"Des Moines" Isn't One House. It's At Least Three.

Sherman Hill is the oldest residential neighborhood in the city, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979 — Victorian-era homes and early apartment buildings with the period details to match. Beaverdale, over by Drake and Waveland Park, is mostly 1920s-40s bungalows, Tudors, and Colonials. Waterbury, south of Grand, tends toward larger, well-kept older homes under a real tree canopy. Three neighborhoods, three different centuries of construction, three different sets of problems once you open up a wall.

That's the thing about remodeling in Des Moines proper that doesn't apply in most of the smaller towns around it: there's no single "typical house" to plan around. A kitchen remodel in a Sherman Hill Victorian and a kitchen remodel in a Beaverdale bungalow are not the same project, even if the homeowner's wish list looks identical on paper.

• Historic-sensitive kitchen and bath remodels in older core neighborhoods like Sherman Hill, where original details are often worth working around rather than removing
• Bungalow and Tudor-era updates in neighborhoods like Beaverdale, common enough that we've got a good feel for what's usually hiding behind the walls
• Larger-scale renovations and additions in Waterbury and similar established neighborhoods, sized to match bigger, older homes

Tell us the neighborhood, and we'll already have a decent guess at what we're walking into.