Inside Kingdom & Co.
Hosted by Zion Lovingier and Lincon Rogers, we started this podcast to pull back the curtain on the design-build world. This podcast was born from a desire to bring clarity and confidence to a process that often feels overwhelming. Whether you're renovating, building from the ground up, or simply exploring your options, we're here to offer refined insight and trusted guidance. From navigating timelines and budgets to understanding design choices and construction challenges, this podcast is your guide to a smoother, smarter experience from concept to completion.
Q&A, May 2025
Tip for living in your home while you’re going through a remodel.
Don’t.
Okay, what if it’s just like a bathroom or something like that?
Okay, have low expectations.
Be prepared for dust and dirt, be prepared for some inconvenience, be prepared for noise.
When it comes to pets and if, again, you’re going to have people in and out of that house and, oh, did you let my dog out?
Like, you got to be prepared for what that means.
Like, you’re going to have a lot of people in and out of that home.
And so, just really having educated expectations of what that looks like.
If you’re in a home and, hey, the plumber’s going to be there at 9 o’clock, sometimes the plumber shows up at 11.
Yeah.
It’s just the reality of life.
They don’t show up.
Sometimes they don’t show up.
So, it’s one of those things where, yeah, your expectations need to be very low if you’re living in the home while the chaos is going on.
We give timelines, like we’ll build out an entire project where we are understanding of, there are times where subcontractors, their schedule gets messed up as well and they aren’t able to show up.
And so, for example, if we know it takes sometimes one or two days for a plumber to get done, sometimes we’ll say we’re going to plan for three days because we know that there’s sometimes scheduling conflicts.
So, just because a plumber doesn’t show up doesn’t mean we’re not planning for it.
And don’t be offended.
And don’t be offended by it.
Yeah.
Like, it’s not like they stood you up for a date.
This is a process.
You are not the only job that that person’s doing.
Now, repetitive failures to meet timelines, yes, that’s something we take seriously.
And that’s different.
That gets addressed.
Yeah.
If you’re living in the home, there is challenges for sure.
And just expect that.
Why don’t we see more home theaters these days?
I think the biggest reason for them is they take up so much space and they’re so expensive.
And technology has come such a long way that what we are seeing, and we’re actually doing it for one of our spec homes, and I’ve seen it in actually a lot more listings and homes, is these smaller theaters.
Yeah.
Where they’re not doing these grand, big old 1,500 square foot or 2,000 square foot theaters.
They’re doing these 20 by 20s theater rooms where it’s just more intimate and easier.
And it’s a lot more budget friendly, but still feels super luxurious.
So, you are seeing a lot more intimate movie theater rooms.
But the main reason why is because a lot of people just don’t want to spend a lot of money on them.
And I think technology is like we’re so overly stimulated.
Like it’s just, I think, 80s and 90s and early 2000s, it was nice to have that retreat.
And you’re going to watch that movie in that nice theater.
But it’s just like it’s so accessible everywhere that most people are just…
Like I’m only in my bed watching my phone.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s how most people are sitting there watching an iPad or a phone.
Technology has come to us, and it’s much more mobile than having that expensive space that you’re having to pay for that you never used anyway.
And that’s our theory.
We don’t know the exact reason, but what we’re seeing is when we’re going through these houses and with our clients, they just don’t want…
They’d rather put the money into their kitchen.
A gym.
And a gym, an office is more important now.
Yeah.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, good point.
Zion, how can I make my small bedroom appear larger?
Get rid of your crap.
Just get rid of your crap.
You have too much crap in your room.
Have less stuff.
Yeah.
There’s things you can do with colors.
A lighter ceiling makes it look, feel taller.
The darker you do, the more enclosed that room is going to feel.
More lighter area.
I know the designers have a lot of opinions on this.
They should probably be the ones to ask this question.
But we do know that you can minimize stuff, change colors, not so much clunky stuff.
People have all these cabinets and these bars and these…
This is like, guys, just get rid of all that crap, minimalize it.
Make it airy and beautiful and quit trying so hard.
Yeah, it’s funny.
We walked through some of these old homes that were built in the 90s and 80s and you think they were built just for alcoholics.
There’s a bar, there’s a wet bar in every room.
I was like, you don’t need that, you know?
If you want to make your room look bigger, get rid of that kind of crap.
But alcoholics need places to live too.
That’s true.
Yeah.
Good point.
How do I select the right interior designer?
In my opinion, you select our team.
One of the girls from our team.
They’re so good at it.
And they are so in tune with being able to design based off of costs and having a team to run things through that they’re not designing blind.
They have the resources of the support staff to help them execute the project.
They’re not doing it part-time whenever they can get to it from home.
A lot of people don’t understand what design means.
It’s not just picking out colors.
It’s analyzing and making sure the floor plans are right, making sure the elevations and designs are all right.
It’s putting all the pieces together and understanding the importance of… The functionality of everything.
Yeah, functionality of everything and having the team.
How many times have we been with outside design?
We work with a lot of outside designers.
We actually like a lot of them.
There’s a lot of them we don’t like.
And the reason why is because if you hire a designer that you love and they overdesign, and then they come to us and they say, hey, we want you to build this for us.
And we’re like, okay, great.
This remodel is going to be $400,000.
They’re going, well, my budget is $200,000.
And I’m going, well, you picked a designer who isn’t in touch with the cost of construction.
And you’ve just wasted a lot of your energy.
And now you have an emotional attachment to the design.
So now you have to go hire a bunch of cheap subs and try to make it work.
Or you have to pay again to redesign.
Or you have to pay again to redesign.
And I’m like, no, hire one of our designers so that we can cost budget the entire way through.
And so if we are going over budget, we can warn them ahead of time.
And we can adjust a couple things here and there.
So the answer is hire one of our designers.
It’s really that simple.
And I don’t think you can go wrong.
I mean, there’s obviously, it’s not perfect.
There’s challenges still.
But it at least gets you in the way right direction.
How do I incorporate sustainable materials into my remodel?
Just don’t go cheap.
We talked about this earlier.
Just don’t use cheap.
We will not allow you to do cheap things that will cause a lot of warranties.
Yeah.
Generally, you get what you pay for.
In the material space, that’s almost always true.
Do you remember when I built my house, I used that Brazilian hardwood on the exterior.
Beautiful stuff.
So pretty.
It’s hardwood.
It’s a very durable.
And dense.
It’s the heaviest wood on the planet.
And even still, it doesn’t really hold up to the Vegas climate.
So generally, on exterior stuff, you’re sticking with stone, steel, and concrete stuff.
We have such a harsh environment here in the desert southwest that that’s what you want.
That’s what’s gonna hold up.
Anytime you’re going with those, a natural wood product, it’s really gonna take a beating.
Well, with that knowledge, you’ve done a good job with our spec home coming up in McDonnell Highlands of adding those wood tones, but doing it in a way where it’s like the aluminum wood stuff.
You’ve gotten really good at understanding what products still make the house look warm and natural, but that can sustain these 120-degree weather days.
And then also understanding, okay, when I’m using this material versus that material, what’s gonna happen when those heat up and cool down?
And the expansion-contraction, how they shed water.
There’s a lot that goes into all that stuff.
But getting back to as cool as that wood was on that home that I built, I later found out the process of how they harvest that wood is pretty crazy.
It’s a rare dense hardwood that grows in Brazil.
They fly a plane, and they have to look for a certain color of leaf, and then they send in the extractor to come in and pull that tree out.
And it’s rare, but it also sticks out like a sore thumb because in this vast green space, there’ll be this yellow tree.
And they’ll go in and harvest that tree, and it’s like, yeah, this wood’s beautiful.
But what they do to harvest that tree is pretty predatory.
I would guess you could put it like there’s not…
It’s a rare wood.
Yeah.
They can’t just go cut down any…
Once I found that out, I’m like, I kind of felt bad about using that wood because it’s pretty rare, and the way they extract it is there’s not a lot of it.
All right.
How long does a typical remodel take?
Depends on the size.
But I would say on a home figure, okay, average 4,000 square feet.
And let’s say you’re doing a full job, yeah, plan on six to eight months.
There’s some that are like 7,000 square foot we’re doing that have taken like nine months.
There’s some who…
If there’s like a 3,000 square foot remodel, sometimes it’ll take four to six months.
It just depends.
Yeah.
It all depends on how…
Are we knocking down a bunch of walls?
Are we doing structural stuff?
Are we just doing surfaces?
It just all depends.
But I would say between four to eight months is depending on what you’re doing.
I mean, you could almost say for every 1,000 square feet, plan a month, and then add two.
Something like that.
That’s a good point.
Yeah.
I’ve never thought about that.
There’s probably some equation you can work out, but yeah.
For every 1,000 square feet that you’re going to touch, plan on a month and a half.
What questions should I ask to vet the contractor I choose?
It’s a really good question.
It’s probably one of the most important questions you can ever ask, because it comes down to so many variables.
I’m putting myself in client’s shoes, right?
The first thing in my mind, you’re like, price, and I get it.
It’s expensive to build.
No matter what you say, no matter how you do it, we have a lot of our competitors who will undercut the market with cheap prices and change order you in the field, and that’s the most dishonest thing to do.
Everyone has a horror story about a contractor, it seems like.
Yeah.
Nobody wants to be that person at a dinner party telling your friends how much you paid for it, and your other friends telling you you got ripped off.
Nobody wants to be that person.
If I was hiring a contractor, I’d want to sit down in their office or studio, and I’d want to know about who they are, where they come from.
I would want to know their processes, I’d want to meet their team, and I’d want to walk some projects.
You got to get inside.
People can just tell you whatever you want, but if people come here, I want to show them who we are.
I want them to go to our projects.
I want them to experience who we are as a whole, because when they come to our studio, I want to show them from our secretary all the way up to our design team, to our production team, to go to some job sites.
I want to show them a job site that’s completed.
I want them to go to a job site that’s ongoing.
I want them to see our company for what it is, and not for what I say it is.
I would ask them the most simple question is, if a designer or an architect or whoever makes mistakes, how do you handle those problems, and how have you handled those problems?
Because to me, there’s so much finger-pointing in this industry that if your contractor won’t take responsibility, then I think you’re in a tough situation.
You’re going to pay for a lot of things.
But that’s just my opinion.
I know that’s kind of a lot of things, but that’s the questions I would ask.
Yeah.
Look under the hood.
Get into their processes.
That really matters a lot.
Because you’re spending, some of these people are spending between $100,000 to, I mean, some of our remodels, we have a $3 million remodel going on right now.
It’s a lot of money, and so you better know who they are.
And that’s one of the things I pride ourselves in at Kingdom & Co.
I’m like, we’re born and raised here.
My name here is so important that I’m going to make sure that we do a good job for you, because I don’t want people- Your name matters to you.
My name matters.
And it does matter.
And I want to be proud of what I do, and I don’t want to just be the guy who doesn’t care.
And so to me, that’s what sets us apart.
But that’s the question you want to know.
If you’re the contractor that’s been here for two years from out of town, I’d be a little nervous about that just because maybe it doesn’t matter as much as they do.
I don’t know.
It’s just my thoughts.
How much does it typically cost to build a casita?
Good question.
So the numbers have changed over the last year or two.
The build of itself is probably around $300 a foot, but that’s not including a lot of the utility stuff that needs to be brought to the space, design- Yeah.
Distinguish between vertical costs and horizontal costs.
We call horizontal costs are the gas lines and the electrical lines and the sewer lines and the water lines.
And that’s stuff that goes under the dirt.
Call that horizontal.
And then you’ve got vertical costs.
Yeah, because a lot of our companies will say between $300 to $350 a foot, and it’s really not because by the time you pay for permits and by the time you pay for design and architecture and MP&Es, you’re paying $400 a foot.
Not all casitas are the same.
They’re all the same.
It depends on what all you’re putting there.
Correct.
Are you doing a kitchen?
So yeah, all that matters.
Is it just a pool house?
Is it just a place to hang out?
And there’s a starting point.
No matter what, there’s a starting point.
It could be $600 a foot if you’re building a 10 by 10 room.
Yeah.
When you go smaller, because there’s so much cost that is just built into getting a toilet to flush.
Correct.
Think about all the things you need for a toilet to flush.
If you go bigger, like 2,000 square feet, it gets a lot cheaper.
So yeah, the true cost is by the time you design it, by the time you engineer it, by the time you bring everything to the property, by the time you grade the property, by the time you’re getting ready to build and finally build it, you’re talking probably between 350 to 450 a foot.
That’s probably where you’re at.
Generally.
Q&A, May 2025
Tip for living in your home while you’re going through a remodel.
Don’t.
Okay, what if it’s just like a bathroom or something like that?
Okay, have low expectations.
Be prepared for dust and dirt, be prepared for some inconvenience, be prepared for noise.
When it comes to pets and if, again, you’re going to have people in and out of that house and, oh, did you let my dog out?
Like, you got to be prepared for what that means.
Like, you’re going to have a lot of people in and out of that home.
And so, just really having educated expectations of what that looks like.
If you’re in a home and, hey, the plumber’s going to be there at 9 o’clock, sometimes the plumber shows up at 11.
Yeah.
It’s just the reality of life.
They don’t show up.
Sometimes they don’t show up.
So, it’s one of those things where, yeah, your expectations need to be very low if you’re living in the home while the chaos is going on.
We give timelines, like we’ll build out an entire project where we are understanding of, there are times where subcontractors, their schedule gets messed up as well and they aren’t able to show up.
And so, for example, if we know it takes sometimes one or two days for a plumber to get done, sometimes we’ll say we’re going to plan for three days because we know that there’s sometimes scheduling conflicts.
So, just because a plumber doesn’t show up doesn’t mean we’re not planning for it.
And don’t be offended.
And don’t be offended by it.
Yeah.
Like, it’s not like they stood you up for a date.
This is a process.
You are not the only job that that person’s doing.
Now, repetitive failures to meet timelines, yes, that’s something we take seriously.
And that’s different.
That gets addressed.
Yeah.
If you’re living in the home, there is challenges for sure.
And just expect that.
Why don’t we see more home theaters these days?
I think the biggest reason for them is they take up so much space and they’re so expensive.
And technology has come such a long way that what we are seeing, and we’re actually doing it for one of our spec homes, and I’ve seen it in actually a lot more listings and homes, is these smaller theaters.
Yeah.
Where they’re not doing these grand, big old 1,500 square foot or 2,000 square foot theaters.
They’re doing these 20 by 20s theater rooms where it’s just more intimate and easier.
And it’s a lot more budget friendly, but still feels super luxurious.
So, you are seeing a lot more intimate movie theater rooms.
But the main reason why is because a lot of people just don’t want to spend a lot of money on them.
And I think technology is like we’re so overly stimulated.
Like it’s just, I think, 80s and 90s and early 2000s, it was nice to have that retreat.
And you’re going to watch that movie in that nice theater.
But it’s just like it’s so accessible everywhere that most people are just…
Like I’m only in my bed watching my phone.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s how most people are sitting there watching an iPad or a phone.
Technology has come to us, and it’s much more mobile than having that expensive space that you’re having to pay for that you never used anyway.
And that’s our theory.
We don’t know the exact reason, but what we’re seeing is when we’re going through these houses and with our clients, they just don’t want…
They’d rather put the money into their kitchen.
A gym.
And a gym, an office is more important now.
Yeah.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, good point.
Zion, how can I make my small bedroom appear larger?
Get rid of your crap.
Just get rid of your crap.
You have too much crap in your room.
Have less stuff.
Yeah.
There’s things you can do with colors.
A lighter ceiling makes it look, feel taller.
The darker you do, the more enclosed that room is going to feel.
More lighter area.
I know the designers have a lot of opinions on this.
They should probably be the ones to ask this question.
But we do know that you can minimize stuff, change colors, not so much clunky stuff.
People have all these cabinets and these bars and these…
This is like, guys, just get rid of all that crap, minimalize it.
Make it airy and beautiful and quit trying so hard.
Yeah, it’s funny.
We walked through some of these old homes that were built in the 90s and 80s and you think they were built just for alcoholics.
There’s a bar, there’s a wet bar in every room.
I was like, you don’t need that, you know?
If you want to make your room look bigger, get rid of that kind of crap.
But alcoholics need places to live too.
That’s true.
Yeah.
Good point.
How do I select the right interior designer?
In my opinion, you select our team.
One of the girls from our team.
They’re so good at it.
And they are so in tune with being able to design based off of costs and having a team to run things through that they’re not designing blind.
They have the resources of the support staff to help them execute the project.
They’re not doing it part-time whenever they can get to it from home.
A lot of people don’t understand what design means.
It’s not just picking out colors.
It’s analyzing and making sure the floor plans are right, making sure the elevations and designs are all right.
It’s putting all the pieces together and understanding the importance of… The functionality of everything.
Yeah, functionality of everything and having the team.
How many times have we been with outside design?
We work with a lot of outside designers.
We actually like a lot of them.
There’s a lot of them we don’t like.
And the reason why is because if you hire a designer that you love and they overdesign, and then they come to us and they say, hey, we want you to build this for us.
And we’re like, okay, great.
This remodel is going to be $400,000.
They’re going, well, my budget is $200,000.
And I’m going, well, you picked a designer who isn’t in touch with the cost of construction.
And you’ve just wasted a lot of your energy.
And now you have an emotional attachment to the design.
So now you have to go hire a bunch of cheap subs and try to make it work.
Or you have to pay again to redesign.
Or you have to pay again to redesign.
And I’m like, no, hire one of our designers so that we can cost budget the entire way through.
And so if we are going over budget, we can warn them ahead of time.
And we can adjust a couple things here and there.
So the answer is hire one of our designers.
It’s really that simple.
And I don’t think you can go wrong.
I mean, there’s obviously, it’s not perfect.
There’s challenges still.
But it at least gets you in the way right direction.
How do I incorporate sustainable materials into my remodel?
Just don’t go cheap.
We talked about this earlier.
Just don’t use cheap.
We will not allow you to do cheap things that will cause a lot of warranties.
Yeah.
Generally, you get what you pay for.
In the material space, that’s almost always true.
Do you remember when I built my house, I used that Brazilian hardwood on the exterior.
Beautiful stuff.
So pretty.
It’s hardwood.
It’s a very durable.
And dense.
It’s the heaviest wood on the planet.
And even still, it doesn’t really hold up to the Vegas climate.
So generally, on exterior stuff, you’re sticking with stone, steel, and concrete stuff.
We have such a harsh environment here in the desert southwest that that’s what you want.
That’s what’s gonna hold up.
Anytime you’re going with those, a natural wood product, it’s really gonna take a beating.
Well, with that knowledge, you’ve done a good job with our spec home coming up in McDonnell Highlands of adding those wood tones, but doing it in a way where it’s like the aluminum wood stuff.
You’ve gotten really good at understanding what products still make the house look warm and natural, but that can sustain these 120-degree weather days.
And then also understanding, okay, when I’m using this material versus that material, what’s gonna happen when those heat up and cool down?
And the expansion-contraction, how they shed water.
There’s a lot that goes into all that stuff.
But getting back to as cool as that wood was on that home that I built, I later found out the process of how they harvest that wood is pretty crazy.
It’s a rare dense hardwood that grows in Brazil.
They fly a plane, and they have to look for a certain color of leaf, and then they send in the extractor to come in and pull that tree out.
And it’s rare, but it also sticks out like a sore thumb because in this vast green space, there’ll be this yellow tree.
And they’ll go in and harvest that tree, and it’s like, yeah, this wood’s beautiful.
But what they do to harvest that tree is pretty predatory.
I would guess you could put it like there’s not…
It’s a rare wood.
Yeah.
They can’t just go cut down any…
Once I found that out, I’m like, I kind of felt bad about using that wood because it’s pretty rare, and the way they extract it is there’s not a lot of it.
All right.
How long does a typical remodel take?
Depends on the size.
But I would say on a home figure, okay, average 4,000 square feet.
And let’s say you’re doing a full job, yeah, plan on six to eight months.
There’s some that are like 7,000 square foot we’re doing that have taken like nine months.
There’s some who…
If there’s like a 3,000 square foot remodel, sometimes it’ll take four to six months.
It just depends.
Yeah.
It all depends on how…
Are we knocking down a bunch of walls?
Are we doing structural stuff?
Are we just doing surfaces?
It just all depends.
But I would say between four to eight months is depending on what you’re doing.
I mean, you could almost say for every 1,000 square feet, plan a month, and then add two.
Something like that.
That’s a good point.
Yeah.
I’ve never thought about that.
There’s probably some equation you can work out, but yeah.
For every 1,000 square feet that you’re going to touch, plan on a month and a half.
What questions should I ask to vet the contractor I choose?
It’s a really good question.
It’s probably one of the most important questions you can ever ask, because it comes down to so many variables.
I’m putting myself in client’s shoes, right?
The first thing in my mind, you’re like, price, and I get it.
It’s expensive to build.
No matter what you say, no matter how you do it, we have a lot of our competitors who will undercut the market with cheap prices and change order you in the field, and that’s the most dishonest thing to do.
Everyone has a horror story about a contractor, it seems like.
Yeah.
Nobody wants to be that person at a dinner party telling your friends how much you paid for it, and your other friends telling you you got ripped off.
Nobody wants to be that person.
If I was hiring a contractor, I’d want to sit down in their office or studio, and I’d want to know about who they are, where they come from.
I would want to know their processes, I’d want to meet their team, and I’d want to walk some projects.
You got to get inside.
People can just tell you whatever you want, but if people come here, I want to show them who we are.
I want them to go to our projects.
I want them to experience who we are as a whole, because when they come to our studio, I want to show them from our secretary all the way up to our design team, to our production team, to go to some job sites.
I want to show them a job site that’s completed.
I want them to go to a job site that’s ongoing.
I want them to see our company for what it is, and not for what I say it is.
I would ask them the most simple question is, if a designer or an architect or whoever makes mistakes, how do you handle those problems, and how have you handled those problems?
Because to me, there’s so much finger-pointing in this industry that if your contractor won’t take responsibility, then I think you’re in a tough situation.
You’re going to pay for a lot of things.
But that’s just my opinion.
I know that’s kind of a lot of things, but that’s the questions I would ask.
Yeah.
Look under the hood.
Get into their processes.
That really matters a lot.
Because you’re spending, some of these people are spending between $100,000 to, I mean, some of our remodels, we have a $3 million remodel going on right now.
It’s a lot of money, and so you better know who they are.
And that’s one of the things I pride ourselves in at Kingdom & Co.
I’m like, we’re born and raised here.
My name here is so important that I’m going to make sure that we do a good job for you, because I don’t want people- Your name matters to you.
My name matters.
And it does matter.
And I want to be proud of what I do, and I don’t want to just be the guy who doesn’t care.
And so to me, that’s what sets us apart.
But that’s the question you want to know.
If you’re the contractor that’s been here for two years from out of town, I’d be a little nervous about that just because maybe it doesn’t matter as much as they do.
I don’t know.
It’s just my thoughts.
How much does it typically cost to build a casita?
Good question.
So the numbers have changed over the last year or two.
The build of itself is probably around $300 a foot, but that’s not including a lot of the utility stuff that needs to be brought to the space, design- Yeah.
Distinguish between vertical costs and horizontal costs.
We call horizontal costs are the gas lines and the electrical lines and the sewer lines and the water lines.
And that’s stuff that goes under the dirt.
Call that horizontal.
And then you’ve got vertical costs.
Yeah, because a lot of our companies will say between $300 to $350 a foot, and it’s really not because by the time you pay for permits and by the time you pay for design and architecture and MP&Es, you’re paying $400 a foot.
Not all casitas are the same.
They’re all the same.
It depends on what all you’re putting there.
Correct.
Are you doing a kitchen?
So yeah, all that matters.
Is it just a pool house?
Is it just a place to hang out?
And there’s a starting point.
No matter what, there’s a starting point.
It could be $600 a foot if you’re building a 10 by 10 room.
Yeah.
When you go smaller, because there’s so much cost that is just built into getting a toilet to flush.
Correct.
Think about all the things you need for a toilet to flush.
If you go bigger, like 2,000 square feet, it gets a lot cheaper.
So yeah, the true cost is by the time you design it, by the time you engineer it, by the time you bring everything to the property, by the time you grade the property, by the time you’re getting ready to build and finally build it, you’re talking probably between 350 to 450 a foot.
That’s probably where you’re at.
Generally.
Inside Kingdom & Co.
Hosted by Zion Lovingier and Lincon Rogers, we started this podcast to pull back the curtain on the design-build world. This podcast was born from a desire to bring clarity and confidence to a process that often feels overwhelming. Whether you're renovating, building from the ground up, or simply exploring your options, we're here to offer refined insight and trusted guidance. From navigating timelines and budgets to understanding design choices and construction challenges, this podcast is your guide to a smoother, smarter experience from concept to completion.
