How Castle Uses AI to Give Twin Cities Homeowners a Better Remodel

Our owner, Loren Schirber, recently sat down with Jason Lockhart and Mirjam Lippuner on the Designer Discussions podcast to talk about running a second-generation remodeling company, and how artificial intelligence is quietly changing the way we work. Here is what he shared, and what it means for your next project.

If you have called a contractor lately and gotten voicemail, waited days for a callback, or wondered whether anyone actually double-checked the plans before demo day, this episode is for you. Loren's take is simple: AI is not here to design your kitchen or swing a hammer. It is here to make sure nobody misses your call, you see your design sooner, and the details on page seven of the specs match the details on page two.

Listen to the full episode: Episode 172 – Using AI to Scale a Remodeling Business with Loren Schirber on Designer Discussions.

A Twin Cities remodeler since 1977, now in its second generation

Before the conversation turned to technology, the hosts asked Loren about taking over a family business. Castle was founded in 1977 by Loren's dad, who had worked for other contractors and decided he could do it better. For years the company ran out of the family basement, and Loren was dragged along to job sites from the age of ten.

A few weeks hauling shingles convinced him that manual labor was not his calling. Sales and marketing were. After a business degree, a stint in the corporate world and an MBA, he joined Castle when it was doing about half a million dollars a year, mostly roofs and exteriors. Hiring a first designer and opening a real design studio changed everything: neighbors who had never heard of Castle started walking in, and the company grew into the design-build firm we are today.

Loren eventually bought the business from his father, who is now happily retired and exploring the North Shore. Today Castle has four design studios and a team of about 30: drafters, interior designers, project managers and roughly 15 in-house carpenters who do our own framing, drywall, tile, trim and paint. We focus on kitchens, bathrooms, basements, whole-house interiors and additions across Minneapolis and St. Paul.

"I've been doing it half my life now. That's kind of crazy to think about." – Loren Schirber

Where AI actually helps a remodeling company (and where it does not)

Loren is candid that he is "relatively new on the AI train." It started about eight months ago when Castle adopted a new CRM. Since then, a handful of uses have proven their worth.

1. Nobody's call goes unanswered

The biggest win has been an AI assistant that handles website inquiries and after-hours phone calls. Instead of leaving a voicemail and playing phone tag for a week, homeowners can get their questions answered and a consultation call booked on the spot, at 9 p.m. on a Sunday if that is when you finally have time to think about your kitchen.

"We used to have a lot of folks who would leave us a voicemail, we'd call them back and not get them, and never end up connecting. Now an AI agent can be there to answer any time."

Importantly, the assistant books a phone call with a real person. Every conversation is recorded and reviewed, and Loren has spent a lot of time retraining it whenever a homeowner was confused, for example making clear that the first step is a call, not a home visit. The goal is not to replace the human conversation. It is to make sure it happens.

2. Seeing your design sooner

Our designers are starting to use AI for quick visual answers that used to take hours. Wondering how three different grout colors would look with your backsplash tile? It used to mean building physical sample boards. Now a designer can show you all three in minutes.

The same goes for renderings. A designer could spend two hours in Chief Architect adding plants, furniture and accessories, then wait hours for the computer to produce a print-quality image. Today a simple rendering can be turned into a photorealistic preview in about a minute, so you spend your design meeting making decisions, not waiting for pictures. See how this fits into our design and planning process.

Homeowners are bringing AI images to us, too ("I want three windows on this wall, like this"), and our team can now respond in kind.

3. Catching the 43-inch mirror before it costs you money

This is the use Loren is most excited about on the production side. A typical project comes with eight pages of plans and seven pages of scope, and a project manager might have two days to get up to speed. It is easy for a human to miss that one page says 2x8 framing and another says 2x10, or that the pricing assumes a standard 42-inch mirror when the drawing calls for a custom 43-inch one.

Castle is testing AI tools that compare plans against specifications and flag discrepancies, and we have been running them against past projects to see whether they would have caught mistakes we know cost us money. Sometimes they would have. That directly supports our No Unforeseen Change Order Guarantee: the more we catch on paper, the fewer surprises you see on the invoice.

"Those tools are what AI is really good at: reviewing and comparing."

4. Call summaries and connected systems

Every initial consultation call is recorded in our CRM and summarized automatically, so when a designer or salesperson picks up your project, they already know your goals, timeline and budget. Behind the scenes, Loren also uses AI to connect the software that runs the business, describing in plain English what he wants and letting automation tools build the workflow.

AI trains our team. It does not replace them.

The hosts asked about something every design professional worries about: will AI take my job? Loren does not sugarcoat the apprehension on his own team, about the environment, about energy use, about a computer suggesting countertops.

His message to the team is consistent: AI is here to make them better and faster, not redundant. Nobody at Castle is being replaced by software. A designer who spends one minute instead of two hours on a rendering has two more hours for the part that actually matters: understanding how your family lives in your home. Meet the people behind the work on our team page.

Why we are putting remodeling education online

Loren also talked about how Castle's marketing has evolved. His dad relied on referrals and yard signs. A design studio with purple awnings on a busy street took the company to the next level. Today, though, homeowners research on their phones, so that is where Castle shows up.

Two things came out of that shift that you can use right now:

• The 2026 Twin Cities Remodeling Cost Guide. A 54-page guide covering what a kitchen, a kitchen makeover, a bathroom, a basement bathroom or a second-story addition really costs in our market, with FAQs built in. Download it free here or read the summary in The Real Cost of Remodeling in the Twin Cities: 2026 Edition.

• Kitchen Remodeling 101 and Bathroom Remodeling 101, on video. For years we taught these as in-person classes in our studios. We are turning them into watch-anytime videos, complete with cabinet-factory and appliance-showroom tours with our partners. Watch for them on our blog and social channels.

The hosts, both PR and marketing pros, also pushed Loren on media relations and online reviews, noting that AI search tools now pull from sources like Yelp and local news. His honest answer: "Now that the large language models care about Yelp, I have to care about Yelp." If Castle has remodeled your home, here is a 5-step guide to leaving a Google review. It genuinely helps.

One more insight came out of rebuilding this very website. Loren had heard that more than half of all web traffic now comes from bots, AI crawlers and answer engines, and while studying up on SEO he noticed that most of the advice was really about accessibility.

"A bot is basically a blind human. If you don't describe what a picture is, it can't see it. Optimizing for accessibility is also optimizing for bots."

That is why every image on castlebri.com has a real description and every page is built to be read, not just looked at. Good for neighbors using screen readers, and good for being found.

Loren's advice to his younger self: focus

The hosts close every episode by asking what the guest would tell their younger self. Loren's answer explains a lot about how Castle works today: focus and specialize.

Castle's estimating spreadsheet has about a thousand line items, and it is tempting to tell every homeowner "we can do that, too." But looking at job costing over the years taught him that the most profitable projects are not always the ones with the best margin on paper. They are the ones that are easy: easy to design, easy to build with our in-house crews, easy to sell, and the ones where the client ends up happiest.

That is why Castle concentrates on kitchens, bathrooms, basements, interiors and select additions in the Twin Cities' older homes. Because our carpenters do most of the labor in-house, we can be very competitive on a $60,000 bathroom that a large design-build firm managing 17 subcontractors simply does not want, while still having the design depth for a whole-house renovation. As Loren put it, "the pure-play people are going to win," so Castle is "trying to win five niches" rather than be everything to everybody.

What this means for your remodel

• Faster first contact. Reach out any time and get a consultation call scheduled without phone tag.

• Clearer decisions, sooner. Quick visual previews of tile, grout, finishes and layouts during design.

• Fewer surprises. AI-assisted plan and spec review backs up our guaranteed upfront pricing.

• Real people, every step. Your designer, project manager and carpenters are Castle employees. AI just helps them spend more time on you.

Ready to remodel with confidence?

Whether you are planning a kitchen, a bathroom, a basement or a whole-house renovation, the first step is a conversation.

Schedule a free consultation to discuss your goals, timeline and budget, day or night. And if you would like to do some homework first, browse our portfolio or download the 2026 Twin Cities Remodeling Cost Guide.