Home Remodeling in Boothwyn, PA
Remodeling for the Cape Cods, ranchers and older houses of Boothwyn and Upper Chichester Township.
Boothwyn started as McCaysville, a crossroads village at Chichester Avenue and Meetinghouse Road that grew around the Chichester Friends Meeting, organized in 1682, whose meetinghouse dates from 1769. The McCay-Pierce House, still on the southwest corner of that intersection, was the main house of a 350-acre estate called Boothwyn Farms and served at different times as a school, post office and church. The estate was subdivided starting around 1892, and the village took the Boothwyn name in the early 1900s. Chichester Avenue itself follows a Lenape ridge trail that settlers turned into Old Concord Road.
Most of what was built on those lots is mid-century. In the township's 2021 study of the Boothwyn town center, more than 55 percent of the houses dated from before 1959, nearly a third from the 1950s alone, and fewer than 5 percent from after 1990. Upper Chichester as a whole grew from 5,280 people in 1940 to 9,682 in 1960. Dawson's serves Boothwyn and the rest of the township, about thirty-five minutes from Middletown.
Upper Chichester's License and Inspection department
Boothwyn is not a municipality. Upper Chichester Township issues its building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing and fire protection permits through its License and Inspection department, which sends plan review and inspections to a third-party agency under the state construction code. One township rule shapes additions: a project of 750 square feet or more has to carry grading and stormwater management, with an engineered plan and an escrow, so a large addition is sized with that threshold in view. The township's historic sites survey counts 41 historic resources in Boothwyn alone and its ordinance adds a demolition review for them, but there is no historic district and no historic commission reviewing exterior changes.
Cape Cods and ranchers from the 1950s
The typical Boothwyn house is a Cape Cod or a rancher from the years right after the war, with a small kitchen closed off from the living room and a single bath. The kitchen wall is usually a partition, so taking it out and running a peninsula into the old dining space is the change that does the most. The bath gets stripped to the framing, and the old cast-iron and galvanized lines come out while the floor is open. A Cape's upstairs, often two small rooms under the roof slope, can become a real primary suite with a shed dormer and a bath stacked over the one below. Where the basement has the headroom, it becomes a family room once the water is under control.
Older houses on Chichester Avenue
The town center still has houses from before 1940 along Chichester Avenue, some turned into businesses and many still homes. They are frame or stone with plaster and rear kitchens, and they get fitted cabinetry, rebuilt baths and exterior work that keeps the old street face. On the mid-century streets, the original windows and the aluminum or asbestos-cement siding that often covered them are due for replacement, with insulation added while the walls are open.
Dawson's serves Boothwyn for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Marcus Hook, Claymont, Garnet Valley and Arden.
Boothwyn is part of the Delaware County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Boothwyn?
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.