Homeowners walk into our first meeting with a number in their head. Six weeks. Three months. “Done by Christmas.” Then we explain that a real renovation timeline runs on three parallel tracks: permits, material lead times, and trade availability. Any one of them can stretch the whole job by a month.
That is not a contractor scare tactic. It is how exterior renovation actually moves in British Columbia, where rain delays, strata sign-off cycles, and a stretched supply chain all compound. We have managed enough projects to plot a fairly honest week-by-week map of where the time goes.
This article walks through what a typical 12 to 20 week exterior renovation looks like in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, from the day you sign the contract to the day the dumpster leaves. The point is not to scare you. It is to set the calendar so you stop checking your watch in week six.
## Pre-construction: weeks negative-eight to zero
The clock most homeowners forget starts long before the first hammer.
After you sign the contract, we spend four to eight weeks on what looks like nothing. Drawings get finalized. Permits get pulled. Materials get ordered.
In a City of Vancouver building permit application for an exterior renovation involving structural work or envelope changes, plan review takes 6 to 10 weeks if the file is complete. Burnaby and North Vancouver typically run faster. Surrey and Coquitlam fall somewhere in between. Strata buildings add another layer: council needs to vote, sometimes twice, and the depreciation report often needs to be referenced in writing.
Material lead times in BC have not fully recovered from 2022. Standard fibre cement panels arrive in two to three weeks. Specific cladding products with custom colours or imported stone? Eight to fourteen weeks is normal in 2026.
The homeowner mistake we see most often: signing a contract and assuming construction starts the following Monday. It almost never does. Real start dates depend on whichever of permits, materials, or the previous project finishing arrives last.
What you can do in this stretch: confirm with us in writing when permits are expected, when materials are confirmed to ship, and which trades are blocked behind them. A specific site mobilization week should appear on your schedule with a real date, not a hand-wave.
## Weeks 1 to 2: mobilization and demolition
The trucks finally show up.
Week one is mobilization. We deliver dumpsters, install site fencing, lay protection over driveways and landscaping, set up scaffolding if the building height demands it, and walk through the scope with the foreman who will run the day-to-day work.
Selective demolition starts in the second half of week one or early week two. For an exterior renovation, this usually means stripping siding, cutting back failed stucco, removing damaged sheathing, and pulling old window or door units that are being replaced. Crews work top to bottom on multi-storey buildings because gravity is on our side.
Expect noise. Expect dust. Expect a yard that looks worse than it did before you signed anything. This is the phase where homeowners second-guess the decision most often, and we understand why: you are paying a lot of money to make your house look terrible.
A two to three storey single-family exterior renovation usually completes demo in 8 to 14 working days. A 20 to 30 unit strata building stretches demo into three to four weeks because we sequence by elevation so residents are not surrounded by torn-open walls.
One contrarian note about demolition: faster is not better. Demo crews that move too quickly find rotten sheathing or hidden moisture damage two weeks later, often after the new cladding is on the wall. Careful demo, with photos at every stage, costs an extra two or three days and saves you from change orders later.
## Weeks 3 to 6: structural repair and building envelope
Once demolition exposes the building, the actual repair work begins. This phase is where renovation timelines most often diverge from estimates, and where the project plan needs the most flexibility.
If the original scope was cosmetic (re-cladding without structural changes), week three is typically when sheathing repair, water-resistive barrier installation, and rough carpentry for new window openings happens. On a typical single-family exterior reno, this is a 10 to 15 working day stretch.
If demolition uncovered moisture damage, dry rot, or structural deficiencies, this is the phase where change orders show up. BC’s building envelope rules under Part 9 of the Building Code, plus the Step Code requirements that came in over the last few years, mean that any sheathing replacement also triggers air-sealing and insulation continuity checks. You cannot just nail a new board over a wet stud bay anymore. The inspector will not let you.
This is the phase where the renovation timeline can stretch from three weeks to seven for reasons that have nothing to do with crew speed. A real example: a 1980s East Vancouver home went into a straightforward stucco re-clad and exposed three windows with rotted framing that had been hidden behind decades of paint. Repair time: 11 extra working days. Inspector visits: four.
Window and door installation typically lands in week five or six on a single-family project. New units get installed before any final cladding goes up because flashing details depend on the rough opening being square and weather-sealed before cladding tucks in over the head flashing.
Strata projects move slower here because we sequence per elevation. Plan on six to ten weeks of envelope work on a mid-size multi-family building, with the south or west elevation typically getting priority since those usually suffer the most weathering.
## Weeks 7 to 12: cladding, finish, and trim
Once the building envelope passes its mid-construction inspection, the visible work that homeowners imagine when they sign begins.
Cladding install (stucco, masonry, fibre cement panels, longboard siding, or whatever the spec calls for) runs three to seven weeks depending on building size and material. Stucco specifically needs warm enough temperatures to cure properly, which is why most BC contractors prefer to do stucco between May and September. Masonry stone veneer is slower because every stone gets dry-fit, cut to size, and back-buttered before final placement. A 1,500 square foot stone facade can take a four-person crew six to eight weeks.
Trim, soffit, fascia, and gutter work usually overlaps with the last stretch of cladding. So does painting if the cladding is paint-grade. The trades have to coordinate carefully because scaffold needs to come down floor by floor, and the wrong sequence forces re-mobilization later.
This is also the phase where the homeowner starts to see the project. Paint colours look different at full scale than they did on the swatch. Window trim profiles look bulkier or thinner than the drawing suggested. We hold a colour and trim walkthrough at the start of cladding install for exactly this reason. Changing a paint colour during the first quarter of cladding adds maybe a day. Changing it during the last quarter adds two weeks.
The renovation timeline tightens here because most of the moving parts are now stacked sequentially rather than in parallel. Cladding has to finish before trim. Trim has to finish before gutters. Gutters have to finish before downspouts. Each handoff is a half-day or a day, and they add up.
Plan on the final cladding inspection landing somewhere in week ten to fourteen for a single-family project, and week sixteen to twenty for a mid-size multi-family.
## Final weeks: punch list, demobilization, and sign-off
The last two weeks of any renovation feel slow and matter most.
Punch list work means finishing every detail that the foreman, you, and the building inspector flagged during walkthroughs. Caulking gaps. Touch-up paint. Hardware that did not align. A downspout that drains the wrong way. Individually these items are minutes of work. Collectively they take 5 to 10 working days because they require multiple trade callbacks.
Scaffolding comes down. Site protection gets pulled. The dumpster leaves. Landscaping that was crushed under boots and scaffold legs gets repaired, either by us or by a landscape sub we coordinate. We do a final site clean and a complete photo set for the project file.
Then the final inspection happens, which on most BC municipalities is a single visit that covers building envelope, energy efficiency, and life safety in one walk. If anything fails, we fix it that week, request a re-inspection, and finish only when occupancy is signed off.
The handover package closes the file from your side: as-built drawings, warranty documents, paint and material specs for future touch-ups, and contact information for any sub-trade warranty (windows, roofing, anything that came with a product warranty separate from our workmanship warranty).
The homeowner mistake we see at this stage: signing off too fast because the project is “basically done.” Walk every elevation with us before signing. Use a flashlight. Bring the original contract scope. This is the cheapest correction window in the whole renovation timeline.
## What stretches the renovation timeline
After 200 projects, we can predict where delay shows up. The pattern is consistent.
**Rain and freeze.** Stucco needs dry, above-5°C conditions for at least 24 hours after application. Painting wants similar. A wet November can add two to three weeks to a fall project that started on schedule.
**Permit revisions.** Any mid-construction design change that triggers an architectural drawing revision adds two to six weeks because the file goes back through plan review. Avoid this if you can. Lock the scope before mobilization.
**Strata council cycles.** Strata buildings often need council approval for change orders, and council typically meets monthly. A change that should take a day to decide can sit for three weeks because the next meeting is far away.
**Hidden conditions.** The most common single delay we see is sheathing damage discovered during demolition. Budget for this in advance: assume 5 to 10 percent of your contingency will get spent on something you could not see from the outside.
**Multi-trade scheduling.** When window installers, masons, painters, and gutter trades all have to dance around each other on a scaffolded wall, a one-day delay in any trade pushes every subsequent trade by at least that much. This is why competent project management matters more than crew speed.
The honest version of any BC renovation timeline includes a 15 percent buffer on top of the contracted schedule. Sometimes you use it. Sometimes you do not. The contractors who do not build that buffer in are the ones whose final invoice surprises you.
## Plan your project with a real schedule
MV Construction has run exterior renovation projects across Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island for over a decade. Our team is fully licensed, WCB-insured, and Passive House certified. Every project comes with a written estimate, a written schedule, and a warranty on workmanship. We have completed work in Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, North Vancouver, Surrey, and across the Island, on single-family homes, custom builds, and strata buildings ranging from 8 to 80 units.
If you are planning an exterior renovation and want a realistic schedule before you sign anything, call us. We do an in-person site visit, walk through what the scope actually involves, and give you a written estimate with a schedule attached, free of charge. Reach our office at 778-378-6393 or send the scope and your address through https://mvconstruction.ca/contact-us/.