Home Remodeling in Magnolia, DE
Remodeling for the houses inside Magnolia's circle, south of Dover.
Magnolia grew up around a crossroads. By about 1845 the point where the road from Dover to Frederica met the road from Canterbury to Barker's Landing on the St. Jones River had become the center of a small village, on land that went back to a grant from the Duke of York. When the town incorporated in 1885 it drew its limits as a circle around that intersection, and it has kept the circle, turning down annexation rather than growing past it. It borrowed for a fire engine in 1893 and built its own water plant in 1929, and it still runs its own water department. The John B. Lindale House, the Matthew Lowber House and the Governor George Truitt House are all on the National Register.
A fixed boundary means a fixed number of lots. The census counted 310 people in 1960, 225 in 2010 and 277 in 2020: a town that has barely changed size in sixty years. With the boundary fixed, remodeling in Magnolia is mostly about getting more out of the houses already inside the circle. Dawson's serves Magnolia and the roads around it.
The mayor's permit comes first
Magnolia's permit rule is short. Under Ordinance 701, anyone building or adding onto a structure in town first gets a construction permit from the mayor or vice mayor, with a full description of the work, an estimated finish date and a rough value. That town permit then goes to Kent County, which issues the building permit and inspects, and the town follows the county's guidelines on which jobs need a permit at all. The town permit is good for a year. Two things to know ahead of time: no permit is issued while the property owes the town taxes or water bills, and the town's form sets its own setbacks.
Adding room inside a fixed circle
Those setbacks are ten feet from any road or street and ten feet from the side and rear lines, and the form applies them to any structure, so a deck, a porch or a shed is measured the same way as the house. On a small lot they decide what an addition can be. The first measurement on any Magnolia addition is the distance from the back wall to the rear line. Where that is tight, going up can gain what going out cannot: a second story over a one-story wing, or an attic finished into a bedroom with dormers. A detached garage or a new shed answers to the same ten feet, and on a narrow lot that can settle where it goes before anything else does.
Inside the older houses near the crossroads, the projects are the usual ones for a 19th-century town: kitchens replanned in rooms that were never meant to hold them, baths rebuilt from the framing, and windows and siding chosen to sit well beside the houses on either side.
Ready to plan a remodel in Magnolia?
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.