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ZIP codes: 91101 · 91103 · 91104 · 91105 · 91106 · 91107
Pasadena is the rare Los Angeles city where the architecture is the reason people moved in, and it sets the brief before anyone opens a catalogue. Craftsman bungalows with original joinery, Spanish Colonial Revivals with plaster and tile worth keeping, post-war ranches on generous lots, and whole blocks inside landmark districts where the street elevation is protected. The city runs its own Building & Safety Division and its own historic-preservation review, so a Pasadena project is two conversations rather than one. We have finished a whole-home remodel here and published it in full — photographs, the homeowner on camera, and the price it closed out at.
73 finished remodels published with their final price — nothing hidden.
What our finished LA work actually cost: 27 kitchens ran $23k–$84k, median $50k; 28 bathrooms $28k–$105k, median $38k; 17 whole-home remodels $36k–$440k, median $150k. Real final prices from our own job records, not estimates.
$35,000 A patterned encaustic-look floor, a sage shaker vanity and a glass shower with a tiled bench.
$38,000 Emerald shaker cabinetry and brass hardware around a cream range and an apron sink.
$63,500 White cabinetry with brushed-gold hardware, a white-oak island, and a marble-look slab backsplash.
$105,000 Marble-veined slab walls, a frameless glass shower, and patterned tile floors.
$242,700 Structural work to open up the space, a vaulted ceiling, solid wood floors, kitchen and two baths.
$250,000 White shaker cabinetry and veined quartz, with hex-mosaic walk-in showers.
Not a range and not an example from somewhere else. Every project below was built in Pasadena, and each one publishes the price it actually closed out at — the photographs, the figure, and the homeowner's own video where they recorded one.
$237,000 Final price: $237,000. That is the closed-out figure for this job, not an estimate and not a rounded range.
The homeowner — the green-tile kitchen from this remodel
Structural and life-safety plan check runs through the city's Building & Safety Division; a landmark property or one inside a landmark district also goes through Design and Historic Preservation. Both are answerable, and both are far cheaper to design for than to argue with once drawings are finished.
A 1910s Pasadena house often holds joinery, glass and hardware nobody can buy now. The design question is which of it stays visible and which of it makes way for a kitchen that works — and that question is answered room by room, not by a rule.
Houses built before the war put the kitchen at the back, small and closed. Most of the money in a Pasadena remodel goes into making that one room the centre of the house without making the rest of it look newer than it is.
Building permits are issued by the City of Pasadena's Planning & Community Development Department through its Building & Safety Division, from the permit centre on North Garfield Avenue. Landmark properties and properties inside a landmark district carry an additional design and historic-preservation review on top of that plan check.
We pull permits in-house — clients don't need to navigate the building department.
Most remodelers answer "what does this cost in Pasadena" with a range they chose. We can answer it with a job.
Our whole-home remodel in Pasadena closed out at $237,000. Deep green tile taken floor to ceiling, timber lower cabinets under white shaker uppers, a farmhouse sink, and the living space opened out to the patio. The photographs are the finished rooms, not renders, and the homeowner recorded a video standing in the kitchen. The whole project is published with its final price.
What that figure is and is not. It is the closed-out contract value for one house, not a Pasadena average — we do not publish per-city averages, because our cost records carry no location field and an average built out of them would be invented. For the range a project of each kind actually lands in, every recorded final price sits on one filterable page: kitchens $23k-$84k with a median of $50k, bathrooms $28k-$105k with a median of $38k, whole-home $36k-$440k with a median of $150k.
Pasadena is its own city with its own Building & Safety Division, so nothing goes to LADBS. That part is ordinary. The part that catches people is preservation.
A landmark district protects what the street sees. Pasadena has whole neighbourhoods under district designation, and in them the front elevation, the roofline and the windows are reviewed for what they do to the block, not only for whether they stand up. A window schedule chosen on price alone is the classic way to lose six weeks.
The review is sequential, not parallel. Design and historic-preservation review happens on top of structural plan check rather than instead of it, which is why a landmark-property schedule is longer than an identical scope two streets outside the district. We build that into the programme at drawing stage instead of discovering it at submittal.
We pull the permits. A homeowner should not be managing a plan check, and in a city with two reviews they certainly should not be managing two.
Free consult, no obligation. Onn reads every inquiry personally — and aims to reply within one business day.
Plan for 4–6 weeks of design, 4–6 weeks of permits, then 8–14 weeks of construction — 4–7 months from first conversation to final walkthrough. A landmark property runs longer, because the preservation review sits on top of the plan check rather than replacing any part of it.
Yes, and the honest version of that answer is that the inside and the outside are different questions. Street-facing elevations in a landmark district are constrained; a kitchen at the back of the same house usually is not. We design to that line instead of pretending it is not there.
Yes, and it is published rather than described. A whole-home remodel — deep green tile floor to ceiling, a farmhouse sink, living space opened to the patio — closed out at $237,000, with photographs and the homeowner talking about it on camera. It is on this page and the full project has its own page.
Altadena · South Pasadena · San Marino · Sierra Madre · Arcadia
Onn personally reviews every inquiry. Tell us about your project and we'll set up an in-home consultation — no obligation.