Home Remodeling in Hartly, DE
Remodeling for the older houses of Hartly, Delaware, and the farm country around it.
Hartly is Delaware's smallest town by both population and area. It sits where Arthursville Road, Main Street and Everetts Corner Road meet, about ten miles west of Dover, on a corner that once marked four Maryland land grants. The place was Hawkins Corner after an 1840 chapel, then Arthursville on the 1868 county atlas. When the post office opened in 1882 there were two houses, a store, a school and a church, and a railroad station came soon after. The town took the name of Mr. Hart, a railroad man who pushed to get that station built. A hotel for twenty-five guests went up in 1883, and by 1888 the town had 105 residents. Strawberry and tomato markets kept it busy into the 1930s, and the last train ran in April 1982.
The town's own walking count in its 2016 plan found 37 houses inside the limits, and only one had gone up in the previous twenty years, as a replacement for an older house. Almost every house in Hartly, then, is an old one being kept up, not a new one being built. Dawson's serves Hartly and the farms along the roads out of it.
A council permit and a fire official's sign-off
Hartly owns no buildings and has no staff; the council meets at the fire company. It still issues its own building permits under a 2016 ordinance that spells out when construction or demolition needs a town permit and what it costs, and an amendment adds approval by the fire official for certain kinds of construction and alterations. The town permit comes first. Kent County then issues its building permit and the county's inspectors do the inspections. For a kitchen, a bath or an addition, that is two approvals before work starts, and it is worth asking early whether your project is one that needs the fire official as well.
A town of pre-1955 houses
In 2003 the Kent County preservation planner surveyed Hartly and recorded 43 structures built before 1955, enough to outline an area that might qualify as a historic district. Nothing in town is on the National Register today, so ordinary zoning is the only rule on the outside. The houses are what a small railroad crossroads put up over seventy years: frame houses facing the main roads, most of them changed and added to by several owners.
Remodeling there is the practical kind. Kitchens get replanned around today's appliances, with the electrical service brought up to carry them. Old baths get rebuilt starting with the floor structure. Worn siding and single-pane windows get replaced, which is often the change you notice most on a small house. Where the lot allows, a rear addition, a finished attic or a deck gives the house room it never had.
Ready to plan a remodel in Hartly?
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.