Interior Renovation in Dallas, TX

Most of what you touch and see in a house is finish work. Door handles, baseboards, the paint on the walls and the face of the fireplace set the tone more than square footage does, and they are the first things that look tired. Updating them is quieter than a kitchen gut, but it changes how every room reads.

What an Interior Renovation in Dallas Covers

An interior renovation with us is built from these deliverables, chosen room by room:

• Trim and millwork: new baseboards, door and window casings, crown molding and wainscoting.
• Interior doors: solid-core or panel doors, new frames where needed, and matching hinges and hardware.
• Built-ins: bookshelves, window seats, mudroom benches and media walls, designed and built to fit.
• Walls and ceilings: plaster and drywall repair, texture removal after testing, skim coating and paint.
• Fireplace surrounds: refaced brick, new tile or stone, a new mantel and hearth.
• Coordinated lighting: fixture swaps and new recessed lights placed with the finishes, wired by licensed electricians.

You receive a finish schedule listing every profile, door, color and sheen, along with a line-item price. Most projects start in the rooms you see from the front door and the kitchen, then extend to bedrooms and halls if the budget allows.

Trim, Millwork and Interior Door Replacement

New trim and doors are usually where an interior renovation starts, because they connect every room.

Trim and millwork that relate to each other

The first decision is scale. Taller baseboards and wider casings suit higher ceilings and newer cabinets; a 1960s ranch with 8-foot ceilings often looks best with a simpler, slightly heavier profile than it has now. We pick one family of profiles and carry it through the rooms you can see from each other, so the kitchen, hall and living room read as one house.

Interior door replacement

Swapping hollow-core doors for solid-core or panel doors is one of the most noticeable upgrades for the money. On Dallas clay soils, slab movement often pushes door frames out of square, so we check each opening first. Where the frame is off, a prehung unit lets us set a new frame plumb; where it is sound, a new slab door is fitted to the old frame.

Drywall and Paint Remodel Work in Older Dallas Homes

Walls in older Dallas houses need more prep than new ones, and the prep decides how good the paint looks.

Some 1950s homes still have plaster, which we patch with compatible materials rather than drywall mud alone. Later houses are drywall, often with decades of nail pops and settlement cracks from slab movement. When a wall has been removed for an open floor plan remodel, the ceiling and floor where it stood need careful patching so no line shows.

Age matters for safety too. A house finished before 1978 may have lead in its original paint, and the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule requires paid work that sands, scrapes or cuts those surfaces to follow lead-safe practices under an EPA-certified firm, unless testing clears the components. We explain what that means day to day in lead-safe remodeling for pre-1978 Dallas homes.

Can a Fireplace Surround Remodel Change the Whole Room?

Yes. The fireplace is usually the focal wall, so refacing it shifts the character of the whole room.

Dated brick can be painted, limewashed, skimmed in plaster or covered with tile or thin stone. A new mantel and a raised or flush hearth finish the look. The residential building code sets minimum clearances between the firebox opening and anything combustible, such as a wood mantel, so we design within those limits. If you are adding or moving a gas line for logs or an insert, that work belongs to a licensed plumber under TSBPE rules.

How an Interior Renovation Contractor Sequences the Work

Our process runs in six steps, under the single-contract model described on our design-build remodeling page.

1. Walk-through. We look at every room in scope, measure openings and walls, and note plaster, texture and paint age.
2. Design and finish schedule. You choose profiles, doors, built-in layouts, fireplace materials and paint colors, all listed in one schedule with a price.
3. Permits when needed. Most finish work needs no permit; new circuits, gas lines or structural changes do, and we file them with the city.
4. Testing and protection. Suspect paint and texture get tested, floors are covered and dust barriers go up.
5. Carpentry, then surfaces. Built-ins, doors and trim go in first, then wall repair, caulk, prime and paint.
6. Walkthrough and touch-up. We walk each room with you, adjust doors and hardware, and finish the touch-up list.

Hayli B. wrote, "You cannot go wrong hiring Six Design for ANY of your interior home improvement projects!"

What Moves the Price of Interior Finishes?

The cost of an interior renovation scales with linear footage and the level of detail. The main factors:

• How many rooms get new trim and doors. Running one profile through the whole house costs more up front but avoids mismatches later.
• Material. Paint-grade MDF trim costs less than solid poplar or stain-grade oak.
• Wall condition. Plaster repair, texture removal and skim coating take time; smooth drywall does not.
• Custom built-ins. Built-to-fit cabinetry costs more than ready-made units but uses the space fully.
• Testing and abatement. Lead or asbestos findings add steps before work can start.

Two smaller variables add up across a house. Door hardware is priced per opening, so a 14-door house feels a lever upgrade more than a small one. And sheen and color count matter for paint: one wall color with a contrasting trim color is faster than a different color in every room. A full kitchen sits in a different price range; published Dallas kitchen averages start at $35,600 (RenovCost), while finish work is priced by the foot and the opening.

Interior Renovation Projects Near Lake Highlands

We work across Dallas from our Lake Highlands base. Trim and millwork matter most in older houses, such as the Tudor and Colonial houses built before the war near SMU in University Park and the 1910s to 1930s homes of Highland Park, each about 20 minutes away. In Richardson, mid-century neighborhoods like Cottonwood Heights call for finishes that respect the period.