Home Remodeling in Woodside, DE
Remodeling for the older Main Street houses and the 1950s homes of Woodside, Delaware.
Woodside was a depot before it was a town. In August 1864 Henry Cowgill, who had already cut a five-mile road from his farm to the rail line, got the railroad to put a station there, when the spot had two houses and about eight people. The stop was Willow Grove Station, then Fredonia, and in 1869 it became Woodside, by local account for the logs and railroad ties stacked on the lot beside the station. Canneries followed in the late 1870s, and between 1900 and 1930 the town grew quickly as the center of the peninsula's peach belt, shipping peaches and tomatoes by rail. It incorporated in 1911, and its brick station stood until passenger service ended in 1939.
A 1983 state survey of Woodside's historic structures recorded buildings from 1820 to 1940, most of them on Main Street, and the Methodist church, begun in 1889, is on the National Register. Then came a second layer: census estimates in the town's 2018 plan put the largest share of its houses in the 1950s, with about a quarter from before 1939. Dawson's serves Woodside and the farms around it.
A letter from the mayor and council
Woodside has no full-time staff, and its council handles permits by vote. Before Kent County will issue a building permit, the mayor looks over the plans and the mayor and council give you a letter of approval, which goes to the county with your application. From there the county's office of inspections and enforcement issues the permit and follows the job through. The town's list of what needs a permit is worth reading before you assume a job is exempt. It includes finished basements, a roof replacement covering more than a quarter of the roof, decks, retaining walls over four feet and fences over four feet.
Main Street's older houses
The houses the 1983 survey counted are frame houses from the railroad and cannery years, and they have been kept up in pieces for a century or more, which is what shows when a wall comes open. A kitchen remodel in one of them usually means new wiring and plumbing runs as well as cabinets, and a bath rebuilt from the joists up. The outside is where the age shows most, and new siding and windows chosen to keep the old proportions do the most for it.
The 1950s houses
The postwar houses are simpler to work on. Most are compact, with a small kitchen and a single bath, and they are good candidates for taking down the wall between kitchen and dining room, adding a second bath, and putting a family room or a deck across the back. Where one of them has a basement, finishing it adds living space without adding footprint, and in Woodside it goes on the permit list like any other finished basement.
Ready to plan a remodel in Woodside?
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.