Home Remodeling in Greenville, DE
Kitchen, bath and addition work for the houses along Kennett Pike, from Westover Hills up through chateau country.
Greenville sits on Kennett Pike, the road the Wilmington and Kennett Turnpike Company incorporated in 1811 and Pierre du Pont rebuilt as a modern highway between 1916 and 1920. By then du Pont family members and businesses owned 48 percent of the frontage on the Delaware side of the pike, which stopped ordinary subdivision cold while the rest of the county sprawled after the war. The result is chateau country: estates, the Winterthur grounds, and Centreville's small village a few miles up the road. Westover Hills, laid out in 1927 as the city's first upscale suburb, is the gateway to it, with almost 400 properties in Tudor, French, Colonial and ranch styles on large lawns.
The houses here are bigger and older than the county average and were built to last, which changes the remodeling conversation. A Westover Hills colonial from 1935 has plaster, hardwood, a slate roof and a kitchen that was staffed rather than lived in. Dawson's serves Greenville for the work that brings those houses into the present without erasing what makes them worth owning.
Kitchens built for a different century
Prewar kitchens in Greenville are often a series of small rooms: the kitchen, a pantry, a back hall and a maid's room. The plan that works combines them into one working kitchen with an eating area, keeps the plumbing wall, and reuses the back stair or the pantry as a scullery. Cabinetry is usually custom because stock sizes do not fit nine-foot ceilings and original casings, and the finishes are chosen to sit beside the house's existing millwork.
Bathrooms, additions and the estate lots
Bathrooms in these houses are original tile over mud beds with cast-iron fixtures, and rebuilding one means new subfloor, new plumbing and tile chosen to suit the house. Primary suites are often carved from two small bedrooms. Additions are common on the larger lots along the pike, where a family room, a first-floor suite or a garage with rooms above can go on without crowding the neighbors. Matching stone, brick, slate and window proportions is most of the design work on a Greenville addition.
Permits through the county
Greenville is unincorporated, so building permits go through the Licensing Division of New Castle County's Department of Land Use rather than the City of Wilmington, whose line is close by. Some houses in the area are on the National Register, which adds no review, and where a house is in a county historic overlay, the county's historic review adds a step for exterior changes. Windows and siding on a prewar house here are usually a restoration question as much as a replacement one.
Dawson's serves Greenville for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Rockland, Elsmere, Centreville and Marshallton.
Greenville is part of the New Castle County, DE service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Greenville?
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.