Tigerwood deck with a steel-frame pergola and recessed lighting under mature oaks in Castle Hills

Home Remodeling in Castle Hills, TX

Our shop sits in Converse, about 20 minutes east of Castle Hills.

Bexar County
Cabinetry Built in Our Own Shop
1 Year Cosmetic, 2 Year Mechanical Warranty

Remodeling and Carpentry in Castle Hills

Castle Hills is its own city. Two and a half square miles, incorporated in 1951, completely ringed by San Antonio, with a 78213 mailing address that fools a lot of contractors into pulling the wrong permit. Nineteen photos in our gallery came out of Castle Hills - most of them from a homeowner who has had us back for three separate projects over the years, which is the kind of repeat work a small city runs on - along with a tigerwood deck with a steel-frame pergola and recessed lighting.

The housing tells you what the work is. Roughly eight in ten homes here went up between 1950 and 1979, more than half of them in the 1960s alone, and there has been essentially no new construction inside the city limits since 2020. The city's own comprehensive plan describes them as custom-built houses with distinctive mid-century modern features, mostly ranch-style, sitting on large treed lots. That means the job is almost never a teardown. It is a kitchen that has been living in 1968, a hall bath with the original tile and a 30-inch vanity, a wall of built-ins the room was designed around that nobody has touched in fifty years, and a back yard under mature oaks that deserves better than a slab of leftover patio.

We handle kitchen and bath remodels, whole-home projects, additions, decks and outdoor living, fencing, and the carpentry side that most general contractors sub out. Cabinetry comes out of our own shop, which matters more here than most places: a 1962 ranch rarely has a square wall or a standard opening, and stock boxes tend to arrive with fillers and apologies. Twenty-plus years of combined experience between the two of us, a written workmanship warranty of one year cosmetic and two years mechanical, and a habit of picking up the phone.

Our shop sits in Converse, about 20 minutes east of Castle Hills. Close enough that a cabinet door we mill on a Tuesday morning can be hung that afternoon, and close enough that we can swing by mid-job when a homeowner has a question best answered standing in the room.

What Is Different About Building in Castle Hills

The permit rules, the ground, and the housing stock all change at the city line. These are the ones that actually move a Castle Hills estimate or a schedule.

Castle Hills is not San Antonio for permits

The permit comes from the City of Castle Hills, not the City of San Antonio, and the city charges double the fee on any work started without one. There is no online portal here. Applications and plan sets go in by email or across the counter at City Hall, and plan review runs about 10 to 15 working days. Contractor registration with the city is free but requires current trade licenses and a certificate of insurance naming Castle Hills as a certificate holder, a detail we take care of as part of the job. We build that review window into the schedule from the first conversation rather than discovering it after demo.

We plan projects around your oaks, not through them

The tree ordinance is the single biggest scheduling factor in Castle Hills, and it is stricter than San Antonio's. Oaks cannot be trimmed February 1 through June 30 because of oak wilt. Any wound to an oak, including an accidental scrape from equipment, has to be painted within the hour, which is why there is black paint on our truck year-round. Anyone trimming for a fee needs a city tree permit, protected trees need root-zone fencing before construction starts, and removals can trigger mitigation charged by the inch of trunk diameter. On a treed lot, that math can outrun the building permit itself. We walk the trees with you before we price a deck, addition, patio or driveway, because the answer changes the design more often than it changes the budget.

Good news on the schedule

no design board for houses. Some of the enclave cities near here route residential projects through an architectural review board, which can add a month or more. Castle Hills exempts single-family and two-family residences from its Architectural Review Committee entirely, along with interior remodeling of any structure. Your timeline is exposed to plan review, not to a monthly meeting. Saturday work is also allowed from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., which we use sparingly and only with a heads-up to you and the neighbors.

Fences here have their own rulebook

Front yard fences top out at 3 feet. Side and rear can go to 8. Fiber cement panel, which has gotten popular around San Antonio, is expressly prohibited as a fence material in Castle Hills. And there is a rule that catches people: if you replace more than a quarter of a non-conforming fence in a single year, the whole fence has to come into compliance. A patch quote on an old fence can legitimately turn into a full replacement, so we would rather tell you that up front and let you decide than quote the patch and hand you a surprise later.

Mid-century houses reward opening things up, carefully

These ranch homes were built with real materials and honest framing, but with 1960s ideas about how families use a kitchen. Most of what we do here is taking down a wall between a closed kitchen and a dining room, reworking a galley into something with a working island, or rebuilding the built-ins and paneled walls the original architect drew in. Custom cabinetry is usually the right call, both because openings are rarely standard and because matching the low horizontal lines of a mid-century house is not something a catalog door does well. Additions are possible but bounded: they cannot push past the front line of the house, exteriors are held to a masonry requirement, and detached structures have to sit well back on the lot. We check all of that against your survey before drawing anything.

Castle Hills Questions

Do I need a permit for an interior remodel in Castle Hills?
Almost certainly, yes. Castle Hills publishes a very short exemption list: interior painting, exterior painting, minor roof repairs, and repair or replacement of asphalt driveways. That is the whole list. Unlike San Antonio, there is no published exemption for flooring, tile, cabinets or countertops, and the city's own application spells out that remodel work that is not purely cosmetic needs a permit and inspection. Interior demolition needs one too. Since the city doubles the fee on work started without a permit, we confirm the scope with the permit clerk before we start rather than guessing. Permitting is our job on your project, not yours.
Will a remodel put my oak trees at risk, or cost me tree fees?
It depends entirely on what you are building and where. Trimming that clears the way for a deck or an addition cannot happen February through June, so timing matters. Removals are where the money is: mitigation is charged per inch of trunk diameter, and heritage trees carry a higher rate plus city manager approval. There is a helpful carve-out, though. If you live in the house and it sits in one of the single-family districts, the city will generally permit removal of up to three protectable non-heritage trees a year for property improvements without mitigation, plus trees that are dead, dying or a genuine threat to the structure. In practice we usually end up designing around the tree instead. A deck can be notched, a footing can be moved, a patio can shift six feet. We would rather redraw a corner than take down something that took forty years to grow.
How tall can my fence be, and what can it be built out of?
Three feet in the required front yard, up to eight in the side and rear. Permitted materials are wood, wrought iron, brick, stone, stucco and finished concrete, with galvanized chain link allowed in side and rear yards only. Fiber cement panel is not allowed as fence material here even though you will see it elsewhere in San Antonio. Corner lots have a sight triangle where nothing over 18 inches can sit near the intersection. Fences need a permit, a site plan or survey, and an inspection. The one to watch is the 25 percent rule: replacing more than a quarter of a fence that does not meet current code within a year requires rebuilding the whole thing to code. We measure and tell you which side of that line your project falls on before we write the number down.

Nearby Areas We Serve

Separate jurisdictions with their own rules, even where the mail looks the same.

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We provide premium home improvement services throughout the San Antonio Metro Area and the beautiful Texas Hill Country.

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Monday - Friday: 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Saturday: 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM | Sunday: Closed