Home Remodeling in Brookhaven, PA
Kitchens, baths, basements and exterior work for the postwar houses of Brookhaven, the borough between the two creeks.
Brookhaven is a young borough on old ground. The land between Chester Creek and Ridley Creek was dairy farms and two mills for most of its history, and in the late 1800s much of it belonged to John Price Crozer's stock farms, which developers bought after his death. When the borough incorporated on April 4, 1945, it had 672 people in 150 homes. Then the building started: 1,042 residents in 1950, 5,280 in 1960, 7,370 in 1970. Today its 1,094 acres hold more than 3,600 homes, apartments and condominiums. Cambridge Estates is typical of the single houses, detached homes built mainly from the 1950s through the 1970s with three or four bedrooms and one and a half to two and a half baths, on a quarter to half an acre.
That makes a Brookhaven house, most of the time, sixty or seventy years old with its original floor plan: the kitchen where the builder put it and a hall bath retiled once. It is a good house to remodel, with sound framing, a simple layout and room on the lot. Dawson's serves Brookhaven from Middletown, about forty minutes up I-95.
Borough permits and the transfer inspection
Brookhaven runs its own Building and Code Enforcement office from the municipal building on Cambridge Road, and that office does more than issue permits. It registers contractors who work in the borough, licenses rentals, enforces the zoning code and inspects a house each time it changes hands. Borough code says no one may build, alter or enlarge any part of a building until the owner or the contractor has applied for and received a permit, and permit fees can be paid online. Two practical results: the contractor's borough registration has to be in place before the permit is issued, and a recent buyer may already hold a list from the transfer inspection that makes sense to fold into the same project.
Postwar singles, room by room
Kitchens in these houses were built for one cook and closed off from the dining room, and the wall between them often carries no load, so opening it is usually the first step in a kitchen remodel. Bathrooms from the 1950s and 1960s are small, tiled over mortar beds, with cast iron tubs; rebuilding one means stripping to the studs, leveling the floor and adding the exhaust fan the original never had. Where there is a basement it is poured or block, and once the grading and gutters are right it is the easiest square footage on the property to add.
Outside, most of these houses have had one round of exterior work already, siding over the original and replacement windows from the 1980s or 1990s, and both are due again. Lots of a quarter acre and more leave room for a rear deck or a family room addition, which the borough checks against its zoning setbacks before the building permit.
Dawson's serves Brookhaven for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Wallingford, Aston, Swarthmore and Media.
Brookhaven is part of the Delaware County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Brookhaven?
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.