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ZIP codes: 91108
San Marino is a small city that takes its own appearance seriously, and a remodel here answers to a committee before it answers to a plan checker. A Design Review Committee appointed by the City Council looks at new houses, at two-storey additions, and at architectural changes visible from public view, and a permit does not issue until that approval exists. The housing stock is worth the attention: large, well-built inter-war and post-war houses on deep lots, most of them structurally sound and internally a generation behind. We have finished a whole-home remodel in San Marino and published it with its final price and the homeowners' own video.
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.
$25,000 White shaker cabinetry, white subway tile, and light quartz counters.
$28,000 Stacked white tile and a blue patterned floor, with brushed brass fittings and a round mirror.
$45,000 Rust and blue slate-tone tile over a pebble mosaic shower floor, with bronze fittings.
$75,000 Rift-oak flat-panel cabinetry with white uppers, a quartz island and a fluted tile backsplash.
$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 San Marino, 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.
$150,000 Final price: $150,000. That is the closed-out figure for this job, not an estimate and not a rounded range.
The homeowners — the blue-tile kitchen from this remodel
San Marino's Design Review Committee meets twice a month, and its approval letter is copied onto the plans that go to the Building Division. A project designed as though that step does not exist gets to it and stops.
Interior work is largely a plan-check matter. Anything that changes the face of the house — massing, a second storey, an elevation people can see — is a design conversation, and it goes better when the drawings are made for it.
The typical San Marino project is not a rescue. It is a sound house with formal, compartmentalised rooms, servant-era kitchens and bathrooms that have had one cosmetic pass in fifty years — which is the profile where a considered remodel shows most.
Building permits are issued by the City of San Marino's Building Division, and for most residential work they follow Design Review Committee approval rather than preceding it: additions and alterations to existing houses and new or replacement houses are subject to design review, and the approval is carried onto the plans submitted for plan check. The committee meets in the Council Chambers at City Hall.
We pull permits in-house — clients don't need to navigate the building department.
We had finished work in San Marino before this page existed, which is the wrong way round and the reason it exists now.
Our whole-home remodel here closed out at $150,000. A cobalt glass-tile backsplash with a framed patterned-tile inset behind the range, white uppers over charcoal lowers, and marble-look slab bathrooms fitted in brushed brass. The homeowners recorded their own video standing at that range wall. The whole project is published with its final price.
That is one house, not a San Marino rate. We publish no per-city average and cannot honestly derive one — the cost records hold no location field. What we do publish is every recorded final price on one filterable page, where whole-home projects ran $36k-$440k with a median of $150k, half of them between $78k-$246.3k.
The Design Review Committee is the defining fact of building in San Marino, and treating it as an obstacle is how projects lose months.
It is a design body, so it responds to design. Massing, proportion and how a change sits against its neighbours are what it is looking at. Drawings that show the house in its street, rather than in isolation, answer the question it is actually asking.
Its calendar is fixed and ours is not. The committee meets on a published schedule. A submittal that misses a meeting waits for the next one, which is why we set the drawing programme against those dates from the first week rather than the last.
Then the Building Division still does its job. Design approval is not a permit. The approved scheme goes into plan check like anything else, and the approval letter travels with the drawings. We run both, so the homeowner runs neither.
Free consult, no obligation. Onn reads every inquiry personally — and aims to reply within one business day.
A kitchen that stays inside the existing walls is normally a building-permit matter. A kitchen that pushes the house outwards, raises it, or changes an elevation people can see from the street brings the Design Review Committee in, and we plan for the meeting dates rather than around them.
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. Where design review is triggered, add the committee's own calendar — it meets twice a month, so the cost of missing a date is measured in weeks rather than days.
Yes. A whole-home remodel with a cobalt glass-tile kitchen and marble-look baths in brushed brass closed out at $150,000. The photographs are published, the homeowners recorded a video at their own range wall, and the full project has its own page.
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Onn personally reviews every inquiry. Tell us about your project and we'll set up an in-home consultation — no obligation.