If you are planning more than one project in a West Des Moines home, the order matters more than the ideas do. One rule settles most of it: never build something you will have to take apart later. Anything that opens walls or floors, or that touches the electrical service, the HVAC, or the drains, comes before finishes. That means the envelope and any moisture problem come before an interior remodel, a panel upgrade comes before anything that adds load, and adjacent rooms sharing a floor get done together rather than eighteen months apart. West Des Moines has the most varied housing stock in the metro, from Valley Junction-era homes to houses finished last year, so the right first project depends far more on what your house is than on what is popular.
Key Takeaways
- Order everything by one test: will this have to be opened up again later? Work that touches structure, wiring, ducts, or drains goes ahead of anything you can see.
- An electrical service upgrade comes before a kitchen, a basement finish, an induction cooktop, or an EV charger, because each of those adds load to a panel that may already be full.
- Adjacent rooms sharing a floor should be done together, since flooring runs continuously and a seam at a doorway is the tell that two projects happened years apart.
- Roof, windows, grading, and any moisture problem come before finished space below them. Finishing a basement under a failing roof is doing the basement twice.
- On an older house the correct first project is frequently one nobody can see, and on a newer one the infrastructure clears quickly and the question becomes which rooms share a floor.
- We do not publish resale return figures. If you want regional data, Des Moines sits in the West North Central region, not East North Central, which is where people usually look first.
Most remodeling advice is a list of ideas. Ideas are the easy part. Almost every homeowner we meet already knows what they want, and the expensive mistakes are almost never about taste.
They are about sequence. Someone finishes a basement and then discovers the panel cannot carry the kitchen they wanted next. Someone tiles a bathroom and reroutes a drain eighteen months later. Someone remodels one room beautifully and then cannot look at the room beside it.
The rule that decides the order
Ask one question about every item on your list: will anyone have to open this back up later?
Work that touches structure, wiring, ductwork, or drains goes first, because all of it lives behind something you are about to pay to finish. Work you can see goes last. That is the whole rule, and it sorts a surprising number of arguments.
It is also why the cheapest version of a multi-room plan is rarely the one that starts with the room you care about most. Starting with the fun room feels good for about two years, until the next project requires cutting into it.
What comes first, whatever you actually want
Four things outrank preference. If any of these apply to your house, they come before the remodel you were planning, and West Des Moines has enough range in its housing that which ones apply depends heavily on when your house was built.
The envelope and anything wet. Roof, windows, siding, grading, gutters, and any active water problem. Finished space underneath a leak is money you will spend twice. This is the most common sequencing failure we see, and it is the least forgivable, because the evidence is usually visible before anyone starts.
Electrical service. Older West Des Moines houses, particularly the mid-century stock through the core of the city, frequently have 100-amp panels with nothing left in them. A kitchen remodel, a finished basement, an induction cooktop, a hot tub, and an EV charger all add load. If two or three of those are in your five-year plan, the service upgrade is a first move rather than a surprise in the middle of the third project.
HVAC capacity. Adding conditioned square footage, whether that is a finished basement or an addition, is a load question before it is a comfort question. Find out whether the existing system can carry it before you frame anything, not after the first August.
Drains and supply lines. Cast iron and galvanized pipe in older homes reaches the end of its life quietly. If yours is original and you are about to close walls or floors over it, that is the moment to deal with it. Access is the entire cost of that job.
Houses on the newer west side of the city usually clear all four quickly, which is good news and moves the question from infrastructure to rooms.
What is cheaper done together
Some things cost meaningfully less as one project than as two, and it is worth knowing which before you phase.
Flooring across adjacent rooms. Flooring runs continuously and looks it. Doing a kitchen now and the adjoining dining room in two years usually means a transition strip at the doorway and two slightly different floors, because dye lots and product lines move. If the rooms touch and the floor is changing, do the floor once.
Anything sharing a wall. Two bathrooms back to back, or a kitchen and a laundry sharing plumbing, are one plumbing project or two. The second one costs far more than the first did.
Mobilization and protection. Every project carries setup: dust barriers, floor protection, a dumpster, permit cycles, and crew mobilization. Two projects run together share that overhead. Two projects run a year apart pay for it twice, and you live through the disruption twice, which is the part people forget to price.
None of this argues for doing everything at once. It argues for phasing along the seams that actually exist rather than arbitrary ones.
Choosing between rooms
Once the infrastructure questions are settled, the honest ranking is simpler than most advice suggests.
Fix what is failing before you improve what is merely dated. A bathroom leaking into the ceiling below outranks a kitchen you have grown tired of, every time, and it is not close.
After that, weigh by hours of use. A kitchen is where a family spends its time, which is why it usually wins over a guest bath or a formal dining room even when the dining room looks worse. Count how many hours a week your household actually spends in each candidate room and the list tends to reorder itself.
Then account for the adjacency problem, which is real and rarely mentioned. Remodeling one room raises the standard for everything it touches. A new kitchen makes an untouched adjoining living room look worse than it did before, and people who did not budget for that end up doing an unplanned second project on a compressed timeline. If two rooms are visually connected, plan them as one decision even if you build them in two phases.
Two West Des Moines houses, two different orders
The rules above are easier to use against a real list. Here are two houses we see constantly in this city, with the same four projects on each list and two different answers.
A 1960s ranch through the older part of the city. The homeowner wants a kitchen, the main bathroom, a finished basement, and a deck. What a walkthrough usually turns up: a 100-amp panel with no spare capacity, an original cast iron stack, windows at the end of their service life, and grading that has been pushing water toward the foundation for a while.
The order we would argue for starts with the service upgrade and any drain work, because the panel has to carry both the kitchen and the basement and the stack runs through the space you are about to finish. Then the grading and anything wet, before there is finished space below. Then the kitchen, which now has the power it needs. Then the basement, which is where the panel and the stack live, so the messy work down there is already done. The bathroom and the deck are last because neither constrains anything else.
Notice what that means. On this house the first project is invisible, and the kitchen the homeowner actually came in asking about is third. That is not us talking someone out of a kitchen. It is the only order that does not involve paying for the kitchen twice.
A mid-2000s two-story on the west side. Same four projects. What a walkthrough usually turns up: a 200-amp panel with room in it, PVC drains, an envelope in good shape, builder-grade finishes throughout, and often a bathroom rough-in already stubbed into the basement slab.
Here the infrastructure clears in an afternoon, which changes the question entirely. Now it is about adjacency and use. If the kitchen opens to a living or dining space and the flooring is changing, those rooms are one project rather than two. The basement is independent of everything above it and can go whenever the budget allows, and the stubbed rough-in already fixes where its bathroom goes. The deck is independent and seasonal, so it schedules around the calendar rather than around the house.
Same list, same city, completely different order, and the difference is the house rather than the homeowner’s priorities. That is the whole argument of this post in one comparison.
One thing that stays true on both houses: paint, hardware, light fixtures, faucets, and landscaping sit outside this entire discussion. They are cheap, reversible, and constrain nothing. Do them whenever you want.
What you can actually live through
Sequencing is not only a construction question. It is a question about your household.
The combination that most often goes wrong is a kitchen and the only full bathroom at the same time. Each is survivable alone. Together, in a house with one bath, they are not, and that is worth knowing before someone builds you a schedule that does it.
A few things that help. Set up the temporary kitchen before demolition rather than during it. Understand that a kitchen is out of service for essentially the whole active construction window, not part of it. If you have a second bathroom, schedule bath work so one is always usable. And build selections into the front of the schedule, because selections stall projects more often than construction does.
Our guide to planning and budgeting a remodel in the Des Moines metro covers the money side of a multi-project plan, including how allowances work and why two bids for the same scope diverge.
Working with Elk River Contracting in West Des Moines
Everything above is the conversation we would rather have at a walkthrough than in month six of a plan built in the wrong order. Elk River Contracting is a family-owned design-build remodeler based in Ankeny, founded in 2022 by Cole and Marquel Stuedemann, working throughout West Des Moines and the metro. Cole walks the house, looks at the panel, the grade, and what is behind the access panel, and will tell you when the project you asked about should not be the first one. Emma Cross handles selections and finishes with you. Registered Iowa contractor, license C144441, general liability and workers’ compensation with certificates shared before any contract is signed, and a one-year workmanship warranty in writing. Our home remodeling page and home additions page cover the scope, and the portfolio has finished work from across the metro.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which remodel adds the most value to a home?
We do not make resale predictions and we would be careful with anyone who does, because a national or even regional average tells you very little about your house on your street. If you want to look at published data, the figure to know is that Des Moines falls in the West North Central region, which is where most people looking this up go wrong. Read it as market context, not as a promise about your project.
Should we do everything at once or phase it?
Phasing is often right on budget, and the way to phase well is along the seams that already exist. Keep work that shares a wall, a floor, or a mechanical run in the same phase. Split along rooms that do not touch. Phasing that cuts through the middle of a plumbing wall or a continuous floor costs more than doing both at once.
Our house is from the 1960s. Does that change the order?
Usually yes. Mid-century houses in the older parts of West Des Moines are the ones most likely to need the panel, the drains, or the envelope addressed before anything cosmetic. It is not a reason to avoid remodeling them; those houses often have the best bones and the most room to improve. It just means the first project is frequently one nobody sees.
How far ahead should we plan a multi-year remodel?
Far enough to know the whole list, even if you build a third of it. You do not need final selections for a project three years out. You do need to know it is coming, so the electrical, the mechanical, and the flooring decisions made this year do not have to be undone when you get there.
Where to start
Write down every project you expect to do in the next five years, not just the one you are thinking about now. Then check the list against four things: the roof and any water, the electrical panel, the HVAC capacity, and the age of your drains. Whatever those turn up moves to the front.
That exercise takes an evening, and it routinely changes the order people were planning. If your house looks like either of the two above, you already have a reasonable draft of the answer. We work throughout West Des Moines and the Des Moines metro, and we are glad to walk your house and tell you what we see, including the parts that cost money. Get in touch to start one.