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Karin Ross Designs is a team of whole-home remodeling contractors in Kansas City who handle design and construction as one team. Instead of updating one room at a time and hoping it all matches later, we plan your full home remodel as a single project: layout, finishes, and the systems behind the walls.
4.7 ⭐ rating with 115+ Google reviews, award-winning Kansas City interior designer, NKBA-listed professional, multi-year Guildmaster winner, and nationally featured expert in Kansas City Homes & Style, IN Kansas City Magazine, and KCTV5.
Most whole-house projects start with the same feeling: the house is fighting how you actually live. A few common signals:
If two or three of these sound familiar, one coordinated project usually beats another one-off remodel.
A whole house project is not one big room. It is your layout, your finishes, and usually the systems behind the walls, all handled at once. Around Kansas City, it often looks like:
These choices all lean on each other, which is why whole-house remodelers plan them in one sequence rather than one room at a time. Move a load-bearing wall, and the beam changes; change the beam, and the ceiling and lighting plan change with it. Handled as separate jobs, that turns into change orders. Handled together, it gets solved on paper first.
Kitchens and baths are the usual anchors, so we fold kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling in with your cabinets, countertops, flooring, and custom closet systems under one plan. One palette, chosen once, instead of pieces that almost match.
The honest answer is that it depends, and any number pulled off the internet rarely matches your actual house. What moves the cost most is scope: how much of the layout changes, whether the systems behind the walls get touched, and the finishes you choose. It helps to think in tiers.
Three rough tiers we see:
We do not hand out a per-foot guess and call it a quote. After we walk through your house, you get a real number tied to your actual layout and selections.
Plan on roughly six months to a year, start to finish. A cosmetic-leaning refresh can land in three to five months, while a full gut with structural changes runs nine to twelve or more. It moves through three phases:
Design and permitting alone can eat close to a quarter of the whole timeline, which is why planning is where good projects are won or lost.
A few local realities are worth knowing before you start:
In a single room, the worst case is one space you are not thrilled with. On a whole house, the risk is ten rooms’ worth of decisions that all depend on each other, made in the wrong order. That is the exact thing we are built to manage.
You can vet all of this before you call. You work directly with Karin, an NKBA-listed senior designer with 25-plus years in the metro and a multi-year Guildmaster winner, backed by a 4.7 rating across 115-plus Google reviews. Browse the awards and recognition and past projects yourself.
Every project runs the same path, built around settling the hard decisions before anyone opens a wall.
We walk the actual house and test what you want against what the structure allows: which walls are load-bearing, where systems run, whether your layout is a simple reframe or something bigger. You leave with a real scope, a budget range, and an honest read on doing it all at once versus phasing it.
Karin designs every room as one connected plan, and you lock your selections in the showroom, so construction becomes execution instead of a running series of “wait, which one did we pick?”
We pull permits for your jurisdiction and order cabinetry, windows, and other long-lead items while the approvals process is underway, so the two run in parallel.
Demolition, structural, mechanicals, then finishes, in the order that keeps trades from colliding. One company runs the schedule, so you are never the go-between.
We walk the finished house together, handle the small stuff, and do not call it done until you sign off.
We take full-house projects on both sides of the state line, from Missouri-side neighborhoods to the Johnson County suburbs. These are the areas we cover most often, and if yours is not listed, just ask.
You can also see every community we cover on our service areas page.
You already know how you want your home to feel. Our job is to walk it with you, tell you what is actually possible, and build it in the right order so the finish line does not keep moving on you.
When you are ready to start, Karin Ross Designs is the team of whole-home remodeling contractors Kansas City homeowners rely on to design and build a full-house project under one roof. Call (816) 425-2815 or book your free consultation today.
For a true gut and reconfigure, most homeowners move out for at least part of it, since plumbing and power get shut down and the dust is constant. For a lighter whole-home refresh, you can often stay, and we will map out a workable setup so daily life keeps moving.
Tearing down and rebuilding usually costs around 20 percent more than remodeling the house you already own, and moving carries agent commissions, closing costs, and moving expenses on top. If you love your street and your home has good bones, a remodel keeps your location and builds equity instead of paying it out in transaction fees.
Yes, any work that touches structure, plumbing, electrical, or the layout needs a permit, and the process differs between Kansas City, MO, and the Johnson County cities on the Kansas side. We handle the applications and inspections for your specific jurisdiction, so you do not stand in line at City Hall.
If you plan to stay in the home for the long haul, usually ten years or more, a whole house remodel tends to pay off in both daily livability and resale. It makes the most sense when you love the location, but the house no longer fits how your family actually lives.
