Renovations and teardown-rebuilds, taken back to the bones worth keeping.
Custom homes and renovations around the Bay of Quinte — Belleville, Trenton, Brighton, and the shoreline and countryside of the region — built and managed by Nicholson Bros.
The Quinte region wraps the bay, and waterfront is much of what makes it worth building here. That means grade, drainage, shoreline setbacks, and conservation-authority approvals on nearly every project before a footing goes in. We've spent three decades working these approvals and reading these lots, so the constraints that stall other builders are known to us, not a surprise halfway through.
Inland from the water, Quinte is farmland and small-town lots where people are building or rebuilding the home they'll retire into. A new build on a bay-view parcel or a teardown-rebuild on an older lot, the work runs the same way: one family carrying it, a written schedule, honest allowances, with the shoreline and the seasons planned for rather than discovered.
Renovations & Rebuilds in Quinte.
A renovation asks a different question than a new build. Not what do we want here, but what's already here and worth keeping. We read the existing house — the structure, the systems, the grade it sits on — and tell you honestly which bones are worth saving and which are cheaper to replace. Sometimes the answer is a careful reno. Sometimes it's a teardown and a fresh footing on the same view.
A teardown-rebuild is its own discipline: demolition, then building back from the dirt on a lot that already has services, setbacks, and neighbours. We've stripped houses off their foundations and put clean new builds in their place, where you'd drive by and not know it's the same property. Reno and addition work carries the same written schedule and named allowances as a custom home, because the hidden work behind old walls is exactly where budgets get lost.
One family on the whole job matters most in reno work. When a wall opens and the surprise is behind it, the person who has to solve it is standing there, not calling the office. We finish the flow, the systems, and the finishes, and leave the character worth keeping.
The same two brothers, an easy run east from our Trent Hills yard.
- An honest read on what's worth keeping versus rebuilding, before you spend on it
- Demolition and rebuild handled by one crew, on one schedule
- Named allowances for the hidden work where renos overrun
How do I know whether to renovate or tear down and rebuild?
We tell you. After walking the house and the grade, we lay out what each path costs and what you get. Sometimes the structure is worth saving; sometimes you're paying more to work around it than to start clean. You get the honest version, not the easy one.
Can you add to a home we already love without it looking added-on?
That's most of the craft in an addition — matching the line, the materials, and the roof so the new work reads as though it was always there. We design it around what the house and the property are already doing.
Why choose you over a larger builder?
The network behind us. We work with two of every trade in this region, and most of those relationships were built over twenty years or passed down from our dad and mentors with fifty years in the business. When a problem comes up on your site, it gets solved that day, not next week. You aren't hiring one builder. You're hiring that network.
Will the budget I start with be the budget I finish with?
Closer than you may be used to, because we don't price your house from a guess. We price it from finished drawings, after the design is settled and the permit is pulled. If a material or a site condition changes the number, you hear about it that week, not at the end of the job.
Do we need an architect, or do you provide the design?
We work with our own designer. She spends a day with you on what you want, then brings you plans and revises them with you until they're right. If you already have an architect or finished plans, we're glad to build to them.
Planning a build in Quinte?