Home Remodeling in Wallingford, PA
Remodeling for the old estates, the commuter houses and the postwar streets of Wallingford.
Wallingford took its name from a mill. Thomas Allen, who came from Wallingford, England, started a cotton mill on Crum Creek in 1763, and people began calling the whole area after it. Nether Providence Township went on to hold fourteen major mill complexes, six on Crum Creek and eight on Ridley Creek. After the Civil War, well-off Philadelphians built summer houses here, and the railroad of 1854 and the trolleys of the 1890s turned the township into a place to commute from; the Wallingford station is attributed to Frank Furness. Three properties are on the National Register: Avondale, the Thomas Leiper estate, along with Westlawn and Wolley Stille. At the south end, Garden City went up in the 1940s as row houses and ranch houses for returning World War II veterans.
One ZIP code, then, covers a 19th-century summer house on a big lot, a commuter single in Wallingford Summit or Heatherwold, and a compact Garden City ranch. Dawson's serves all of them, about forty-five minutes from Middletown.
Nether Providence Township issues the permits
Wallingford has no government of its own. It is the largest community in Nether Providence Township, and the township's code office on Sykes Lane handles its permits. The township's own guidance: a building permit is needed for structural work, such as removing or building a wall, and for any addition, new house or demolition, while nearly all plumbing and electrical work needs a permit too and a shed needs a zoning permit. The township also has a Historical Commission that keeps a survey of historic buildings and advises the commissioners when a demolition permit would affect a historic resource, which is worth knowing before anything old on a property comes down.
Rose Valley shares the mail and not the rules
Some addresses nearby are in Rose Valley, a separate borough of about a thousand people that uses both the Wallingford and Media ZIP codes. Architect William Lightfoot Price founded it in 1901 as an Arts and Crafts colony on 80 acres around a former textile mill, and the Rose Valley Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2010, covers nearly the entire borough. Rose Valley issues its own permits, so a house there answers to a different office than its neighbor across the township line.
From summer houses to Garden City
The big 19th-century houses have old-house problems at a larger size: tall plaster walls, kitchens moved more than once, and baths tucked into former dressing rooms. Doing them well takes careful demolition, new subfloors and plumbing runs planned around the framing. Garden City is the opposite, compact 1940s row houses and ranches where every foot counts, so the work is a kitchen with smarter storage, a bath rebuilt inside its walls, new windows and siding, and on the ranches a deck or a rear addition where the lot allows.
Dawson's serves Wallingford for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, additions, windows, siding, decks and carpentry.
Nearby, Dawson's also serves Swarthmore, Brookhaven, Media and Aston.
Wallingford is part of the Delaware County, PA service area.
Ready to plan a remodel in Wallingford?
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.