Home Remodeling in Chester Heights, PA
Remodeling for the townhouses, the single homes on large lots and the older houses of Chester Heights.
Chester Heights was the northern end of Aston Township until 1945, when its residents, after nearly two centuries of discontent with the township lines, formed their own borough. Its history is summer country. The Baltimore Pike and the railroad brought estates, resort hotels in the 1880s and, from 1872, the Methodists of the Chester Heights Camp Meeting, who still gather every July. The camp grounds on Valley Brook Road became a National Register historic district in 2001: 101 cottages built from about 1876 to 1920 in Gothic Revival, Queen Anne and plain camp meeting styles. The houses on Station Road near the old Wawa station went up mostly in the first two decades of the 1900s.
Then very little was built until the 1970s, when the Valleybrook townhouses and new single and multifamily housing doubled the borough's population in one decade. The borough's own plan describes it as low density, with many single-family homes on lots of an acre or more. Dawson's serves Chester Heights, about forty-five minutes from Middletown.
Borough permits, and the sewer question
Chester Heights issues its own building permits, for new buildings, additions, alterations, repairs and remodeling, from the borough office on West Baltimore Pike, where applications go to the Building Inspector. Its zoning chapter dates from 1983. What sets the borough apart is sewage. Public sewers reach only two areas; Valleybrook and Darlington Woods run on their own small treatment plants, and the rest of the borough relies on individual on-lot systems. On a septic lot, a new bedroom or bathroom is weighed against what the system can carry, and an addition has to stay clear of the drain field, so the site plan comes before the floor plan.
Valleybrook and the 1970s townhouses
Valleybrook is 264 townhouses from the 1970s, interior and end units, most with two or three bedrooms. Townhouses of that age remodel in a particular way. The galley kitchen opens toward the dining area where the framing allows, the hall bath is rebuilt from the joists with new supply lines and a fan ducted outside, and the shared walls are treated with respect for fire separation and sound. On the outside, siding, windows and decks are association business before they are anyone else's.
Acre lots and the older houses
The single homes on large lots, from the growth years and earlier, take the whole list: kitchens, primary baths, finished basements, and additions where the setbacks and the septic field leave room. The early-1900s houses on Station Road have plaster, older wiring and baths added later, and they get the patient treatment an old frame house needs. The camp meeting cottages are a case of their own: the grounds have no sewage service beyond a bath house and the caretaker's house, and seasonal living in the cottages is no longer allowed, so work there means repairing framing, porches and trim rather than adding kitchens or baths.
Dawson's serves Chester Heights for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Glen Mills, Concordville, Garnet Valley and Aston.
Chester Heights is part of the Delaware County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Chester Heights?
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.