Home Remodeling in Cheswold, DE
Kitchens, baths, additions and exterior work for the old center and the newer streets of Cheswold, Delaware.
Cheswold began as a stop on the Delaware Railroad in 1856. It was Leipsic Station at first, then Moorton, after John S. Moor, who kept the general store and the post office, and a naming contest just before the town incorporated in 1889 gave it the name it has now. By 1860 the place had about 35 homes, three general stores, a wheelwright, a brickyard and a grain warehouse, and it shipped the area's grain and fruit north by rail. For most of the next century it stayed about that size. Then it grew fast. The census counted 313 people in 2000, 1,380 in 2010 and 1,923 in 2020, and developments like Parkers Run, off Main Street, are part of the newer town.
So a Cheswold house is usually one of two things: an older frame house near Main Street and Commerce Street, where the town started, or a house from the last twenty-some years on one of the newer streets. Each needs different work, and the paperwork runs through the town either way. Dawson's serves Cheswold, about twenty miles south of Middletown.
A building department of its own
Cheswold keeps its permits in town. It runs a Building and Public Works Department, and its building inspector comes from an outside code firm the town has used since 2016, so plan questions and inspection calls go to Cheswold rather than to the county office in Dover. The town's checklist for work on an existing house asks for a drawing of anything attached to the house, a deck, a porch, a roof over a porch, a ramp, and for where it ties into what is already there. Every contractor and subcontractor on the job needs a Town of Cheswold license on top of the state one, with proof of coverage in writing. Even a shed has town setbacks: two feet off the rear and side lines on an interior lot, ten feet on the side of a corner lot.
Frame houses from the railroad years
A house from Cheswold's first century is frame, and most have been added onto more than once, so the first step on any remodel is finding out what the framing actually carries before a wall comes out. The kitchen is often the room that got the least attention over the years, and a bath may have been carved out of a bedroom or a back porch. Remodeling one usually means taking the kitchen to the studs and replanning it around today's appliances, and giving the bath a solid floor and a fan vented outside. On the outside you are choosing between repairing old siding and replacing it, and between keeping old sash and ordering new windows sized to the existing openings.
Newer houses on the growing edge
The houses built since 2000 are due for their first round of updates. The questions there are finishes and space: a kitchen with more working counter and an island, a primary bath with a walk-in shower where the tub was, a deck off the back door, a basement or a bonus room turned into living space where the house has one. Where a development has an association, its rules on siding color, windows and decks apply alongside the town permit, not instead of it.
Ready to plan a remodel in Cheswold?
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.