VaHi, the roofline and the masonry aren’t afterthoughts. They’re where the project starts. The window specification we draw is one we know works with the existing masonry openings. The addition design accounts for how it meets the existing roofline. When the walls open up and show something that changes the scope (deteriorated framing behind brickwork, a roof leak that’s been running longer than anyone realized), we figure out what it means and keep the project moving. The same people who drew the plan are in the house when the walls come open.
We require that homeowners move out during major renovations. On a whole-home renovation of a VaHi Tudor or English cottage, you’re opening walls, addressing masonry, replacing systems, and restoring original architectural details across a project that runs months. There’s no way to stage a family around that kind of work. We say that clearly from the first conversation so the relocation can be built into the plan.
That first conversation is about the house: what it is, what was done to it, and what it takes to get it where you want it. Before scope. Before numbers. Before anything else.
Ready to talk about your Virginia-Highland home?
Whether you own a Tudor cottage that needs full restoration or a bungalow that needs a systems update and more space, that conversation starts with the house. We’ll tell you what it needs, what the work involves, and whether we’re the right team for it.
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