Home Remodeling in West Chester, PA
Kitchen, bath, basement and exterior work for the borough of West Chester and the townships around it.
West Chester is the Chester County seat and a college town, and its borough is a grid of brick rowhouses, twins and Victorians around the courthouse and West Chester University. It has been one of Chester County's fastest-growing places since 2020, up nearly 22 percent, as apartments and townhomes filled its edges. Most houses with a West Chester address are outside the borough, in West Goshen, East Bradford, Westtown and East Goshen townships, where the housing is 1950s ranchers and split-levels close in and 1980s-to-2000s colonials farther out.
That gives a remodel in West Chester two very different starting points. A borough rowhouse from 1890 has plaster, a party wall, a rear kitchen and a stone cellar, and its exterior may answer to a review board. A township colonial from 1992 has a builder kitchen, a garden tub and a poured basement waiting to be finished. Dawson's serves both, about an hour from Middletown.
The borough's Building and Housing Department and HARB
The Borough of West Chester enforces Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code through its own Building and Housing Department, which reviews and issues construction permits, zoning approvals and rental inspections. Work in the borough's historic district goes through its Planning and Zoning Department and the Historical and Architectural Review Board. No exterior architectural character of a structure in the district may be altered until the permit application has been reviewed by HARB, recommended for a certificate of appropriateness and approved by Borough Council. Interior work does not go to HARB. The townships around the borough each run their own permit office under the same state code, so an address in West Goshen or East Bradford files with the township, not the borough.
Rowhouses and twins with no HOA and one review board
Historic rowhouses and twins on borough streets typically have no homeowners association at all, which makes interior projects simpler: the kitchen at the back opens to the dining room along the party wall where the plumbing runs, the second-floor bath gets rebuilt over it, and the stone cellar is assessed for moisture before anyone talks about finishing it. What the district does regulate is the street face, so a window replacement on a HARB block means wood or wood-look units matched to the originals and a certificate before the permit.
The township colonials
Outside the borough the projects are the standard ones for a 1980s-to-2000s subdivision: the peninsula kitchen turned into an island kitchen, the primary bath rebuilt around a tiled shower, the basement finished with a bath, and siding and windows replaced at the twenty-five-year mark. The township permit comes first and the homeowners association, where there is one, reviews the exterior.
Ready to plan a remodel in West Chester?
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.