Houston · inside the loop

Anybody can show you
the after. Here is the middle.

Delgado & Sons is a second-generation remodeling shop. Kitchens, bathrooms and whole-house work. Below is one Oak Forest kitchen from the morning the floor came up to the morning we handed the keys back — including the weeks nobody photographs.

Walk the job What it costs
  • Licensed & insured
  • Bilingual crews
  • Since 1994
A finished galley kitchen in Bellaire: white shaker cabinets, brass pulls, marble counters and a mosaic backsplash.
Bellaire galley kitchen
Finished in 9 weeks

The middle

One kitchen in Oak Forest, in the order it actually happened.

A 1962 galley taken to the studs. Five moments out of forty-six working days — the same five moments every kitchen goes through, whether or not anyone photographs them.

  1. A room stripped for work: drop cloths on the subfloor, a folding table under plastic sheeting, a paint can and tray.

    01 Day one

    The floor comes up.

    Plastic goes on the door frames, a runner goes from the truck to the kitchen, and the old floor comes out before anything else. This is the week you will hate. It is also the only week where nothing looks like progress, so we tell you in advance instead of letting you wonder.

  2. Gloved hands holding a hammer over a pencil-marked pine board with a nail started at the line.

    04 Day four

    Marks before nails.

    Framing is where a bad job hides. Every stud gets marked in pencil, checked against the drawing, and only then nailed. If a wall is out of square, it gets fixed here — not covered with caulk in week six and blamed on the house.

  3. A tape measure, rubber mallet, spirit level and putty knife resting on patterned floor tile laid out on a bench.

    12 Day twelve

    The floor gets laid out dry.

    Tile goes down loose first — full pattern, no mortar — so you can stand in your own room and look at it while it is still reversible. Twice we have changed a layout at exactly this moment. Both times it was cheaper than being right.

  4. Two carpenters working at a half-installed kitchen: cabinet boxes set, floors papered over, a compressor and buckets on the ground.

    24 Day twenty-four

    Boxes set, counters templated.

    Cabinets are shimmed level and screwed to framing, then the counter fabricator templates off the real boxes, never off a drawing. Same two carpenters as day one. We do not hand a job to a different crew halfway through it.

  5. The finished Oak Forest kitchen: white cabinets against charcoal walls, stainless appliances and refinished oak floors.

    46 Day forty-six

    Keys back.

    We walk the punch list with you, open every drawer, test every outlet, and pull the plastic off the door frames on the way out. Nothing gets called finished by us alone. You sign the last page, or we come back.

Forty-six working days. One change order, priced and signed before the work happened. Final invoice $61,400 against the $58,000–$66,000 range we wrote down in February.

Two more, start to end

Also finished · inside the loop
  • A finished primary bathroom with a curbless glass shower, marble slab walls and a pebble mosaic floor.

    Primary bath, Garden Oaks

    6 weeks · 1958 ranch

    Curbless entry, marble slab walls, pebble floor pitched to a linear drain. The owners stayed in the house the whole time, so we built them a working shower in the garage on day two and took it out on the last day.

  • A crew re-roofing a white Victorian house, with tarps and stripped shingles laid out across the front lawn.
    Week 3 — roof off, porch framing out. We photograph this week on purpose.

    Whole house, The Heights

    14 weeks · 1918 Victorian

    Roof, siding, windows and a rebuilt front porch, in that order, because the porch framing was holding water. Every permit was pulled and posted before the first tarp came off the truck. The owners moved back in on the Friday we had written down in April, and the last payment cleared after they signed the punch list, not before.

Other recent jobs

  • Galley kitchen, Spring Branch 7 weeks · finished March
  • Hall bath and laundry, Oak Forest 4 weeks · finished January
  • Kitchen and back porch, Bellaire 9 weeks · finished November

Smaller jobs get the same two carpenters and the same schedule on paper. If yours is not on this list, it is probably still one we have done twenty times.

Money and scope

What a job costs, and what we turn down.

Ranges, not quotes. A real number comes after we have stood in the room, opened a wall if we need to, and written the scope down.

Three shapes of job

  • Kitchen, to the studs $35,000–$70,000 8 to 12 weeks. New layout, cabinets, counters, floor, lighting and electrical brought to code.
  • Primary bath $25,000–$45,000 5 to 8 weeks. Includes moving drain lines, which is where bathroom budgets usually break.
  • Whole house $70,000–$90,000 12 to 20 weeks. Phased so you can live in part of the house, or done empty and faster.

What we turn down

  • Additions and second stories. Different trade, different insurance.
  • More than two jobs at a time. It is the whole reason we finish on the day we said.
  • Any job where the permit cannot be pulled in our own name.
  • Demolition before the cabinets are physically in our shop. That wait is what keeps a kitchen from sitting open for a month.

How it gets paid

  1. 01 · Deposit

    Ten percent when you sign, and it goes straight to the cabinet order. You get the supplier invoice with it, so you can see where your money went the same week you spent it.

  2. 02 · Progress

    Payments land on finished stages — rough-in inspected, cabinets set, tile grouted — never on calendar dates. If a stage is not done, the payment is not due.

  3. 03 · Last payment

    Held until you have walked the punch list and signed it. Anything still open on that list keeps the final payment open too.

Every job carries a written workmanship warranty, handed to you with the contract before day one, not promised on a website. If our work fails, we come back and fix it — and the sentence that says so is in your paperwork.

Two generations, four blocks of tools, one truck at a time.

Ramón Delgado hung his first cabinet in Houston in 1987, working for somebody else. He put his own name on a truck in 1994 and never grew past the size he could stand on himself. His sons Andrés and Beto run the crews now; Ramón still walks every job before the price goes out.

We are licensed and insured, we pull our own permits, and we work in English and Spanish because half our clients and most of our trades do too. If we are the wrong shop for your job, we will say so on the first call and give you two names that are not ours.

Where we work
Oak Forest, Garden Oaks, Spring Branch, Bellaire and The Heights. Inside the loop keeps the crew off the freeway and on your job by 7:15.
Who shows up
The same two to four people, in a marked truck, every day until it is done. No subcontracted crew you have never met.

What clients said afterward

“They told us the second week would be miserable and it was. Everything after that landed within two days of what was on the schedule.”

Marisol — Oak Forest

“One change order in fourteen weeks, and Andrés brought it to me on paper before anybody picked up a tool.”

Dave — The Heights

What people ask before they sign

Asked on the first call · answered here
How soon could you start?
Usually eight to fourteen weeks out, because we only run two jobs at a time and we do not demo until your cabinets are physically in our shop. If somebody can start Monday, ask them what they are not telling you. We will give you a real date on the first visit and a written one with the contract.
Do we have to move out?
For a kitchen, no — most people stay and we set up a temporary sink and a run of counter somewhere else in the house on day one. For a whole house it is usually cheaper and faster to be out. We will tell you which one your job is before you decide, not after.
What happens when you open a wall and find something?
Work stops on that wall, you get a photo the same hour, and the fix is priced and signed before anybody picks a tool back up. In a 1962 house something is found maybe one job in three — rot under a window, a drain run the wrong way, aluminium wiring. It is never a surprise on the last invoice. That is what the change order is for.
Can we supply our own cabinets, tile or fixtures?
Tile, fixtures and appliances, yes, and plenty of people do. Cabinets, no — the schedule lives or dies on when the boxes land, and we cannot promise a date we do not control. If you have a cabinet source you love, tell us early and we will look at it.
Who cleans up, and what does the house look like at 6pm?
Swept and bagged every evening, dumpster or trailer emptied before it overflows, and the runner from the door to the work stays down for the whole job. The bathroom the crew uses is the one we agree on in the first week, and it gets cleaned by us, not by you.
What if we want to change something halfway through?
Ask. Some changes are free at the right moment and expensive a week later, and we will tell you which one you are looking at. Anything that moves money gets written down, priced and signed first — the Oak Forest kitchen above had exactly one change order in forty-six days, and that is normal here.

Anything not on this list — ask it on the phone. Nobody here works on commission.

There is no form here. Somebody answers the phone.

(713) 555-0142

Ramón or Andrés picks up between 7am and 6pm, Monday through Saturday. If a job has us inside a wall, leave a message and you get a call back the same day. Reading this at midnight? Email the four things below and we will already have something to say when we call.

office@delgadoandsons.com

What helps on the first call

  • 01Two or three photos of the room, taken from the doorway.
  • 02Rough measurements, even paced off. Wall to wall is enough.
  • 03The month you want to start, and whether you plan to live in the house.
  • 04The number you do not want to go past. It saves everyone the second meeting.