Home Remodeling in Christiana, DE
Remodeling for the village houses and the 1980s-to-2000s communities of Christiana, Delaware.
Christiana is two places with one name. The village at the junction of Route 7 and Route 273 was a colonial port at the head of navigation on the Christina River, established in 1684 and named for the Swedish queen, with ten or so buildings standing by 1739 and the Marquis de Lafayette landing 1,500 troops there in 1781. Its historic district holds nine contributing buildings including the Brinkle-Maxwell House of about 1786 and the Christiana Presbyterian Church of 1757. Around that village, the modern Christiana grew up in the 1980s and 1990s on the strength of the Christiana Mall, Christiana Hospital and the Route 1 interchange with Interstate 95, and much of it was planned as one large development called Metroform.
So the houses are either very old or fairly new. The village has frame and brick houses from the 18th and 19th centuries on Main Street. Everything else is townhome and single-family communities from the 1980s through the 2000s along Route 7, Old Baltimore Pike and the roads toward Bear. Dawson's serves both.
Townhomes and the 1980s communities
The townhome is the Christiana house. Sixteen to twenty feet wide, three levels, a kitchen at the back or the middle, a bath and a half or two and a half, and a lower level that is either a garage and a family room or an unfinished basement. Remodeling one means working within the width: galley kitchens gain the most from removing the wall to the dining area and adding lighting, and the lower level often becomes the second living room. Single-family houses in the same communities have the 1990 colonial plan with a kitchen open to a family room through a peninsula, which usually becomes an island.
Permits and association approvals
Christiana is unincorporated, so building permits come from the Licensing Division of New Castle County's Department of Land Use. Nearly every community here has a homeowners association or condominium association with rules about exterior changes, work hours and dumpsters, and a townhome's shared walls make the neighbors part of the planning as well. Interior projects usually need only the county permit. The village's historic district is a National Register listing, which recognizes the houses but does not by itself add a review step for interior work.
Village houses on Main Street
The older houses in the village are a different job: plaster walls, deep window jambs, additions layered on over two centuries, and basements that may be stone. Kitchens there are usually in a rear addition and get rebuilt in place. Window and siding work on a house of that age is done to match the proportions and profiles the street already has, and where a house carries the county's historic zoning, the county's historic review applies to exterior changes.
Ready to plan a remodel in Christiana?
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.