Home Remodeling in Kemblesville, PA
Remodeling for the historic village of Kemblesville and the newer houses of Franklin Township around it.
Kemblesville was called Fox Chase until the Kemble family, settled here since colonial times and prominent in the 1800s, lent the village its present name. Its roots go back to the late 18th century. Franklin Township, created from New London Township in 1852, is named for Benjamin Franklin, who is thought to have owned land in the area. The village's Methodist church keeps the Kemble family graveyard, the elementary school dates from 1955, and the Kemblesville Historic District preserves the village largely as it looked in the late 19th century. Around it the township grew fast: its population rose 84 percent in the 1980s and another 45 percent in the 1990s, reaching 4,433 in 2020, and it runs south to the Maryland line near Fair Hill.
That makes two kinds of Kemblesville house: the 19th-century village house inside a reviewed district, and the 1980s or 1990s house on the township's roads. Dawson's serves the village and the township from Middletown, about thirty-five minutes away past Newark.
The Kemblesville HARB comes before the permit
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission certified the Kemblesville Historic District in September 2003. Under Franklin Township's ordinance, exterior work on a property in the district needs a certificate of appropriateness before a building permit can be issued. The Historical Architectural Review Board meets on the first Wednesday of each month and wants a complete application a week ahead; its members look at the site from the road, and the board may take up to 45 business days to make its recommendation, though it usually moves faster. The Supervisors then decide at their meeting on the third Wednesday. The board asks for photographs and samples of the actual materials, and it measures the work against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation. Each property already has a historic resource survey on file, with a sketch and roadside photos.
Franklin Township's zoning and code officer
Franklin Township handles building permits through its zoning and code enforcement officer, who keeps public hours at the township building on Monday and Wednesday afternoons and schedules building inspections as well. Work has to begin within one year of the permit or the permit lapses. Interior work in a village house, such as a kitchen or a bath, goes to the permit office alone, because the certificate covers only the exterior.
Village houses and township houses
A village house here has plaster, small rooms, and a kitchen and bath fitted in long after it was built. Inside, the job is a kitchen laid out around the windows and chimney the house already has, and a bathroom rebuilt on a sound floor with real ventilation. Outside, the application is the plan: roofing, siding and windows specified by material and color before anything is ordered. The township's houses from the 1980s and 1990s are larger and easier to change: kitchens opened to the family room, basements finished, decks rebuilt, and siding and windows replaced.
Dawson's serves Kemblesville for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves New London, Landenberg, West Grove and Avondale.
Kemblesville is part of the Chester County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Kemblesville?
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.