Home Remodeling in Edgemoor, DE
Kitchen, bath and exterior updates for the 1940s and postwar houses of Edgemoor.
Edgemoor grew around industry on the Delaware River. The Edge Moor Iron Company, incorporated in 1869, built its bridge works on the river north of Wilmington and developed a village for it in 1871. The plant fabricated the deck of the Brooklyn Bridge, was sold to the American Bridge Company in 1900 and closed in 1925. In the 1930s the property passed to what became a DuPont subsidiary, and titanium dioxide was made there for nearly eight decades. The housing that defines Edgemoor today came with that second wave of plant work. Edgemoor Gardens went up in the 1940s. It is said to have been planned for military families, and after construction restarted under new developers in 1942 the houses went to DuPont plant workers. The county counts 382 properties in it.
Most houses in Edgemoor Gardens and the streets around it were built between 1940 and 1969, and they are modest single-family homes on small lots. The oldest are now past eighty, and many still have the room layout they were built with. Dawson's serves Edgemoor for the updates that age brings, inside and out.
County permits and a civic association
Edgemoor is unincorporated, so building permits and inspections come from New Castle County's Department of Land Use on Reads Way. There is no design approval layered on top. Edgemoor Gardens has a civic association rather than a covenanted homeowners association: it was revived in the 1980s, and around 2013 its two branches, Edge Moor Gardens and Edgemoor Gardens, merged under by-laws that let tenants take part along with owners. The Edgemoor Revitalization Cooperative, formed in 2006, made the neighborhood one of Delaware's first Blueprint Communities by 2008. For an exterior project, that means the county permit is the only approval to plan for.
Getting more out of a small house
A 1940s house here is compact, and the plans that work get more out of the rooms it already has. The kitchen is usually closed off and small. Taking out the wall to the living or dining room, where it does not carry load, and running the cabinets and counter along one side turns it into a room two people can cook in. One bathroom serves the whole house, so a rebuild is scheduled to be short, and a half bath can sometimes be found in a closet or under a stair. Where the house has a basement, it gets a moisture check before anyone talks about finishing it.
Siding and windows on the older streets
Houses of this age have usually had one round of exterior work already, often aluminum or early vinyl siding over the original walls and replacement windows from decades ago. Taking that off is a chance to look at the sheathing, add house wrap and flash the openings properly before new vinyl or fiber cement goes on. Double-hung replacements with insulated glass, sized to the original openings, keep the proportions of the house. On a small house the shell is a large share of the whole, so tight windows and a sealed wall make a difference you can feel in the rooms.
Dawson's serves Edgemoor for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Bellefonte, Wilmington, North Wilmington and Claymont.
Edgemoor is part of the New Castle County, DE service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Edgemoor?
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.