Home Remodeling in Bear, DE
Remodeling for the 1990s subdivisions of Bear, Delaware, now at the age for a first real kitchen and bath.
Bear was a crossroads fourteen miles south of Wilmington with small farms growing corn and cattle until the late 1980s and 1990s, when it became the county's fastest place to build. The developments went in along Route 40 and the roads off it: Fox Run in 1987, Caravel Farms on larger lots, Mansion Farm behind it with about 400 ranchers and two-story colonials on quarter-acre lots built by R.C. Peoples in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Red Lion Chase with the larger houses. Lums Pond State Park is the open space they wrap around, and Route 1, Interstate 95 and Route 13 are why people bought here.
A house from that boom is now twenty-five to thirty-five years old. The builder kitchen has been repainted once, the primary bath has a garden tub nobody fills, the basement is still concrete and the siding and windows are original. Dawson's serves Bear for exactly those four projects, and the floor plans repeat often enough across the developments that the load walls are predictable before the walkthrough.
The 1990s colonial, room by room
The kitchen in a Bear colonial faces a family room across a peninsula or a half wall, and the plan that homeowners want is an island in its place with the counter run along the window wall. Cabinets go from builder oak to painted or stained wood, laminate becomes quartz, and the lighting gets designed instead of centered. The primary bath trades the platform tub for a walk-in tiled shower and gets a vanity sized to the room. The unfinished basement, poured concrete with an eight-foot ceiling, becomes a family room, a home office or a guest room with a full bath, and in the parts of Mansion Farm and Caravel Farms with sloping lots a walk-out door adds daylight.
Permits and the homeowners association
Bear is unincorporated, so building permits come from the Licensing Division of New Castle County's Department of Land Use. Almost every development here has recorded covenants and an association with an architectural review committee. Additions, decks, sunrooms, fences and siding color changes go to the committee before the county permit is filed; kitchens, baths and basements usually need only the permit. Dawson's checks the covenants at the estimate so the sequence is right from the start.
Siding and windows at thirty years
The original vinyl siding and builder windows on a 1995 house in Bear are at the end of their run. Replacement double-hung windows with insulated glass fit the existing openings, and the front elevation, where the builder used a bay or a picture window, is where the upgrade shows. Siding replacement is a chance to add house wrap and correct the flashing at windows and decks. Vinyl and fiber cement both suit these houses, and the association's color rules apply either way.
Dawson's serves Bear for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Christiana, Brookside, Glasgow and Delaware City.
Bear is part of the New Castle County, DE service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Bear?
Call Dom with the address and the project, or send the details through the form. The walkthrough is free and the estimate comes in writing.