Home Remodeling in Delaware County, PA

Delaware County is 49 municipalities packed between Philadelphia and the Delaware state line, and its two halves aged differently. The eastern boroughs filled in around the trolley and rail lines before 1950, while the western townships, Bethel, Concord, Chadds Ford and Thornbury, took the 1990s and 2000s single-family subdivisions on what had been farms and estates along Route 1 and Route 202. Media, the county seat, is the old center of that side, a borough of 19th-century houses on a grid around a courthouse.

The houses in those townships are the two ends of that story. A Glen Mills or Garnet Valley colonial from 1995 has the builder-grade kitchen, the unfinished basement and the homeowners association that come with its era. A Media or Chadds Ford house from 1900 has plaster, a stone foundation and a historic character worth keeping through the remodel.

As everywhere in Pennsylvania, each township and borough issues its own building permits under the Uniform Construction Code, usually through a third-party inspection agency. The county issues none. Chadds Ford's ZIP code crosses into Chester County, so two townships in two counties issue permits for it. For any address in the western townships, call with the township and the project.