Whole-house renovation on the North Carolina coast

The assessment writes down the frame, the walls and roof, and the wiring, plumbing and heating and cooling. In a flood zone, it also notes your town's flood rule and how long it counts the work. We ask what was done to the house in that time, since that work can count too.

The job, step by step

What the walls hide is an allowance.

Some damage only shows once the walls are open. That damage is carried as an allowance in the price.

The choices are yours.

• The layout, and which walls move
• Which systems are replaced
• The kitchen and the baths
• Whether impact windows and doors join the job
• Whether new siding, and maybe a roof, join it too
• Whether to seal the house to an airtightness target, checked by a blower-door test

Design is its own step, and you keep the drawings. Each decision goes into your private online workspace with the reason behind it. A tighter house needs fresh air brought in on purpose, and airtightness without stuffy interiors explains how.

Plan to move out for a gut.

A house gutted to the studs cannot be lived in during the work. You move back in once the final inspection passes and the inspector issues a certificate of compliance. If part of the house is ready and safe sooner, the inspector can issue a temporary certificate for that part.

A smaller job can be staged around you, with the rooms you rely on kept usable. Living through a renovation covers how that works.

The test

The cost of the work, set against the building's market value before the work starts

What counts

Nearly all of it: materials, labor (yours too), demolition, framing, finishes, cabinets, systems, code upgrades, overhead and profit

Market value

The building alone, without the land, set by appraisal, depreciated replacement cost or adjusted tax value

The line

50 percent of market value, or 49 percent in Carolina Beach

How long it counts

Many towns: any one year. Holden Beach: any two years. New Hanover County (outside its towns), Burgaw and Boiling Spring Lakes: five. Wilmington: the job plus repairs and reconstruction from the five years before it

Who decides

The local floodplain administrator, when the building permit is reviewed

On an older, low house, the value of the building can be modest next to the cost of opening it up. That is why we add up the whole job and place it against your town's line before design starts.

What the town adds up

Federal guidance for local officials lists what counts. Materials and labor count, including the going rate for work you do yourself. So do demolition, framing, drywall, floors, cabinets, insulation, wiring, plumbing, heating and cooling, and the contractor's overhead and profit. Plans, the survey, permit fees, landscaping and detached buildings such as a shed can be left out of the count.

Bringing an old house up to today's code counts in full. Code work comes out of the count only for a violation a code official has identified, fixed to the minimum needed for safe living.

Your town sets the window.

Many towns count the work over any one year, among them Southport, Oak Island and Leland. Holden Beach counts any two years, starting from the first improvement or repair. New Hanover County counts five years outside its towns, and so do Burgaw and Boiling Spring Lakes. Wilmington adds the repairs and reconstruction from the five years before the job. Carolina Beach counts one year and draws its line at 49 percent. The town-by-town table lists each rule.

Earlier work can count too.

Splitting the job into phases or separate permits leaves the count the same. Federal guidance has the town make its call before the first permit, counting all of the work. A roof replaced inside your town's window counts along with the new job. So do storm repairs.

If the job crosses the line

Crossing the line is uncommon, and the house may still be fine. Past it, the whole house has to meet the flood rules for a new house. Today's flood height is the map's flood level plus the margin your town adds. If the house already sits at that height, the job goes ahead much as planned. Its new wiring, ducts and equipment go at or above that height, and enclosed space below stays for parking, access or storage. A low house has to be brought up to that height. When replacing the house makes more sense, building new is the other path.

Outside a flood zone

Outside a mapped flood zone, the building code decides on its own. What the code asks covers it.

Section R102.7.1 of the 2018 North Carolina Residential Code sets that rule. It also bars work that would make the house unsafe or hurt how it performs.

A whole-house job needs a permit.

State law lets some work of $40,000 or less, done to code, go ahead without a building permit. A whole-house job usually falls outside that in three ways. It changes the design of the plumbing, the wiring or the heating and cooling. It usually touches load-bearing framing. And it almost always costs more than $40,000.

Taking out walls

Some inside walls hold up the floor or roof above them. Others brace the house against wind pushing sideways. Before one comes out, the beam or bracing that takes over its work is sized and permitted. Every lot in our three counties falls under the code's high-wind design rules (Section R301.2.1.1), and the new layout is braced to them.

Opened walls get insulated.

The shell of the house is its outside walls, the ceiling under the attic and any floor over a crawl space, garage or open air. Every cavity the job opens in the shell is filled with insulation before it closes. New or rebuilt parts of the shell meet the energy code for a new house (Section N1109). With the framing bare, the seams where air leaks in are easy to seal as well.

Heating and cooling sized to the house

The code sizes new heating and cooling equipment from a load calculation for the house (Section M1401.3). A gut changes that load, since new insulation and sealed seams tend to shrink it. So the load is figured for the house as it will be, and new ducts are sealed at every joint and seam. Right-sized systems explains why the right size keeps a coastal house drier.

Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms

A permitted whole-house job brings the smoke alarms up to the rules for a new house. That means one in each bedroom, one outside each sleeping area and one on every level. Once wall and ceiling finishes come off, the alarms are linked, so one sets off all of them. Carbon monoxide alarms follow the same rule where the house has a fuel-burning appliance or fireplace, or an attached garage that opens into it.

Wiring

New and changed wiring meets the North Carolina Electrical Code. How much of the old wiring to replace is decided with you, once the walls are open and the wiring can be seen.

A new bedroom needs a way out.

Every bedroom needs a window or door big enough to escape through in an emergency (Section R310.1). A room re-planned as a bedroom picks up that rule, along with its own smoke alarm. On a septic lot, a new bedroom also changes what the system has to carry. Older houses covers that step.

Older than the flood map

A house begun before its town's first flood rate map is called pre-FIRM. Many older houses here sit lower than a new house would today. A pre-FIRM house can stay as built while the work stays under the town's line. Wilmington dates its first map to April 17, 1978, and Leland to October 19, 1992. On Oak Island, the date turns on which town or county the lot belonged to before the 1999 merger.

Paint and old materials

Paid work that disturbs paint in a house built before 1978 falls under North Carolina's lead-safe renovation rules. Old flooring and its adhesive, joint compound and ceiling texture can hold asbestos. On an older house, those materials are tested by an NC-accredited inspector before demolition.

Septic lots and new bedrooms

On a septic lot, in places like Winnabow and Boiling Spring Lakes, the state's wastewater rules size the system by its bedrooms. A new bathroom on its own leaves that size where it was. An added bedroom goes to county environmental health before framing. A job that adds no bedroom can use the state's existing-system affidavit at the permit.

Historic districts

In Southport's local historic district, all exterior work needs a certificate of appropriateness before the building permit. In Wilmington, exterior work in a local historic district goes to the Historic Preservation Commission first. Under state law, the commission has no say over the layout inside.

The flood rule has its own historic exception, and age alone leaves a house under the rule. The exception covers a house the National Register or a certified local program lists as historic, when the work keeps that listing. Southport, Holden Beach, Oak Island and Burgaw also require a variance. Older houses on our renovation page goes further.

When the zoning has moved on

Some older houses sit closer to a lot line than today's zoning allows. In Carolina Beach, repairs to such a house worth more than half its tax or appraised value bring two more rules. The house has to meet the setbacks from lot lines away from the street, and the town's parking minimum.