Home remodelingin Allisonville, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Allisonville. We are a 15-minute drive away in Fishers, we pull the permit through the Marion County Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, and the crew that walks your house is the crew that builds the job.
We have been opening walls in Marion County since 2012
The Allisonville corridor along Fall Creek is post-war Washington Township — 1950s to 1970s houses on large lots, many backing onto the creek or its flood plain. Lot size is the distinguishing feature and it changes what is possible.
- Generous lots that make a footprint addition realistic where an inner-city neighbourhood would not allow it
- Properties near Fall Creek where the flood plain determines what can be built and how a basement should be treated
- Original single-pane windows and under-insulated 1960s wall cavities, worth addressing while a room is open
What each of them means in Allisonville
Bathroom remodeling in Allisonville
The common project here is the original hall bath: one room off a long bedroom corridor, a five-foot tub against the wet wall, and a thirty-inch vanity dropped in during the seventies where a wall-hung lavatory used to be. Two things about the era decide what the work is. The first is what the walls are made of. Through the fifties and into the early sixties, tile in this stock was set in a mortar bed over wire lath, and that does not strip out in an afternoon. It comes out in slabs, the floor loses better than an inch of height when the bed goes, and the threshold and door casing get reworked to suit. The second is the vent. The residential code still lets an openable window of adequate area stand in for an exhaust fan, which is why so many of these rooms never had one; replace that window with a fixed unit and mechanical ventilation stops being optional. Below the floor, expect cast iron or early plastic waste and one vent stack serving the whole bedroom wing, and where that stack sits usually decides whether a fixture can move two feet or stays put. What lots this size allow that a tighter neighborhood does not is pushing the room out through the exterior wall instead: a footing, a permit and a longer schedule, worth pricing against carving the space out of the hall closet.
Kitchen remodeling in Allisonville
These kitchens were planned as a workroom: a closed square, a doorway to the dining room, a service door to the garage or back yard, and one window over the sink facing a yard several times the size of the room. Whether the wall to the dining room is bearing depends on which way the joists run, which a floor plan will not tell you; we establish it before quoting a beam. What gets underestimated is everything else in that wall: the kitchen's only circuits, sometimes the sink vent, and in the earliest houses the flue chase from the original furnace. Rerouting those is often the larger part of the opening's cost. The boxed soffit over the wall cabinets is the same question: usually hollow, occasionally full of duct. Power is the other half. These kitchens ran on one or two general-purpose circuits: no dedicated feed for a dishwasher, disposal or microwave, no ground-fault protection at the counter. Current code expects two twenty-amp small-appliance circuits, GFCI at the counter receptacles, and no point along a countertop more than two feet from one. When the panel is still a hundred amps with no spare spaces, that goes on the estimate as its own line rather than arriving as a change order in week three. On a lot this deep the other move is out through the back wall, which turns a remodel into an addition on a footing below frost depth.
Basement finishing in Allisonville
Not every house here has one, and that is the first thing we establish. Plenty of the sixties ranches along the corridor sit on crawl space, and some have a basement under the original block with crawl under a bedroom wing added later. Where there is a basement, the fall of the ground toward Fall Creek does something useful: given enough drop, a footing drain can discharge to daylight instead of to a pump, and the same slope is what makes a real walkout door possible on a house that reads as fully below grade from the street. It cuts the other way as well. Ground that falls toward the creek sits closer to seasonal groundwater, so the reading we take on a dry August afternoon is not the one that governs the design. We plan for the wet end of March. Whether the address sits inside the mapped flood plain gets settled before anything is drawn rather than after, because it changes both what may be built below grade and what the permit asks for. Radon belongs at the same stage, not the last one. Marion County sits in EPA Radon Zone 1, and the practical consequence is scheduling: routing a passive stack while the walls are open and the slab is still exposed is ordinary work, while adding one to a finished basement means opening up what you just paid to close.
The ground along Fall Creek
Allisonville sits in the Fall Creek valley on the heavy clay that covers most of Central Indiana, and between the two of them a good deal of interior work starts outside the house. Water that turns up in a basement, or under a bathroom floor, has usually traveled there from a downspout, a grade that has gone flat, or a drive pitched back toward the slab. We look at all three before quoting anything below grade, because correcting them first is cheaper than correcting them afterward.
Clay that holds water and moves
Central Indiana clay drains slowly, holds water against a foundation wall, and moves with each freeze and thaw. Anything new that bears on the ground — a stoop, a deck pier, the footing under an addition — sits below the local frost line, roughly thirty to thirty-six inches here.
How close the water table sits
Ground that falls toward the creek sits closer to seasonal groundwater than the flat ground back from it. It is why a basement can stay dry for years and then take water for three weeks after a spring thaw. We plan for the March version, not the August one.
Marion County is Radon Zone 1
Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, the highest of the three, where roughly one home in three tests at or above the 4 pCi/L action level. That is worth knowing before a basement becomes a bedroom or an office, not after the drywall is hung.
Room to stage the work
The lots take a dumpster, a material drop and the crew's trucks without anything going in the street. On clay this soft in spring we stage on the drive and board out anything crossing grass, and we ask before a container goes on your driveway rather than after.
We pull the permit. You do not chase the Marion County Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.
Permits inside Marion County go through the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services at 200 E Washington Street, and residential review typically runs ten to fifteen business days — longer than any of the Hamilton County offices. DBNS also requires the applicant to be either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner.
All of it is built to the 2020 Indiana Residential Code — the 2018 International Residential Code plus the 2020 Indiana amendments, and we meet the inspector on site rather than leaving you to.
Allisonville and around it
- Allisonville
- Fall Creek
- Devonshire
- Avalon Hills
- Binford Boulevard
We are based in Fishers, about 15 minutes from Allisonville. That is a drive we make constantly and there is no travel charge — what distance changes is scheduling, not price. We block work in one area into continuous runs rather than splitting a crew across the metro in a day.
What Allisonville homeowners ask us
My property backs onto Fall Creek. Does that affect a basement?
It can. Proximity to the creek and the flood plain affects both what may be built and how a below-grade space should be handled. We check water before anything gets framed — that rule does not bend, and near a creek it matters more.
Can I add on rather than remodel?
Lot sizes here often allow it where a Broad Ripple lot would not. Whether it is the right call depends on what the addition costs against finishing space you already own — usually a basement. We will tell you honestly which is better value for your house.
Is it worth insulating while the wall is open?
In a 1960s house, yes. The cavity is usually under-insulated by current standards, and doing it while the drywall is already off costs very little compared with the same work as its own project.
Is Allisonville a historic district? Do I need a Certificate of Appropriateness?
No. The Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission oversees thirteen historic districts and five conservation areas, and Allisonville is not among them — they are downtown and in the older neighborhoods around it, not in post-war Washington Township. Your project takes the standard Marion County permit and nothing on top of it. Worth knowing in general: even inside a designated district, interior work generally falls outside the commission's review.
Who issues the permit out here — Washington Township?
No — Marion County's townships are not permitting authorities. The Department of Business and Neighborhood Services issues for the county, apart from the separately governed municipalities that kept their own offices; at this end of the county that is the City of Lawrence, and addresses on the eastern edge of the corridor can fall inside it. DBNS also requires the applicant to be a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner, so who files is settled before scheduling.
You're based in Fishers. Do you actually come out to Allisonville?
Yes, and we should be plain about it: we have no office in Allisonville and we do not claim to be local to it. We drive down from Fishers, roughly fifteen minutes on 96th Street or Allisonville Road. The practical effect is that we load for the whole day and have materials delivered to the site rather than running back to the shop, and the crew leaves the site swept before it goes.
Water stands in the yard after a heavy rain, but the basement is dry. Does that matter?
Sort it out before you finish anything below grade. Standing water usually means the clay is saturated and the grade has gone flat, often because beds and mulch have been built up against the house over the years. The code asks for six inches of fall in the first ten feet away from the foundation. Dry this year is not dry in a wet March, so we would rather move the water away first and then talk about the room.
We have one bathroom for three bedrooms. Can a second one be added?
Usually. The workable spots in these plans are a hall closet or the corner of a bedroom backing onto the existing wet wall, where a new fixture can reach the existing stack; distance from that stack is what sets the cost. What decides it here is what is under the bedroom wing — over crawl the drain runs below the floor, over slab it means cutting concrete. Where there is a basement, a bath down there is the other option.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Allisonville
Call or send the form
Tell us the room and roughly what you want done. We answer our own phone.
Walkthrough & estimate
We measure on site and send a detailed, transparent estimate — materials and labor itemized.
Build
Our own crew, code-compliant work, the site swept at the end of every day.
Final walkthrough
We go through the finished room with you and clear the punch list before we invoice.
What Allisonville homeowners are actually choosing between
The person who quotes it runs it
The same crew that walked your house builds the job. You are not handed to a project manager who was not there.
Seven trades in-house
Tile, carpentry, flooring, trim, fireplaces, decks and finish work. One point of contact instead of a general contractor and five subs.
An itemized written estimate
Materials and labor, line by line, before anyone picks up a tool. You know the price at step two of four.
We answer our own phone
Call 317-427-8162 and you get the company, not a call centre. Working across Central Indiana since 2012.