Service · Renovations & Remodeling
Full Custom Renovations
Taking the house you have and turning it into the house you want — kitchens, bathrooms, whole floors, or the entire thing. Serving Wilmington, Southport, Oak Island, and Brunswick County.
Remodeling, with the books open
Renovation is where trust gets tested.
Anyone who has remodeled before knows the pattern: a tidy quote, demolition day, and then the price starts climbing while the explanations get vague. Northstar runs renovations differently. Every job is cost-plus — you pay what the work actually costs, plus a flat 20% builder's fee, and every invoice is yours to read.
That structure matters more in remodeling than anywhere else, because no one knows exactly what is behind a wall until it is open. When the scope shifts, the math stays the same. There is no incentive for us to find problems, and no reason to hide them either.
Chase has spent roughly 24 years in the trade, and renovations are the work he points the company at first. If you are weighing a remodel against moving, he will walk the house with you and tell you plainly which one your money is better spent on.
Whole-home renovations
A full gut-and-rebuild of the house you already own: new layout, new systems, new finishes, same address. This is Northstar's primary target work — homes worth keeping, in places worth staying, brought up to the standard of a new custom build.
You stay on the design team the whole way. Room by room, you decide where the money goes — open up the living space, push out a wall, rework the back of the house toward the water — and Chase gives you the real cost of each move before you commit to it.
- Structural changes, additions, and full-floor reworks
- You direct the budget; the fee never changes shape
- One crew, one builder accountable for the whole house
Kitchen renovation & remodels
The kitchen carries more of daily life than any other room, which is why a kitchen remodel is the project most homeowners start with. We handle the whole job — layout, cabinetry, counters, lighting, plumbing, and the structural work if a wall needs to come out to get the room right.
Because Chase is a carpenter first, a Northstar kitchen renovation is not limited to what a showroom stocks. Cabinet runs get built to the inch, and odd corners that a catalog kitchen would waste become storage instead.
- Full kitchen remodels, from layout through final hardware
- Custom cabinetry built for the room, not ordered for it
- Wall removals and beam work done properly, with permits
Bathroom remodeling
Bathroom remodeling is detail work in a small footprint: waterproofing, tile, ventilation, and plumbing all packed into a room that gets used every single day. Cut a corner in any of those and the room tells on you within a year. We don't cut them.
Whether it is one dated hall bath or a primary suite rebuilt from the studs, the process is the same — you pick the fixtures and finishes with real prices in front of you, and the work behind the tile is done so you never have to think about it again.
- Primary suites, hall baths, and accessibility updates
- Waterproofing and ventilation done right behind the finishes
- Fixture and tile selections priced at actual cost, no markup
Historic & older homes
Downtown Wilmington and the older streets of Southport are full of houses with good bones and a century of patches. Renovating them takes a different temperament — older framing, mixed-era wiring, plaster, and trim profiles nobody mills anymore. Chase has been working on houses like these his whole career.
The goal is to modernize how the house works without erasing what makes it worth owning. We match existing millwork where it should be matched, replace what is genuinely failed, and tell you honestly which is which.
- Historic Downtown Wilmington and older Southport homes
- Trim and millwork matched to the original profiles
- Straight talk about what to restore and what to replace
Where we do this work
Remodeling across the southern NC coast
Northstar takes on renovations from its Southport base across Brunswick County and up into Wilmington and New Hanover County. Coastal houses age in their own way — salt air, humidity, storm seasons — and remodeling them well means knowing what this climate does to a structure over twenty or fifty years.
Home remodeling in Wilmington, NC
Kitchen and bathroom remodels and whole-home renovations, from Historic Downtown to Landfall and Autumn Hall.
Renovating on Oak Island
Updating island homes for salt, wind, and weather — and opening older floor plans up to the views they sit on.
Southport & St James renovations
Older in-town houses and established St James homes, remodeled by the builder who lives here.
Brunswick County remodels
County-wide remodeling — ranches, golf-community homes, and rural properties brought up to custom standard.
Why cost-plus matters here
Renovation pricing without the games
Remodeling is exactly where fixed bids go wrong — the scope evolves once the walls are open, and every change becomes a fight over a change order. Cost-plus removes the fight: actual cost, a flat 20% fee, and invoices you can read. It is the fairest way to price work nobody can fully see in advance.
See how cost-plus worksQuestions we get about this work
Can we live in the house during the renovation?
Often, yes — it depends on the scope. A kitchen remodel or a bathroom rebuild can usually be staged so you keep living at home, with the dust contained to the work zone. A full gut renovation is a different story, and Chase will tell you up front if moving out for a stretch is the realistic answer rather than letting you find out in week three.
How do you price a renovation?
Cost-plus: the actual cost of labor and materials, plus a flat 20% builder's fee. Before work starts you get a line-by-line estimate built with you, and during the job you see the real invoices. If you decide mid-project to upgrade the counters or add a window, the price is the new actual cost plus the same flat fee — not a renegotiation.
Do you take on just a kitchen or just a bathroom?
Yes. The range is small to limitless — a single bathroom remodel gets the same crew and the same standard as a whole-home renovation. Plenty of larger projects started as one kitchen done right.
What happens when you find surprises behind the walls?
We show you. In an older house there is almost always something — rot near a window, wiring that should have been replaced decades ago. Under cost-plus you pay the real cost of fixing it and nothing more. There is no padded contingency built into a bid and no incentive for us to inflate the problem, so the conversation is just: here is what we found, here is what it costs, here are your options.
Thinking about remodeling?
Tell Chase what the house is and what you want it to become. He'll walk it with you, give you honest numbers, and tell you straight whether the project makes sense.