Vancouver Westside renovations,
built to last in homes that already have.

The west side of Vancouver — not to be confused with West Vancouver.

When people say "the Westside," they mean the west side of the City of Vancouver: the neighbourhoods west of Main Street, from Kitsilano along the waterfront to Point Grey, and inland through Dunbar, Kerrisdale, Arbutus Ridge, MacKenzie Heights, and Shaughnessy. This is a different municipality from the District of West Vancouver on the North Shore — different permits, different rules, different building traditions, different homes.

The housing stock here is some of the most architecturally interesting in the city. Craftsman bungalows from the 1910s and 1920s line the streets in Dunbar and Point Grey. Tudor revivals sit in Kerrisdale. Edwardian foursquares anchor corners in Kitsilano. And in First Shaughnessy, the houses aren't just old — they're designated heritage, with restoration requirements that go well beyond a standard permit.

These homes were built to a standard that modern tract construction doesn't match. The challenge — and the opportunity — in renovating them is preserving what makes them worth keeping while genuinely modernising how they live. That means respecting the original proportions, the materials, the details. It also means understanding their quirks: older wiring systems, galvanised plumbing, load-bearing walls where you'd expect to open things up, and floor plans that predate open-concept living by a hundred years.

Renohaus works on the Westside as a design-build contractor. We draw the project, price it with a fixed quote, pull City of Vancouver permits, and build it — one team, one point of contact, from the site visit to the final walkthrough.

What we renovate on the Vancouver Westside

• Character home renovations — Craftsman, Tudor, and Edwardian homes modernised while keeping their architectural identity
• Kitchen remodels in Kitsilano and Kerrisdale — opening up floor plans, adding islands, custom cabinetry and stone work
• Bathroom suites with spa-grade finishes, custom tile showers, and in-floor heat
• Basement development and secondary suites, navigated through City of Vancouver permitting
• Whole-home renovations phased to keep you in the house, or completed in one coordinated build
• Heritage-sensitive exterior work in First Shaughnessy, handled with City Heritage Commission review

What makes Westside renovations different from the rest of the city.

All renovations on the Vancouver Westside fall under City of Vancouver jurisdiction — a single building department covering everything from Kitsilano to Shaughnessy to West Point Grey. Permits are required for structural changes, new plumbing and gas, electrical panel upgrades, additions, secondary suites, and any exterior work on a heritage-listed or heritage-registered property. The City's permit queue and review processes are well-established, and knowing how to move through them efficiently makes a real difference to your project timeline.

The trickiest terrain is First Shaughnessy. The City of Vancouver designated this neighbourhood a heritage conservation area, which means exterior alterations to buildings visible from the street go through additional review by the City's Heritage Commission — a separate process on top of the standard building permit. The review considers things like new windows matching the original profile, additions set back so they don't dominate the original form, and cladding materials staying consistent with what was there. We've navigated this process before, and we build the heritage review timeline into the project schedule from the start.

Outside First Shaughnessy, character homes across Dunbar, Kerrisdale, Point Grey and Kitsilano aren't automatically heritage-protected, but individual properties can still be heritage-listed or on the Vancouver Heritage Register. We check every property's heritage status before permitting. A listed home may restrict what you can do to the exterior, and ignoring that at the permit stage can cause delays that set a whole project back by months.

Structurally, older homes on the Westside keep contractors humble. Craftsman-era framing methods, knob-and-tube wiring that's been added to over the decades, original cast-iron drain stacks, and load-bearing walls in unexpected places are all common finds once walls open. We factor contingency into every Westside project estimate — not as a hedge, but as an honest recognition of what older homes are like to work in.