Design-build kitchen, bathroom, basement, addition, and whole-home renovations across Winnipeg — from century-old character homes in Wolseley and Crescentwood to modern builds in Bridgwater, Sage Creek, and Waverley West.
Renovation Winnipeg is a family-owned, locally operated general contracting and design-build firm based right here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We have spent years renovating homes across the city — from heritage properties in Wolseley and Armstrong's Point to mid-century bungalows in St. James and Charleswood, and contemporary builds in Bridgwater Forest, Waverley West, and Sage Creek. Our team understands the unique character and quirks of Winnipeg housing stock better than any out-of-town franchise ever could.
Winnipeg has the oldest housing stock of any major Canadian city. Roughly one in five homes here is more than 80 years old, and one in ten is more than a century old. That history is part of what makes our neighbourhoods special — but it also means renovations in Winnipeg require specialized knowledge of plaster walls, knob-and-tube wiring, cast-iron drain stacks, settling clay-soil foundations, and the kind of insulation upgrades that make a real difference at minus 35 in January. We have worked on all of it, and we know how to do it right the first time.
Our approach is straightforward. We sit down with you in your home, listen to what you actually want to accomplish, and design a renovation that fits your lifestyle, your timeline, and your budget. We give you transparent fixed-price quotes — no hidden costs, no surprise change orders, no large up-front labour deposits. Every project is assigned a dedicated project manager who is your single point of contact from demolition to final walk-through. You will always know what is happening in your home, who is on site that day, and when the next milestone will be reached.
Whether you are reimagining a tired 1970s kitchen in Westwood, finishing a basement in Linden Woods to create a legal secondary suite, expanding the footprint of a Norwood Flats bungalow with a rear addition, or doing a top-to-bottom restoration of a character home in Wolseley or Crescentwood, our team has done it before. We bring the same level of craft, communication, and accountability to a small bathroom refresh as we do to a half-million-dollar whole-home renovation.
The Winnipeg renovation market is unlike anywhere else in Canada. Our climate sits at the extreme end of what residential construction has to perform through — building assemblies must work at minus 35 in January and at plus 32 in July, often with humidity swings that punish anything built lazily. Our soils punish foundations. Our older neighbourhoods have housing stock that pre-dates the National Building Code, plumbing systems that pre-date PVC, and electrical that pre-dates copper. Real Winnipeg renovation experience cannot be substituted with a generic checklist from a national chain. It has to be earned, project by project, on the specific homes this city built.
Our work spans the full price spectrum, from $25,000 bathroom refreshes to seven-figure whole-home rebuilds, and we approach each with the same care. We do not sell features you don't need, and we do not cut corners on the work you can't see — the framing, the waterproofing, the vapour barrier, the mechanical rough-ins. Renovation work is judged for decades by what's behind the walls. We build to that standard.
Years of hands-on work across Winnipeg neighbourhoods, from pre-1920 character homes to post-2000 suburban builds.
In-house designers, project managers, and trades. National Building Code, current City of Winnipeg by-laws, every day.
References, project photography, and credentials available on request before contract signing.
Fixed-price quotes, milestone-based payments, written workmanship guarantee on every project.
You're inviting a team into your home, often for weeks or months, and trusting them with a significant portion of your savings. We don't take that lightly.
Comprehensive written contracts after a full in-home walkthrough. No lowball estimates that load on change orders once walls are open. Most projects finish at the originally contracted price.
We carry commercial general liability coverage as well as WCB Manitoba coverage for our tradespeople; certificates and clearance letters are available on request before any contract is signed. We pull every permit in our name and coordinate every inspection.
We know which neighbourhoods have clay-soil foundation movement, which 1960s homes likely have aluminum branch wiring, which streets still have cast-iron sewer laterals. Local knowledge prevents costly mistakes.
With winters that routinely hit minus 30, efficiency isn't marketing — it's quality of life. Every renovation is an opportunity to upgrade insulation, triple-pane windows, and air-seal rim joists. Efficiency Manitoba rebates identified and pursued where they apply.
Anything we install — cabinetry, tile, framing, drywall, trim, mechanical rough-ins — is covered against installation failure for the term documented in your contract. Materials are covered by manufacturer warranties we register on your behalf.
Your dedicated project manager sends a brief end-of-day update every working day. You will know who was on site, what was completed, what's happening tomorrow, and whether anything needs your input.
Our in-house designers, project managers, carpenters, and trade partners handle your entire project under one roof. Indicative price ranges based on published market data.
The heart of every Winnipeg home — and the strongest return on investment in our market. Custom cabinetry built in Manitoba, quartz or granite counters, full appliance integration, dedicated electrical, modern plumbing, and the kind of detail that holds up for 20 years.
$35,000 – $160,000+ Discuss your kitchen
Powder rooms, full baths, spa-style primary ensuites. Custom shower builds with proper waterproofing membranes, freestanding tubs, heated floors, dedicated bathroom fans, and code-compliant electrical. Plumbing brought to current standards behind every wall we open.
$6,500 – $120,000 Discuss your bathroom
Family rooms, guest suites, home offices, gyms, theatres, wine cellars, and legal secondary suites that comply with City of Winnipeg by-laws. Proper vapour-barrier detailing, code-compliant insulation, egress windows, sealed sump-pump arrangements, and dehumidification — every basement, every time.
$45,000 – $185,000 Discuss your basement
Character homes in Wolseley, Crescentwood, River Heights, Norwood. Structural reinforcement, foundation repair, plumbing repipes, complete electrical service upgrades, insulation and air-sealing, new windows and doors. Original character preserved wherever possible.
$150,000 – $1M+ Discuss your home
Rear additions, side additions, attached garages with bonus rooms above, sunrooms, mudroom expansions, and full second-storey additions on existing bungalows. Stamped structural engineering, foundation work that matches the existing footing, seamless exterior tie-ins.
$90,000 – $525,000 Discuss your addition
New siding (fibre-cement, engineered wood, vinyl, stone veneer), composite or cedar decks, soffit and fascia replacement, eavestroughs, exterior doors, triple-pane window upgrades, and complete front-entry rebuilds. Stucco repair, parging, and full exterior insulation for older homes built before modern thermal standards.
Project-specific Discuss your exterior
Built-in library walls, mudroom benches and lockers, custom closets, fireplace surrounds, ceiling treatments, wainscoting, crown moulding restoration, custom staircases and railings. Built locally in Manitoba, finished on site to your exact specifications.
Project-specific Discuss a millwork project
Curbless walk-in showers, grab-bar-ready bathrooms, widened doorways and hallways, main-floor primary suites, stairlifts, accessible entryways with no-step thresholds. Designed to be beautiful and resale-friendly, not institutional — expanding rather than limiting your home's appeal.
Project-specific Discuss accessibility
Offices, retail tenant fit-ups, restaurants, medical and dental offices. Investor-owned duplexes, fourplexes, and the conversion of older single-family homes into legal duplex or income-generating secondary-suite properties. Quoted on a project-specific basis.
Project-specific Discuss a commercial projectRenovation pricing depends on scope, finishes, and the condition of the home behind the walls. The ranges below reflect published Winnipeg market data and the projects we most commonly quote.
Same-footprint custom kitchen — locally built cabinetry, quartz counters, full appliance integration, dedicated electrical, modern plumbing, tile or stone backsplash, hardwood or LVP flooring, and recessed plus feature lighting. 6 to 10 weeks from demolition to walk-through.
Vanity, toilet, flooring, paint, lighting. Typically 2 to 3 weeks.
New tub or shower, vanity, tile, plumbing brought to current code. 3 to 5 weeks.
Custom shower, freestanding tub, heated floors, double vanity, custom millwork. 4 to 7 weeks.
Open rec room, bedroom, bathroom, finish work. 6 to 12 weeks.
Egress windows, separate entrance, full kitchen, soundproofing, fire-separation, City inspections.
Top-to-bottom rebuild of character or post-war homes. 4 to 10 months.
Winnipeg's housing stock is unique — pre-1920 character homes, 1950s post-war bungalows, 1970s back-splits, modern suburban builds. Here's what we see most often, and how we fix it properly.
Pre-1960s Winnipeg homes were almost universally built with small, separated kitchens tucked at the back of the house. We engineer and install structural beams to remove load-bearing walls and create open kitchen-dining-living spaces — without losing the character details that make older homes special.
Knob-and-tube wiring, aluminum branch circuits, fuse panels, 60-amp services. We upgrade services to 100, 200, or 400 amps as needed, rewire affected areas with copper, install AFCI and GFCI protection where required, and bring everything to current Canadian Electrical Code under proper City permits.
Galvanized supply lines corrode from the inside out. Cast-iron drain stacks in pre-1970 homes are reaching end of life. During any wall-open renovation we evaluate and upgrade these systems to PEX, copper, and PVC — preventing the mid-night leak that destroys a finished basement six months after the work is done.
If your Winnipeg home is cold in February, it usually comes down to four things: inadequate attic insulation, uninsulated rim joists, leaky single- or double-pane windows, and air infiltration around penetrations. We diagnose with blower-door testing and thermal imaging, then air-seal and re-insulate to current standards.
Winnipeg's clay soils and high water table make basement moisture a real concern. Clogged weeping tile, leaking foundation cracks, undersized sump pumps, missing vapour barriers. We address from outside in — exterior waterproofing, interior crack injection, sump-pump upgrades with battery backup, dehumidification.
Winnipeg sits on Lake Agassiz clay, which expands and contracts dramatically with moisture content. We work with Manitoba-registered structural engineers to evaluate foundation issues and implement appropriate solutions — from helical piers and underpinning to drainage corrections that stabilize the clay around the foundation.
Heavy ice damming is a winter staple in Winnipeg. Attic heat loss, inadequate ventilation, clogged eavestroughs — ice dams back water under shingles and into homes. We address the root cause (attic insulation, baffles, soffit and ridge ventilation) alongside roofing, soffit, fascia, and eavestrough replacement.
Pink tile, avocado tubs, fibreglass surrounds with hairline cracks, single-pane bathroom windows, inadequate ventilation. Still common in River Heights, St. Vital, Transcona, and East Kildonan homes from the 1950s and 1960s. We renovate with proper waterproofing, modern ventilation, and finishes that look current 20 years from now.
Winnipeg winters mean boots, coats, mitts, snowsuits, hockey gear, and seven months of slush. Homes without proper mudrooms become chaos by November. We design custom mudroom solutions — bench seating, individual lockers, tile flooring, durable wall finishes — so your home actually works for how Winnipeggers live.
Older homes often have one ceiling fixture per room and not much else. Modern lighting design uses layered ambient, task, and accent lighting — recessed LED pot lights, under-cabinet kitchen lighting, dedicated vanity lighting, and dimming controls. We update lighting throughout any renovation or as a standalone project.
Choosing a renovation team is one of the most consequential decisions a homeowner makes. Here is the standard we work to — and the questions worth asking anyone bidding on your project.
A successful renovation is the result of careful planning, clear communication, and disciplined execution. Here is exactly what to expect when you work with us.
A 10–15 minute conversation about what you want to accomplish, your timeline, the neighbourhood your home is in, and a ballpark budget. No charge, zero obligation. If your project is a fit, we'll book an in-home consultation.
A senior team member visits your home for 60 to 90 minutes. We walk through the space, listen to your wish list and constraints, take measurements and photos, evaluate the current condition of finishes, structure, plumbing, and electrical, and discuss possibilities.
For straightforward renovations, finalized scope and a fixed-price quote within one to two weeks. For larger projects, our designers prepare full architectural drawings, 3D renderings, finish selection boards, and structural engineering as required.
We sign a comprehensive written contract: full scope, fixed price, payment milestones, schedule, change-order process, warranty terms, your right of cancellation. We then submit permit applications to the City of Winnipeg. Most residential permits issue in 5–15 business days.
Your project manager walks through your home with you to review protection plans for floors, furniture, and finishes; access and parking; daily start and end times; site cleanliness expectations; and how to reach the project manager throughout the build.
Bathrooms 3–5 weeks · Kitchens 6–10 weeks · Basements 6–12 weeks · Whole-home 4–10 months · Major additions 6–14 months. End-of-day updates from your PM and weekly progress photos throughout. Inspections coordinated and signed off at each phase.
Before we hand the project back, we conduct a detailed walk-through together. Every item that needs touch-up, adjustment, or correction goes onto a written punch list. We complete every punch list item before requesting final payment.
You receive a project binder: all permits and inspection sign-offs, material warranties registered in your name, paint colour references, finish-care instructions, and emergency contact information for any service callbacks. Your written workmanship warranty begins.
We check in at 30 days, 6 months, and 12 months to address any seasonal issues — drywall nail-pops as the home settles in winter, exterior caulking after the first spring thaw, anything else that comes up. These check-ins are part of our standard service, not extras.
Wherever you are in Greater Winnipeg, our team is local to you and familiar with the housing stock, building inspectors, and neighbourhood character.
Years of working on Winnipeg homes have taught us what makes this city's renovation landscape unique. Here is the local context that shapes every project we take on.
Most renovations in Winnipeg require a building permit from the Permits Office (located at 65 Garry Street, with online applications through the City's E-Permits portal). Permits are required for, among other things:
Permit fees are based on construction value and start around $130 for minor work. Permit applications typically issue in 5 to 15 business days for residential renovations. The Permits Office general inquiry line is 311 within Winnipeg or 204-986-5140. We pull every permit a project requires under our name and coordinate every inspection on your behalf, so this isn't something you have to manage.
Winnipeg's zoning by-law was updated significantly in 2022 to allow secondary suites in most residential zones, expand laneway housing possibilities, and ease restrictions on infill development. For most single-family-zoned lots in established neighbourhoods, the city now permits one secondary suite in the existing dwelling and, in many cases, a detached secondary dwelling unit (laneway home or garage suite) as well. The exact rules vary by zoning district — we research the zoning of your specific lot at the design stage and confirm what's possible before drafting any plans.
Winnipeg's continental climate is among the most extreme of any major Canadian city, with summer highs above 30°C and winter lows below minus 30°C as a regular occurrence. Renovation work here has to account for:
Winnipeg sits on the bed of ancient Lake Agassiz, leaving the city with deep deposits of expansive clay soil that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. This is the single biggest source of foundation movement in Winnipeg homes — the cracks you see in basement walls, the doors that suddenly don't close in late summer, the floors that pitch noticeably from one corner of the room to the other. Renovating an older Winnipeg home almost always involves evaluating and sometimes addressing clay-soil foundation issues: helical piers, underpinning, exterior weeping tile, foundation crack injection, basement floor slab reconstruction. We work with Manitoba-registered structural engineers on foundation evaluations and document everything for your records.
Efficiency Manitoba (the provincial energy-efficiency utility) offers rebates on a wide range of renovation upgrades — insulation, air-sealing, high-efficiency furnaces and boilers, heat pumps, triple-pane windows, smart thermostats, and home energy audits. Available rebates change periodically, but typical recent offers include $300 to $1,500 per measure on insulation upgrades and several hundred dollars on triple-pane window replacements. We identify every Efficiency Manitoba rebate your project qualifies for, complete the paperwork, and pursue the rebate on your behalf as a standard part of our service.
Different eras of Winnipeg homes come with different renovation challenges. Knowing what era your home is from tells us a great deal about what we'll likely find behind the walls:
Many older Winnipeg neighbourhoods — Wolseley, Crescentwood, River Heights — have spectacular mature canopies of elm, ash, oak, and maple. The City protects most boulevard trees and many mature trees on private property under tree-protection regulations. Additions and exterior renovations near significant trees may require tree-protection plans during construction, including hoarding around the root zone. We evaluate tree-protection requirements at the design stage and incorporate them into the project plan, working with the City's Urban Forestry Branch where needed.
The renovation industry in Winnipeg is busy year-round, but certain windows fill up faster than others. Plan ahead if your renovation falls into any of the following categories:
The earlier you reach out, the more flexibility you have on start dates, design iteration time, and material sourcing. Even if you're a year out from breaking ground, an early conversation costs nothing and saves headaches.
If you take nothing else from this page, take these five filters. They eliminate roughly 80 percent of the contractors who will quote your project, and the remaining 20 percent are the people you actually want to work with:
Quotes shared with permission. Names withheld out of respect for our clients' privacy; full neighbourhood attributions speak for themselves.
We had been quoted by three different contractors before we found this team. Theirs was not the cheapest quote, but it was the only one that was actually comprehensive — every detail laid out, every cost specified, every possible surprise discussed up front. We finished on time, on budget, and the kitchen is exactly what we hoped for.
The communication was what set them apart. Our project manager sent a brief text every single day with what was done, who was on site, and what was happening tomorrow. After dealing with another contractor on a smaller project years ago where we never knew what was going on, this was a revelation.
We're in a Crescentwood character home and were nervous about losing original details during the renovation. They took photos of every piece of original trim, numbered everything before removal, and reinstalled it all afterward. The new spaces feel like they were always part of the house.
We added a secondary suite in our basement so my mother could move in with us. The team worked through all the City requirements, handled every inspection, and the finished suite is bright, comfortable, and feels like its own home. The whole process took about ten weeks and stayed on the original budget.
Our 1955 St. Vital bungalow had original pink tile bathrooms, knob-and-tube wiring we didn't know about, and a kitchen straight from the era. They handled everything — full electrical service upgrade, plumbing repipe, two complete bathrooms, new kitchen — and the house feels like it dropped sixty years off its age.
What we appreciated most was the honesty. When we asked about a feature that they thought wouldn't add resale value, they said so. When we asked about cheaper finish options that they thought would look dated in five years, they told us. We felt like we had advisors, not salespeople.
We had a major foundation crack and were worried about how to handle it during a basement renovation. The team brought in a structural engineer, walked us through three options with honest pros and cons of each, and helped us pick the right approach for our budget. No upsell pressure, just clear information.
Renovating in winter sounded crazy to us at first, but the team made it work. They sealed off the renovation area properly, used temporary heat where needed, and the rest of the house stayed warm and livable through the whole process. It also meant we got on the schedule months earlier than we would have for spring.
If yours isn't covered here, call us at (613) 324-9141 or use the contact form below — we'll get back to you within one business day.
The first conversation is at no cost and with zero obligation. We'll talk through what you have in mind, give you a realistic sense of feasibility and budget, and book an in-home consultation if your project is a fit.
Wolseley · Crescentwood · River Heights · Bridgwater · Sage Creek · Waverley West · St. Vital · Transcona · East & North Kildonan · Charleswood · St. James · Linden Woods · plus surrounding region.
All inquiries answered within one Winnipeg business day. Most calls returned the same afternoon.
10–15 minute phone or email exchange first; then a 60–90 minute in-home consultation if your project is a fit.