Monroe, NC · since 2000
Home Remodeling in Charlotte, NC
A home remodeling contractor for the Charlotte area. Kitchens, bathrooms, beams, stairs, tile, flooring, basements and bonus rooms — and the paint at the end of it, by the same crew that did the carpentry.
- 1contract, not four
- 25years in one county
- 0trades to coordinate yourself
The pillar
Painting is where we started. Remodeling is where it went.
Chris McManus started this company in Monroe in the fall of 2000 as a painting business. The tile, the drywall, the trim and the carpentry came because customers kept asking, and because the person painting the room could already see what was wrong with it.
What we take on
The range below is what one crew can genuinely do well, not a menu written to catch search traffic. If a job needs something outside it — a structural engineer, a roof replacement, a septic run — we say so at the estimate rather than halfway through.
Two rooms have pages of their own because they are the two most people call about, and because they are the two where the order of work decides whether the job goes right: the kitchen and the bathroom.
| Area | What that usually means | Painted by us at the end? |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchens | Cabinets refinished, refaced or replaced; granite; tile backsplash; islands; lighting and layout changes | Yes |
| Bathrooms | Showers rebuilt and waterproofed from the framing out; tile; glass; vanities; tub-to-shower conversions | Yes |
| Ceilings | Vaults opened up, stained beams, popcorn removed and re-textured | Yes |
| Stairs | Rails, balusters, newel posts, treads refinished, wainscot | Yes |
| Floors | Ceramic and porcelain tile, transitions, thresholds | Yes |
| Basements and bonus rooms | Framing, drywall, trim, flooring, a laundry or a bar | Yes |
| Walls | Partitions removed, openings framed, drywall repaired or replaced | Yes |
| Outdoor living | Decks, porches, pergolas and the concrete around them | Stained or painted |
Why the order of work matters
The single most expensive thing that goes wrong on a remodel is not a bad tile cut. It is a handover. The tiler finishes on Friday and the painter arrives on Monday to find the caulk line is wrong, and now there are two companies with two opinions and one customer in the middle.
When the same people do the demolition, the framing, the drywall, the tile, the trim and the paint, the sequence is decided once, by the people who have to live with it. That is the whole argument for how this company is set up, and it is the reason most of our customers call us after somebody else let them down.
Older houses, and what they hide
Union County has a lot of houses built between the 1960s and the 1990s, and a steady supply of surprises inside them. The photographs below are ours: rot behind a window, a wall plate gone soft, a cast-iron tub that had been leaking quietly for years.
None of that is a reason not to do the work. It is a reason to open things up early, show you what is there, and re-price honestly rather than absorb it and cut a corner somewhere you cannot see.
Our own work
Found during demolition, fixed before anything was covered up.
These are photographs of our own jobs, including the parts nobody photographs. More on the gallery page.
Stairs, floors and ceilings
The jobs that make a house feel rebuilt.
A stair hall, a tile floor and a beamed ceiling change a house more than most people expect, and all three are inside one crew's range.
Where we do this
Charlotte, and about fifty miles around it.
The shop is in Monroe. The crew works across Charlotte and the towns around it, on both sides of the state line. Each area has its own page, because the houses are not the same.
On the record
What you can check for yourself.
We would rather publish four facts you can verify than a page of adjectives. Everything below links to the source that holds it.
Do I need a licensed general contractor for my remodel?
In North Carolina it depends on the size of the job. According to the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors, the threshold is $40,000: work bid or contracted below that figure does not require a general contractor license, and work at or above it does. The board published the rise from $30,000 effective 1 October 2023. We wrote the whole thing up, including how to check any contractor's license yourself, in this guide.
How long does a remodel take?
A bathroom is usually two to three weeks of working days; a kitchen depends almost entirely on whether cabinets are being refinished or replaced, and on the lead time of whatever you picked. We give you a working schedule with the written estimate, and we tell you which dates depend on a supplier rather than on us.
Do you use subcontractors?
The core work — demolition, framing, drywall, tile, trim, carpentry and paint — is our own crew. Licensed trades that legally have to be licensed, principally electrical and plumbing, are exactly that: licensed specialists. What you do not get is four separate contracts and four people blaming each other.
Can you open up a wall?
Often, but not always, and the honest answer needs somebody standing in the room. If it is load-bearing it needs a beam and the right support, which is a different job from taking out a partition. We will tell you which one you have before you get attached to the idea.
Will you work on an older house?
Yes, and a good half of our work is in older houses, from Union County to the pre-war streets of Charlotte. Expect the surprises that come with them: out-of-square framing, plaster over lath, a floor that steps down half an inch across a doorway, and at least one previous repair done in a hurry. We price a contingency into an older-house estimate and tell you what it is for.
Do you handle permits?
Where a job needs one, yes, and it is included in the schedule we hand you. Union County, the City of Monroe, Mecklenburg County and York County SC each run their own permit office, which is one of the reasons a job in Fort Mill is scheduled differently from the same job in Monroe.
Get a free estimate
Start with the room that annoys you most.
Most of our remodels started as one room and grew because the crew was already in the house and doing it right. Tell us which room it is and we will come and look at it.