Conquering a Major Whole-Home Remodel in Just 9 Months

What the Cipriani Remodeling Solutions team projected to take a year and a half had to be finished in just nine months. And they did just that.

A three-times-over client came to the Mount Laurel, N.J.-based remodeler with a major whole-home remodel request requiring intense structural changes and a budget of nearly $4 million. Oh, and it needed to be ready by their daughter’s wedding.

The homeowners purchased the 2000s-era home and initially proposed a modest kitchen refresh and bathroom remodels. But the scope crept as the empty-nester homeowners envisioned a luxurious, functional, and hotel-like experience to host their large, growing family.

The ask became a total transformation of the home. The kitchen became an open concept space by removing structural walls and adding a 20-person dining room. Each of the home’s six bathrooms were remodeled, two were added, with the primary bath converted into His and Hers sanctuaries. A full bath was added in the basement. A gift-wrapping room, and playroom were added as well. The basement was transformed into an entertainment hub with a soundproof 13-seat theater room, lounge, and basement kitchenette.

“Cipriani knows that we could handle the job, but redoing a 7,500-square-foot home and getting most rooms completely gutted in nine months, was going to be a challenge,” says Cipriani Designer Anne van de Rijn.

Developing a Process for a Short Timeline

The remodel consisted of 25 different sub-projects, and Cipriani wanted to ensure none of the work took away from his other clients. Company President Jay Cipriani tapped into his remodeling network for insights, reaching out to renowned peers like Andy Wells of Normandy Remodeling, Larry Weinberg of BOWA, and Ty Melton of Melton Consulting.

The Cipriani team met bi-weekly before the job started and delegated pre-construction tasks to the right team members. The production department tapped into the trade partners with the largest teams.

As with any Cipriani project, the team collaborated heavily throughout the project, but most importantly, during pre-construction.

Before breaking ground, Cipriani develops a detailed project agreement. For this project, that agreement was almost 600 pages (nearly 300 just for the second floor). It outlined every specification, down to tile layout, outlets, and framing.

“We document really well for our jobs, so that once work starts, all the project manager has to do is read the agreement and know what to do,” explains van de Rijn. “Everyone is all on the same page from the very beginning.”

Clients must sign off on these agreements to start work, but because of the large scope of the project and the short timeline, the team approached this documentation in four phases. The team could then work on one signed-off phase while continuing to develop the other phases.

The project began on the second floor with phase one, the kitchen as phase two, the bar, foyer, and living room as phase three, and the basement as phase four.

Structural Changes for the Kitchen

The significant layout changes and size of the kitchen was a big lift for Senior Project Manager Nick Zizzamia. The kitchen once included a walk-in pantry, dining area, and kitchen, all walled off from each other.

The team removed those two walls, replacing the support with an 18-foot steel beam. It was one of the structural beams added to support opening the home, and required 12 people to carry it inside, says Zizzamia. Another beam helped support the bar. The beams required digging into the foundation to install new footings. “It was a huge undertaking,” says Zizzamia.

The kitchen features a 60-inch paneled refrigerator, coffered ceilings, a butler’s pantry, a coffee bar behind pocket doors, a 10.5-foot kitchen island (as large as it could get), and a dining area with a table fit for 20 with adjacent built-in cabinetry and counter for buffet-style dining.

The vision was hotel, but homey. And given that these clients worked with Cipriani three previous times, they were trusting and hands-off. The previous storage area was transformed into a butler’s pantry kitchen with a sink, two wall ovens, a dishwasher, and an extra refrigerator. To maximize space yet not affect the look of the exterior, an existing window was retained and covered with a 5x10 finished panel.

This faux window needed to look functional viewed from the outside, so it included shades, was able to open and close, and had a lit candle that the homeowners placed in each of the home’s windows. The production team created hidden access holes beneath the sink for homeowners to access the candle, cranks to operate the window, and the shades.

In the main kitchen, reeded glass cabinet fronts that bifold and pocket into the wall hide a coffee bar. It’s a standout feature that took special engineering from the carpentry team.

“Everyone was saying, ‘You can't do that because the doors will sag,’ and 'The hardware is not meant for that.’ But we came up with a really good plan,” says Zizzamia. The hardware was oversized, and the in-house carpentry team cut into the cabinet from behind, providing extra depth to fit the pocket door hardware.

Thoughtful Areas

When it came to the primary suite, these empty nesters were tired of sharing. The wife envisioned an area where her daughters and granddaughters could get ready together. This required a large, well-lit vanity plus a separate personal vanity for the client’s daily use.

The original His and Hers bath had a small 40x50 inch shower, and a platform whirlpool tub with a large storage closet next to it.  To improve the functionality of the cramped space, and give each their own bath, van de Rijn, along with Bella B Home Interior Designs, reconfigured the area and created a large bathroom suite with a wet room, a soaking tub, dual shower heads and shower jets. The result was essentially the same size bathroom, except for two feet gained from another room to accommodate the large vanity space.

The new layout meant repurposing a closet space that held the wife’s Christmas presents and wrapping paper, so the team created a dedicated wrapping room from an unused loft space.

“When we do a house, we get a little bit nosy, and open up cabinets,” says van de Rijn. "For example, when I do a kitchen, I look in everybody's cabinets and say, ‘Okay, where are we going to put the spices? Where are we going to put this blender?’ We were lucky enough to be able to understand how her daily life functioned and then create thoughtfully designed spaces.”

Ample Amenities

Adhering to the hotel but homey theme, the project needed ample amenities for visiting family. The basement features a kitchenette and dining area with a 13-seat theater room, plus space for the ping pong table, billiards, shuffleboard, and lounge area.

The space underwent 20 redesigns in order to fit all the desired amenities. With the kitchen located above the theater, it required heavy soundproofing, which, in turn, bumped up against the HVAC system. The existing mini-split system made it easy to adjust the cassettes located on the second floor into a new system in the basement.

“Then we were able to hide that up into the ceiling because everything is soundproof,” explains Zizzamia. “So, we had to make sure that we soundproofed above this cassette system and around it and make it so that it looks like it's part of the ceiling.”

Yet even with the tricky design and construction, Zizzamia and the production teams’ toughest challenge came with the home’s artificial intelligence, Josh.ai. The home’s lights, thermostat, and sound were controlled by the Josh.ai central server, so rooms didn’t have typical switches. It changed everything about how the house needed to be wired, so Cipriani’s team and their electrician heavily relied on trade partner Innovative Audio Video Designs to learn the new product and installation without delaying the project. Each week, Zizzamia coordinated a meeting between the three to discuss the action plan for the days ahead.

This project is a standout one for Cipriani Remodeling Solutions, not just because of the high design, but because of the quality of the final product achieved in just nine months. van de Rijn says the project, on any typical timeline, would take a minimum of a year and a half.

Each team member stepped in to accomplish the tall order and the team tapped into experts for advice and insight while putting in hours of overtime, but it made the finished project that much more meaningful.

“We all worked very hard on this project, everyone from Jay Cipriani to [Production Manager] Kevin Brennan to all the guys that work with me in the field,” says Zizzamia. “It's definitely something I'll remember for the rest of my life that I'm extremely proud of.”