Home Remodeling in Claymont, DE
Kitchen, bath, basement and exterior work for the older and newer housing of Claymont, Delaware.
Claymont is the industrial northeast corner of the state, and its housing was built for the plants. General Chemical opened in 1912, National Aniline in 1914 and Worth Steel in 1916, and Overlook Colony was laid out in the early 1910s as workforce housing for General Chemical, with a street plan by city planner John Nolen and buildings by architect H. Errol Coffin. That makes Claymont one of the better places in the country to see planned worker housing, and Overlook Colony was renovated top to bottom in 2005. Around it, the blocks off Philadelphia Pike filled in through the 1920s, 1940s and 1950s with brick twins, Cape Cods and small colonials.
The newest housing is the largest project in town. Darley Green, on the 68 acres that were the Brookview garden apartments before they fell into disrepair in the 1990s, has been rebuilt since its first units in 2009 into a mix of 831 townhomes, apartments and shops, with the Claymont Renaissance Development Corporation, formed in 2006, behind the effort. Dawson's serves both ends of that story: the 1940s twin that needs its first real kitchen and the 2012 townhome whose builder finishes are starting to show.
Permits and the county line
Claymont is unincorporated, so building permits come from the Licensing Division of New Castle County's Department of Land Use, not from a town hall. That matters because the Pennsylvania line is minutes away and the rules change at it completely: a project in Boothwyn or Marcus Hook goes through a township office under Pennsylvania's construction code. Inside Darley Green and the newer townhome communities, the homeowners association has its own architectural rules on top of the county permit for anything on the exterior.
Twins, Cape Cods and shared walls
Much of Claymont's older stock is the brick twin: two houses sharing a party wall, each with a side yard and a basement. The kitchen is at the back and usually small, and the most common plan takes down the wall to the dining room and runs the counter along the shared wall where the plumbing already is. Cape Cods here have half-finished second floors under the roof, and turning that space into a proper bedroom and bath means insulation, dormers and a plumbing run planned with the first-floor bath below.
Basements under the 1940s and 1950s houses are block or poured and tend to be dry enough to finish. In the older Overlook Colony houses the details are protected by the character of the place, and exterior work there is planned to match what the 2005 renovation restored.
Exterior work off Philadelphia Pike
Siding replacement and window replacement are common needs in Claymont because so many houses had aluminum or first-generation vinyl put on decades ago. On a twin, the siding job is coordinated at the party wall so the two halves still read as one house. Vinyl and fiber cement both suit the modest scale of these houses, and double-hung replacements fit the original openings without changing the look of the street.
Dawson's serves Claymont for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Arden, Boothwyn, Marcus Hook and North Wilmington.
Claymont is part of the New Castle County, DE service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Claymont?
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.