Remodeling contractor in Olive Branch, MS.

In 1990 the census counted 3,567 people in Olive Branch. By 2000 it was 21,054, a 490 percent jump in ten years, and from 1990 to 2010 Olive Branch was the fastest growing city in the United States at 838 percent. A 1996 annexation doubled the city's land area to make room for it.

There is no other town in the Mid-South where that matters more to a remodeler. Essentially a whole city's worth of houses went up inside one twelve-to-fifteen year window, which means they are all crossing the twenty-to-thirty year line together. The same honey-oak or maple raised-panel cabinets. The same laminate or early granite. The same first-generation vinyl windows now fogging between the panes. The same builder carpet running through the whole first floor.

And the same corner garden tub. Every one of those primary bathrooms got a big soaking tub wedged into the corner with a cramped framed-glass shower next to it, and almost nobody has filled the tub since the day they moved in. Pulling it out and building one properly sized tile walk-in shower in that footprint is far and away the most requested job we do in this zip code. It is not a compromise, it is the bathroom that house should have had.

The other Olive Branch pattern is the two-story tract house with a vaulted great room. Those are straightforward to paint and genuinely awkward to paint well, because cutting in a two-story wall properly means staging it rather than leaning a ladder against it and hoping. Out on the larger eastern lots the ask changes again and turns into screened porches, sunrooms and additions.