Nevada contractor license 0077896A · Advanced Design & Development, Inc.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM · 1155 Watson Way, Suite 7, Sparks, NV 89431
Seventeen guides on contracts, money, permits and living in a house that is being taken apart. All seventeen are written and posted. The list below is the whole library, in the order we would read it.
01Why this page exists
Almost nobody signs a construction contract twice. The result is that a homeowner meets the mechanics of the thing for the first time while it is already happening to them, and usually while somebody is asking them to approve something in the next twenty minutes. Those mechanics are allowances, plan review, the week the kitchen is a folding table in the garage, draw schedules, the staged payments released as the work is finished, and change orders, the written price and schedule change signed before the extra work starts.
Advanced Design And Development spends most of its planning time explaining those mechanics on somebody’s kitchen counter. Writing them down once, in the order they actually arrive, is cheaper for everybody than explaining them eight times a month. So this library is deliberately narrow: it covers how a job is bought, priced, permitted and lived through. It does not review products, and it does not tell you which finish is in fashion.
All seventeen are posted, and nothing here was padded out to hit a word count. Three are start-here guides, one each on planning, cost and kitchens. Three more go deeper on the kitchen: what one costs, why the layout comes first, and how to tell whether a wall carries the floor or roof above it. Three more carry the cost question into the bathroom, the addition and the whole house. If the one you need is not covered, the phone is still faster than waiting for us to write it.
02The seventeen we have written
All seventeen are live. Read the one that matches where your job is, or call, and you will get the same answer applied to your address.
01 · Planning, where to start
The order the decisions in a remodel come in: scope, a rough budget, how you hire, the contract, the permit and living in the house, with where each one is written up in full.
02 · Contractor records and contracts
Where the Nevada State Contractors Board publishes its record, which fields on that record actually matter, and what the record still cannot tell you about the crew that will be in your house.
03 · Cost, where to start
Where a kitchen, a bathroom or an addition starts in Reno and Sparks, why a whole home is priced from a walkthrough, the four things that set the number, and why no single price is printed on the page.
04 · Kitchens, where to start
The three decisions a kitchen turns on (the layout, whether a wall moves, and the budget), the order a kitchen gets built in, and the planning misses that cost the most to undo.
05 · Kitchens, what they cost
Where a Reno or Sparks kitchen starts, why cabinets are usually the biggest line, and the three changes that move the number most: a wall, the plumbing and the finish level.
06 · Bathrooms, what they cost
Where a Reno or Sparks bathroom starts by finish level, why a small room costs so much per square foot, and the three things that move the number: moving fixtures, what is behind the tile and the shower itself.
07 · Additions, what they cost
Per square foot starting ranges by finish level, why a second storey starts from the same range as building out, how the lot decides which one fits, and the costs no square foot figure carries.
08 · Whole homes, what they cost
Why a whole-house renovation gets its first range from a walkthrough rather than a web page, and why the order of the work protects the budget more than any finish.
09 · Kitchens, the layout first
Why the layout decides the plumbing, the gas, the walls and the budget before any finish is chosen, which moves are cheap and which are not, and how to test a layout with tape before you commit.
10 · Kitchens, before a wall comes out
What load-bearing means, the signs that a wall carries the floor or roof above it, why nobody can call it from a photo or a walkthrough, and what removing one involves.
11 · Budgets, allowances, contingency
A walk through where the money lands, from demolition and structure to mechanical rough-in, the pipe and wire run inside the walls before they close, then cabinetry and finishes, and which line homeowners consistently price too low before the first wall comes down.
12 · Contract mechanics
The situations that legitimately raise a change order, what has to be written on one before anybody signs it, and how to tell a real adjustment from a bid that was thin on purpose.
13 · Planning and plan review
Three separate review paths, not one county rule. Which authority your address answers to, who you file with, and why a neighbour’s finished ADU is not a precedent for yours.
14 · Site life and phasing
Staying put while the house is open: dust containment, which rooms go offline and in what order, the stretch with no kitchen, and the choices that make that stretch shorter.
15 · How a remodel is bought
Two different ways to buy construction. Who holds the drawings, who carries the risk when the drawings turn out to be wrong, and which arrangement suits somebody doing this once.
16 · Plan review and permitting
What a plan review is waiting on at each jurisdiction, which missing submittal sends an application back most often, and what a contractor can and cannot do to move it along.
17 · Value, appraisal and paperwork
Which parts of a remodel a local buyer registers and which ones only you will ever notice, written without national return-on-investment tables, because those are not written about this market.
03What these will not be
04How an entry is built
The study beside this text is the layout every entry follows: the claim at the top of the sheet, the working it out below it, and a title block at the bottom carrying the source, the jurisdiction it applies to and the date it was checked. If a paragraph cannot fill in that title block, the paragraph comes out.
That is a slower way to write, and it is why there are seventeen titles here instead of forty. It also means an entry can be argued with. You should be able to take any sentence in this library to a plan reviewer, a lender or another contractor and have them tell you whether it holds, which is the same standard the six phases a job runs through are written to.
05Read these in the meantime
01
The six phases, the document each one closes with, and where the money moves. Most of the contract questions land here.
02
A planning range by room, size, finish tier and whether structure moves. The assumptions are printed rather than buried.
03
The service lines, and which one your project actually sits in when it involves more than one trade.
04
The cities and counties we hold contracts in, and who runs plan review in each of them. Half the permit questions are answered here.
05
How a monthly-payment arrangement lines up against a draw schedule, and what to read before you accept one.
06
How we are set up, what we run with our own people, and what we sublet. That last one is the question underneath most of the others.
06Start a conversation
An article is written for everybody; your job is not. Tell us which one you read, and we will answer it on the phone for your address, your jurisdiction and your house, which is more useful than the general case.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers, and it is somebody who has been on a job site. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.
We will call you back within one business day with the answer for your address. If you would rather not wait, call (775) 200-0648 now: Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.