The house started as a 1970s single-story ranch on a quiet Woodland Hills street.
The homeowners, a growing family who’d outgrown the layout but loved the neighborhood – came to us with a familiar dilemma: sell and move, or tear down and start over.
Selling would have meant giving up the school district, the walkability, and a lot they’d spent a decade landscaping. Moving out of the neighborhood was off the table. So they made the harder decision: ground-up custom construction on the same lot. Everything down to the foundation, everything back up from the studs.
This is the story of that build – what it took, what it cost, what we’d do the same, and what we’d do differently. If you’re weighing a custom home in the West Valley or anywhere in the Los Angeles or Ventura County service area, this is what the process actually looks like.
The starting point: an aging ranch on a great lot
The original house was 1,850 square feet. Three bedrooms, two baths, one narrow living room, a galley kitchen that opened to nothing, and a den that had been converted from a garage in the 1980s. Standard mid-century Valley construction: cathedral ceilings in one room, 7’6″ ceilings in another, aluminum single-pane windows, popcorn textures throughout.
The lot, though, was excellent. 8,400 square feet, flat, south-facing backyard, mature trees at the perimeter, R1 zoning with a straightforward setback envelope. A rebuild made sense here in a way it doesn’t on every lot.
The design brief
Before we drew a single line, we spent three sessions with the family talking about how they actually lived. Not the wish-list version – the honest version. Where does mail pile up? What time of day does the kitchen get hot? Which kid does homework at the counter? Do you eat dinner at the table or in front of the TV?
What came out of those sessions became the brief:
- Single-story if possible, two-story only if needed to hit target square footage without eating the yard
- Big open kitchen with a real island, but a separate pantry so the counter never becomes a dumping ground
- Primary suite isolated from the kids’ rooms – on the opposite side of the house if the footprint allowed
- A dedicated home office with a door that closes
- Indoor-outdoor flow to the backyard through a real glass slider, not a French door
- Storage in every logical place, including a real mudroom off the garage
- Finished garage, EV charging pre-wired, plumbing stubs for a future ADU
Total budget target: turnkey construction cost inside the mid $1.4M range for approximately 3,400 square feet, including demo, foundation, framing, MEP, finishes, appliances, cabinetry, landscape restoration, and driveway. Design and engineering fees separate.
The design
Our in-house RnDesign team drew the plans over about nine weeks. The final layout ended up single-story, 3,400 sq ft, four bedrooms plus a home office, three-and-a-half baths, a great room combining kitchen/dining/living, and a separate primary wing on the north side of the house. We kept the roofline low and horizontal to sit well on the existing streetscape and to preserve neighbor privacy.
The pantry, mudroom, and laundry all got a full 8×10 foot allocation off the kitchen, so the kitchen itself could stay uncluttered. That’s a trade most homeowners resist – giving up “visible” square footage for utility rooms – but it’s the single decision that keeps a great room feeling great two years later.
Permits and the LA process
Woodland Hills falls under the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. Full demo permit, new construction permit, grading permit, and MEP permits all had to be pulled and coordinated. We also had to work with LADWP on service upgrades (the old 100A panel wasn’t going to cut it for a modern house with EV charging and a potential future ADU) and with the local council office because the lot backs up to a hillside adjacent zone.
Total permit timeline: 14 weeks from first submittal to permit issuance, including two rounds of plan-check corrections. That’s actually faster than the current LA average because we submit clean drawings, we know what LADBS looks for, and we respond to corrections inside 48 hours.
Construction: what actually happened
Demolition (2 weeks)
Complete tear-down to the concrete slab, which we then broke up and hauled out. We saved the mature perimeter trees (the client’s request) by hand-excavating within their drip lines and installing temporary root protection. Lost one tree we thought we could save; that was an early lesson in being more conservative with tree preservation estimates.
Foundation and framing (10 weeks)
Post-tension slab foundation to handle the expansive soils common in the West Valley. Framing went smooth – two-week weather delay early in the rainy season, otherwise on schedule. The great room got a 20-foot clear span over the kitchen island, which required an engineered LVL beam and steel post work but delivered the ceiling openness the homeowners wanted.
MEP, insulation, drywall (8 weeks)
Full electrical rewire (400A main service), all new plumbing, high-efficiency HVAC with dual zones, spray-foam insulation in the roof deck, batt insulation in the walls. Level 5 smooth drywall throughout for the modern look the homeowners wanted – no orange peel, no knockdown, no compromises.
Finishes (14 weeks)
This is where budgets die and schedules slip. We planned every finish selection with the homeowners before framing started, ordered long-lead items (windows, cabinetry, the primary suite tile package) 12–16 weeks ahead of install date, and locked in appliance delivery windows six months out. The result: zero delays from finish availability. That’s rare in the current supply environment.
What it cost and where the money went
| Category | Approximate share of budget |
|---|---|
| Demolition, site work, foundation | 12% |
| Framing, roof, weather envelope | 18% |
| Windows, doors, exterior | 10% |
| MEP (electrical, plumbing, HVAC) | 15% |
| Insulation, drywall, paint | 7% |
| Cabinetry, counters, tile | 15% |
| Flooring, interior doors, trim | 8% |
| Appliances and plumbing fixtures | 6% |
| Landscape restoration, driveway, fencing | 5% |
| General conditions, supervision, permits, contingency | 4% |
What we would do differently
- Be more conservative on tree preservation. We told the client we could save all six perimeter trees. Five made it. On the next project, we’ll quote five and treat the sixth as a bonus.
- Trench and stub for the ADU right away. We ran utilities to a future ADU stub point but didn’t extend the sewer lateral. If the homeowners decide to build the ADU next year, we’ll be cutting the new driveway to do it. That should have been done during initial site work.
- Plan for photography during construction. The finished house is beautiful but there’s no visual record of the framing complexity, the LVL beam install, or the foundation post-tensioning. On new projects we now build a 3–4 site visit photography plan into the schedule.
What we did well
- Front-loaded finish selection. Zero delays from waiting on materials during finish phase.
- One dedicated project manager for the full 14-month build. Homeowners had one phone number, one weekly update, one decision-maker on our side.
- Kept the tree canopy. The lot doesn’t look like a construction site three years later; it looks like a mature property with a new house on it.
- Delivered on budget. The final invoice came in 0.7% over the original contract, driven entirely by two owner-directed upgrades (larger primary shower, walnut ceiling detail in the office). No surprise charges from us.
Considering a custom home in the West Valley?
Ground-up custom construction is a two-year commitment from first meeting to move-in, and it’s the only remodeling decision that lets you shape a home to exactly how your family lives. If you have a lot in Woodland Hills, Encino, Tarzana, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, or anywhere in our LA and Ventura County service area, we’re happy to walk it with you and give you an honest assessment: rebuild, remodel, or move.
See more of our work: the full Woodland Hills project, Woodland Hills service page, or all recent RnD projects.
