Home Remodeling in Kennett Square, PA
Kitchen, bath, basement and exterior work for the borough houses and the township neighborhoods of Kennett Square.
Kennett Square is two municipalities that share a name and a ZIP code. The borough is the old town: its historic district, listed on the National Register in 1989, is 507 contributing buildings put up mostly between 1875 and 1924 in Colonial Revival, Victorian and Federal styles, twins and singles and storefronts on a grid around State Street. The borough has also been one of Chester County's fastest-growing places since 2020. Kennett Township wraps around it, and that is where the 1980s-to-2010s subdivisions, the larger lots and most of the houses with a Kennett Square address actually are, along with the mushroom farms that make this the mushroom capital of the country.
The borough house is a Victorian twin with plaster, a narrow lot and a rear kitchen; the township house is a 1995 colonial with a builder kitchen and an unfinished basement. Dawson's serves both, about forty minutes from Middletown.
Borough permits and township permits are different offices
Inside the borough, a zoning permit is required for every exterior renovation, addition or change of use, and if the property is historic the borough's historic commission may need to approve the work first; building permits and inspections are handled through the borough offices on South Broad Street. Kennett Township is a separate government with its own building codes official, its own permit forms and its own inspections, working from the state's Uniform Construction Code. The same project on either side of the borough line means a different application, a different fee and a different inspector, and Chester County itself issues no building permits at all.
Victorian twins and singles
A house in the historic district has plaster on lath, tall windows, a kitchen in a rear wing and a bathroom fitted in a century ago. Kitchens get rebuilt in the wing with cabinetry fitted to old walls and ceilings and the plumbing kept to existing chases; baths get proper subfloors, waterproofing and ventilation. On a twin the party wall is shared, so structural changes and the exterior are coordinated with the neighbor. Windows and siding on a reviewed house are chosen to match the block, which usually means wood or wood-look units with the original divided-light pattern rather than stock vinyl.
The township subdivisions
In Kennett Township the projects are the ones a 1985-to-2010 colonial calls for: the kitchen opened to the family room with an island, the primary bath's platform tub replaced by a tiled shower, the poured-concrete basement finished into a family room with a bath, and, at twenty-five years, siding and windows replaced with vinyl or fiber cement and insulated double-hung units. Most of these communities have homeowners associations whose architectural committees review exterior changes before the township permit.
Dawson's serves Kennett Square for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Toughkenamon, Yorklyn, Unionville and Avondale.
Kennett Square is part of the Chester County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Kennett Square?
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.