Home Renovation in Spartanburg, SC
Spartanburg is its own city, not a Greenville suburb, and the renovation work over here shows it. People call it the Hub City because by the early 1900s you could leave Spartanburg by rail in seven directions, and that history built a place with real bones: grand old homes in the streetcar suburbs, surviving textile mill villages, and newer subdivisions filling in on the east side toward BMW and the airport. Each one is a different kind of job. Home values in Spartanburg are up about 116% over the last ten years, according to NeighborhoodScout, so a lot of people are putting money into the home they already own. If you’re thinking about a renovation, addition, or whole-home project in Spartanburg, we work over here regularly. Our office and showroom are at 119 Woodruff Industrial Lane, Greenville, SC 29607, about 40 minutes west on I-85. Call (864) 729-4141 or email [email protected].
Three Kinds of Spartanburg Homes
What we do in Spartanburg depends a lot on which part of town you’re in. The historic streetcar suburbs like Converse Heights and Hampton Heights hold early-1900s homes with plaster, old wiring, and detail worth protecting. The old mill villages, places like Beaumont, have smaller, solid houses that people are updating without losing the character. And the newer subdivisions out east, closer to BMW, usually just need to catch up to current taste. Three markets in one city, and we work across all of them.
Renovation Services in Spartanburg
We’re a design-build remodeling contractor, licensed in South Carolina and fully insured, and Spartanburg is one of the areas we cover regularly.
The call we get most is kitchens. In the newer east-side subdivisions it’s usually a builder-grade kitchen with a wall closing it off from the living room, so the wall comes out, and a good share of the time it’s load-bearing. The right fix is a beam up in the ceiling, not a post in the middle of your new island. In the older Converse Heights and mill-village homes, the kitchen is small because that’s how they built them, and opening it up means dealing with whatever the plaster hides.
Home additions are busy right now, same as the rest of the Upstate. If you locked in a low mortgage rate, you’re not trading it for a higher one on a bigger house, so you add on instead. A primary suite, a bonus room, a real family space off the back. The older Spartanburg lots can be tight, so setbacks and how the addition ties into the existing structure are the first things we check, before we design anything.
Bathroom remodels in Spartanburg go one of two ways. The older homes near downtown often still have one original bath with cast-iron pipes and the layout it came with. The newer homes have that builder vanity and cultured-marble shower the humidity has been working on for years. Either way, materials matter most. We use plywood cabinet boxes and good setting materials, because the cheap stuff doesn’t survive Upstate summers.
Garages are a bigger part of what we do lately. An attached garage ties into the house structure and has to be done right, or you’ll feel the draft inside. A detached one gives you more freedom on placement but needs its own utilities and site prep, which the newer east-side lots tend to have more room for than the older in-town ones.
Whole-home renovations usually start when someone buys a solid old Spartanburg home, mostly for the location and the character, and wants it modernized without it looking like every other flip.
A typical job for us is an older home in one of the historic districts that a family bought for the character. They want it opened up and updated but want to keep the trim, the porch, and the details worth keeping. So we rework the layout, plan around the old wiring and cast-iron drains, and go room by room before tearing into anything, because the older Spartanburg homes are where the surprises hide.
Historic Districts, Mill Villages, and Permits
Two things shape a Spartanburg permit. The first is who issues it. Inside city limits it goes through the City of Spartanburg, and out in the unincorporated areas it goes through Spartanburg County instead. We confirm which applies before we file.
The second is the historic districts. If your home is in Converse Heights, Hampton Heights, or the Beaumont mill village, exterior changes and additions go through the city’s Historic Architecture Review Board for a Certificate of Appropriateness before the building permit. That covers what’s visible from the street. We design for it up front and prepare that submittal in the right order, so an old-home project doesn’t stall halfway.
How We Work
We’re a design-build firm. That just means one team does the design and the construction, so you’re not hiring an architect, waiting on drawings, and then trying to find someone to build them. We’ve watched that handoff go wrong too many times, so we stopped working that way. One team, one contract, one phone number, from the first talk to the final walkthrough. Our designer handles the blueprints, structural drawings, and 3D models, so you see the space before we pick up a tool. For deep color work or a really specific look, we’ll point you to specialists we trust.
Every proposal has an allowance for each category: tile, fixtures, sinks, faucets, and hardware. Pick from our partners or find your own, and if you buy somewhere else we pick it up, store it in our warehouse, and install it when that part of the job comes up. You get a project portal from day one for the schedule, selection deadlines, open items, and payments by ACH. And we build past code on every project, not just to it.
Come See the Showroom
Don’t pick a cabinet off a screen or commit to a finish you’ve only seen in a catalog. Come see the real thing. Our showroom is about 40 minutes from Spartanburg, right at our Greenville office. Most of it is cabinets: door styles, how thick the boxes are, the drawer glides, how it’s all put together. Plywood versus particleboard matters more here than people expect, with the humidity. We keep tile, countertops, fixtures, and hardware out too.
119 Woodruff Industrial Lane, Greenville, SC 29607
(864) 729-4141 | [email protected]
Common Questions from Spartanburg Homeowners
Do I need a permit to renovate my home in Spartanburg, SC?
Yes, for anything structural or anything that touches electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work. Simple like-for-like swaps like paint or flooring usually don’t. Inside city limits the permit goes through the City of Spartanburg, and in unincorporated areas it goes through Spartanburg County. We handle the filing either way.
Do I need approval to renovate a home in a Spartanburg historic district?
If your home is in Converse Heights, Hampton Heights, or the Beaumont mill village, exterior changes and additions need a Certificate of Appropriateness from the city’s Historic Architecture Review Board before the building permit. That covers what’s visible from the street. We prepare that submittal as part of the design so it doesn’t hold up the work.
What is the most expensive part of a house to renovate?
Usually the kitchen and bathrooms. Not so much because of the finishes you can see, but because of what’s behind the walls: the plumbing and electrical, plus the cabinets and tile that take the most skilled work. In older Spartanburg homes near downtown, you can also hit structural surprises once things open up. The best way to keep it under control is figuring out the full scope before the work starts, not in the middle of it.
Can I stay in my house during a renovation in Spartanburg?
For a kitchen or one bathroom, most people stay. If you’ve only got one bathroom and that’s what we’re working on, you’ll want to make other plans for that stretch. Whole-home renovations are different. Most people would rather be out, but we can work room by room and keep you in the house if that’s what you need.
What’s the difference between design-build and a general contractor?
A general contractor builds from plans someone else already drew, so you’re the one lining up the designer and the builder. A design-build firm like BuildMasters does both under one contract: the design, the structural drawings, and all the construction. One team, one point of contact, and nobody pointing fingers when a design choice changes the build.
Let’s Talk About Your Renovation
If you’re thinking about a renovation, addition, or whole-home project in Spartanburg, get in touch. We’ll come look at the house, talk through what you want, and tell you straight what it’ll take.
119 Woodruff Industrial Lane, Greenville, SC 29607
(864) 729-4141 | [email protected]
We’ve been building and renovating around Upstate South Carolina for over a decade. The first conversation is free, and we’re not hard to talk to.