Home Remodeling in Pocopson, PA
Remodeling for the farmhouses, village houses and newer homes of Pocopson Township.
Pocopson is a township, and it has long been a rural place of villages and hamlets: Northbrook, Lenape and Pocopson itself, strung along the West Branch and the main stem of the Brandywine. The Wilmington and Northern Railroad carried passengers and freight from 1870 with stops at Pocopson, Lenape, Wawaset and Northbrook, and a trolley tied Lenape to West Chester from 1891 and to Kennett Square from 1904 until it quit in 1929. Two National Register districts listed in 1985 survive from those years: Northbrook, 165 acres and fourteen contributing buildings shared with Newlin and West Bradford, and Trimbleville, a hamlet of about six homes where British troops crossed the West Branch in September 1777. A county survey in the early 1980s counted 72 historic sites in the township.
Most of the houses are far newer. Pocopson had 1,189 housing units in 2010 after adding almost 300 in the 2000s, the large majority of them single-family houses on lots of one to two acres, plus townhouses at Riverside off Route 52, Tullamore off Denton Hollow Road and Windy Hill off Locust Grove Road. Dawson's serves the whole township from Middletown, about an hour to the south.
Pocopson Township's permit office
Pocopson Township issues its own building permits and plans on about fifteen working days from a complete application to a permit. It wants two copies of a plot plan showing the setbacks, the well and the septic tank, two sets of construction drawings and the estimated cost of the work, and the permit has to stay visible from the street until the job is done. Every stage is inspected, electrical inspections go to an outside agency, and starting before the permit is issued doubles the fee. For a finished basement, the township's packet spells out the code's second way out: a walkout door, a hatchway, or an egress window with at least 5.7 square feet of clear opening and a proper well.
Historic houses and the Brandywine floodplain
The township's Historical Committee advises the planning commission on keeping new work in step with the historic character of the place, and the zoning ordinance grants bonus density for preserving historic sites and restoring historic buildings. The creek is the other limit. Federal maps show a floodway along the whole West Branch and main stem of the Brandywine in Pocopson, with broad floodplain north of the Route 842 and Route 52 bridges and around Lenape, and the township's plan notes that existing development near Routes 926 and 52 faces repeated flooding. Few uses are allowed in the floodway, so an addition on a creekside lot begins with the flood map.
The houses of the 2000s
The houses from the 2000s boom are large two-story singles on acre lots and the townhouse rows, all around twenty years old now. Their kitchens are ready for new cabinets, counters and lighting, their primary baths for a tiled shower where the soaking tub was, and their basements for a family room once the egress rule is met. Siding, windows and decks from those years are reaching the point where replacing them makes more sense than patching them.
Dawson's serves Pocopson for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Chadds Ford, West Chester, Thornton and Centreville.
Pocopson is part of the Chester County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Pocopson?
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.