We signed the lease in March and were serving customers in June. LNB walked the space with our drawings before we committed and told us exactly what the landlord's work letter did not cover.
Marisol Vega
Owner · Independent Cafe
Services
Tenant Finish Out Contractor
A tenant finish out contractor does in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas exactly what the rest of the country calls a tenant improvement. Same work, same allowance, same scope. If your landlord calls it a finish out, so will we.
- Licensed Texas General Contractor
- Bonded & Insured
- Workers’ Comp Carried
- BBB Accredited A+
- NARI Member
- On Site In All 50 States
- Escrow Services Available
Same Work, Different Word
In Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and most of the Midwest, what the rest of the country calls a tenant improvement is called a finish out. Same work, same scope, different word.
LNB Construction is a finish out contractor headquartered in Katy, Texas. We take leased commercial space, shell or second generation, and finish it into a business that can open. Retail finish outs, restaurant finish outs, office and medical. Twenty years of them.
If your broker’s listing says finish out allowance and your lease says tenant finish, you are in the right place. Nothing about the work changes with the vocabulary.
- 20+
- Years In Business
- 250,000+
- Square Feet Built
- 50
- States On Site
- 17+
- Locations Delivered
What A Finish Out Includes
Nine phases, in the order you will experience them. The first three are where a finish out is won or lost, which is why they take up as much of our attention as the construction does.
- Pre-Construction
- Lease and work letter review, existing conditions survey, budget, and a schedule of values you can hand to a lender.
- Design Coordination
- Architect and MEP engineer coordination, franchisor standards review, and a permit set that goes in complete.
- Permitting
- Submittal, plan review comments, health department where applicable, and the fire marshal.
- Demo
- Selective demolition of second-generation improvements, keeping whatever is worth keeping.
- Rough-In
- Framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC distribution, sprinkler modification and low voltage.
- Finishes
- Drywall, ceilings, flooring, paint, millwork, tile and specialty coatings.
- Fixtures And Equipment
- Owner-furnished and contractor-installed equipment, franchisor fixture packages, and casework.
- Signage And Exterior
- Storefront sign, illumination and any exterior work, on its own permit and its own landlord approval. Routinely the last thing anybody thinks about and one of the longest leads on the job.
- Closeout
- Punch list, final inspections, certificate of occupancy, as-builts, warranties and lien waivers.
Finish Outs, By Space
Retail finish out.
The fastest and the least forgiving. The store has to look like the brand from the sidewalk, the fixtures arrive on a fixed ship date, and the opening is tied to a marketing calendar nobody wants to move. We watch storefront and entry glazing, sales floor lighting layout, POS and data rough-in, back-of-house receiving, ADA path of travel, and the fixture install sequence, so the fixture crew is not standing on an unfinished floor.
Restaurant finish out.
The mechanical scope is the whole job. Hood and make-up air, grease interceptor sizing, floor drains and slope, dedicated equipment circuits, walk-in coolers, hood suppression, and a health department inspection with its own schedule and its own opinions. We build the schedule around health department and fire marshal availability, because those two dates are the ones that actually control your opening.
Office and medical finish out.
Office is about layout, acoustics and data: demising walls, private offices against open plan, conference room AV rough-in, sound attenuation, and lighting people can work under for eight hours. Medical and dental add regulated scope on top, including operatory plumbing and vacuum, med gas where required, lead-lined walls for imaging, ADA restroom compliance and infection-control finishes.
Franchise finish out.
Layered on top of whichever of the three above you are building. The franchisor sends a prototype package, and the package assumes a building that does not exist in your market: different shell depth, different utility service, different code. We reconcile the prototype against the space you actually leased, put the changes through franchisor approval before construction rather than during it, and build the fifth location the same way we built the first.
Why The Word Matters
It is not only vocabulary. The term comes with a set of local assumptions, and the assumptions are what cost money.
Your paperwork will use it, inconsistently.
If you are leasing in Houston, Dallas, Austin or San Antonio, the broker’s listing will say finish out allowance, the landlord’s work letter will say tenant finish, and the lease will probably use both terms interchangeably. None of that changes what you are buying.
A national assumption about shells is wrong here.
A contractor who does not work in this market prices a shell finish out against a national assumption of what a shell includes, and Texas shells frequently include less than that. That gap does not appear in the bid. It appears in month two.
Second generation restaurant space hides the worst of it.
It often comes with a grease interceptor undersized for your equipment schedule, and nobody finds out until plan review. We work in this market and we price against what is actually in the building, which is why the walkthrough happens before the number, not after it.
The allowance is a reimbursement, not a budget.
This is where the word costs cash flow rather than scope. Most landlords pay the finish out allowance after the work is complete and inspected, against lien waivers and a certificate of occupancy, so you fund the construction first and get reimbursed second. We bill AIA style against a schedule of values, which means the draw package your landlord asks for is paperwork we are already producing.
What A Finish Out Costs
The word is regional. The cost drivers are not, with one local exception that catches out contractors who do not work here.
What the shell actually includes.
Texas shells frequently include less than a national assumption of a shell does. A contractor pricing against that assumption produces a number that looks competitive and is not.
Second generation, or not.
Inheriting a previous tenant’s build-out can be a real saving, and a real cost if the layout fights yours. Demo, code updates and ADA compliance eat the savings quickly.
Mechanical and plumbing.
A restaurant or a clinic finish out is a mechanical project. A retail or office finish out is not. That single distinction separates the categories more than square footage does.
When the allowance lands.
The finish out allowance is usually reimbursed after completion and inspection, against lien waivers. It affects your cash flow rather than the price, and it surprises people.
We will read your work letter before you sign it. That hour is worth more than anything else we do for free.
From Empty Shell To Open Doors
Drag any handle. On the left, a space in the condition a landlord hands it over in. On the right, a finished interior a business can trade out of.
ShellFinished
ShellFinished
ShellFinishedHow A Finish Out Runs
Walkthrough And Scope
We walk it against the work letter, because the gap between what a shell is assumed to include and what this one actually includes is the whole argument.
Budget And Bid
A line-item number priced against what is in the building, with the finish out allowance shown separately so you can see what you are funding and what the landlord is.
Permits And Drawings
Drawing set and submittal, plus health department where the space serves food. Comments at plan review can move walls, so the set goes in complete rather than early.
Construction
Demo, rough-in, finishes, fixtures and signage, sequenced backwards from whichever date is actually fixed: a fixture truck, a franchisor opening or rent commencement.
Punch List And Handover
Punch closed, certificate of occupancy issued, then the draw package your landlord needs to release the allowance, with lien waivers from every tier.
What Owners Say Afterwards
The part that matters is not the bid. It is whether the space opened when they said it would.
Our lender wanted G702s and a schedule of values, not a lump sum. LNB billed the way the bank expected from the first draw, so nothing stalled in underwriting.
Dev Ramaswamy
Franchisee · Fitness Franchise
Four units in three states and every one of them looks like the prototype. That is the part I could never get from hiring a different contractor in each market.
Alicia Brenner
Director of Development · Multi-Site Retail Brand
One superintendent, one number to call, weekly progress against the schedule. We were paying rent on a dark store and they knew it.
Tomasz Kowal
Managing Partner · Retail Group
The permit run in our jurisdiction is where these projects usually die. They tracked it and told us where it sat every week instead of going quiet.
Renée Okafor
Practice Manager · Dental Practice
1 of 5
Related Work
Real square footage, real timelines, real brands.
F&B
Storefront retail. Custom freezer bays.
Stella's Ice Cream · Phoenix, AZ
Retail + custom freezer bays + back kitchen
Automotive
Franchise rolled out. National.
Tint World · National
Service bays + customer lounge + retail
1 of 3
Related Services
The same crews and the same schedule, on a different kind of space.
Finish Out FAQ
Is a finish out the same as a tenant improvement?
Yes. It is a regional term. Texas and the Midwest say finish out, the coasts say tenant improvement or TI, and contractors and tenants everywhere say build-out.
What is a shell finish out?
Finishing out a space the landlord delivered as a shell: no interior walls, no ceiling, no distribution, sometimes no HVAC unit. You are building everything inside the envelope.
What is a second generation finish out?
Taking over space a previous tenant already built out and reworking it for your business. Often cheaper, sometimes not. Demo, code updates and ADA compliance can eat the savings quickly.
Who pays for the finish out?
The landlord usually contributes a finish out allowance and the tenant covers the balance. The split is negotiable, and it is worth getting a construction number before you negotiate it rather than after.
Do you handle the health department for restaurant finish outs?
Yes. Plan review, the pre-opening inspection, and the coordination between health, fire and building that trips most schedules.
Next step
You Signed The Lease. Let's Get It Open.
Send us the space and the brand standards. You'll get a walkthrough scheduled inside 48 hours and a real number. Not a range, not a “starting at.”
No obligation. No pressure. If we're not the right builder for your project, we'll tell you on the call.
info@lnbconstruction.net
