Home remodelingin Butler-Tarkington, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Butler-Tarkington. We are a 25-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
Butler-Tarkington runs between Butler University and Crown Hill, and its housing is 1920s through 1940s — a little later and a little more modest than Meridian-Kessler next door, with a strong stock of brick Colonials and Tudors. A lot of it has been rental at some point, which shows in the finishes rather than the bones.
- Sound brick and framing under finishes that were maintained to a landlord's standard rather than an owner's
- Small original bathrooms with the fixtures in the only arrangement the room allows, so the gain comes from re-planning rather than expanding
- Basements with genuine headroom but original stairs too steep to meet current code if the space becomes living area
What each of them means in Butler-Tarkington
Bathroom remodeling in Butler-Tarkington
The bathroom is a single room five by eight, smaller on the more modest thirties and forties streets, and it has been the only full bath since the house was built. Walls are plaster on wood lath. The wet wall is usually a mortar bed over wire lath, which is why the old tile sounds solid and why demolition is dustier than expected. The hex floor sits on more mortar, so the new floor lands lower than the hallway and the threshold gets rebuilt rather than trimmed. Because so many of these houses spent years as rentals, what we find first is a surface update over the original work, vinyl over the hex or a plastic surround screwed through the tile, and the question is what is behind it. The cast iron stack behind the toilet, lead and oakum joints, can usually stay. What often cannot is the galvanized branch to the tub, narrowed by scale, or an S-trap under the lavatory, which the residential code does not allow. Almost none of these rooms was built with an exhaust fan; an openable window of the right size meets the ventilation requirement, but we duct a fan to the outside anyway, never into the soffit. Two things set the plan: the joists run one way and the closet bend has to live between them, and where there are radiators the one under the window takes the only wall a vanity wants.
Kitchen remodeling in Butler-Tarkington
The kitchen sits at the back behind the dining room, and it was sized for one person working alone. The extra room almost always comes from next door, a breakfast room or a rear porch someone enclosed in the fifties, so the first question is whether the wall between them carries the second floor. The second is the outside wall, veneer or solid masonry, which we settle from the basement before anything is drawn, because it decides what a hood duct or a new window costs to cut. First-floor ceilings run eight and a half to nine feet in the twenties houses and closer to eight in the forties ones, so uppers can reach the ceiling and the room gains storage without gaining floor area. Against that, in a plan this size the kitchen is a crossroads: the back door, the basement stair and the dining room all open into it, which is what eats the wall a refrigerator or a counter run needs. Plaster bows enough that hanging cabinets is a scribing job. The chimney in the kitchen wall often still vents the water heater, and where the furnace was swapped for a high-efficiency unit, that heater is left alone in a flue too large for it. Then the panel. Two twenty-amp small-appliance circuits are the minimum, the range wants its own, and the dishwasher and disposal each want theirs, which is more than the panel usually has left.
Basement finishing in Butler-Tarkington
The basements here run under the whole footprint, poured concrete or block, and in some of the twenties houses hollow structural clay tile, which decides a lot. An egress opening cut through clay tile is a different job from one in poured concrete, because the units are hollow and the opening wants shoring and a lintel, not a saw and a header. On the narrow lots here, whether the window well fits between the wall and the property line is settled first. Height comes next. Habitable space wants seven feet clear, with beams and ducts allowed down to six feet four inches, and what hangs lowest is usually not a beam. It is the oversized round trunk left when the gravity furnace was replaced, and rerouting it is often cheaper than losing the ceiling. Water arrives two ways. The clay soil holds it against the wall and the downspouts often discharge a foot from the foundation; separately, the sewer lateral is old clay tile under mature street trees, which is how a floor drain backs up in a storm. We want to know which you have seen before anything is framed. If a fixture goes in below the level of the street sewer, a backwater valve belongs in the plan, not a later conversation. Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, where roughly one house in three tests at or above the action level, so test before it is finished.
Working Butler-Tarkington out of Fishers
We are not local to Butler-Tarkington. We drive down from Fishers, about twenty-five minutes each way, and that shapes the day: the crew arrives with the material for the stage in front of it, because there is nowhere on a lot this size to hold a week of it. Downtown paperwork gets the same treatment. Who files the DBNS application is settled before anything is ordered, not the week we want to start.
Material by the stage, not by the job
Nothing gets warehoused in your garage or on the dining room floor. Material comes in ordered for the stage it belongs to, and the truck goes back to Fishers with the debris from that stage rather than leaving a pile on the drive.
The driveway, the alley, or neither
Most lots here are narrow with a detached garage at the back, so a container in the driveway blocks the garage. Where there is alley access we use it. Where there is not, we agree the spot and the number of days in writing before the job starts.
Plaster dust in a house you still live in
Pulling plaster and a mortar tile bed makes more dust than drywall, and it travels. Wet areas get sealed off and the oak strip floor between the door and the room gets covered, because in these houses it runs continuously across the whole floor with no threshold to stop it.
We open something before we quote
A stack, a panel, a joist bay, the top of a foundation wall. In houses this age the number turns on what a previous owner left behind a finished surface, and an estimate written without looking is a number that moves once the wall is open.
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.
Butler-Tarkington and around it
- Butler-Tarkington
- Rocky Ripple
- Crown Hill
- Golden Hill
- Michigan Road corridor
We are based in Fishers, about 25 minutes from Butler-Tarkington. 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 Butler-Tarkington homeowners ask us
The house was a rental. What should I expect?
Usually good news structurally and bad news cosmetically — which is the right way round. Deferred maintenance on finishes is straightforward. We still open a wall and check the wiring and venting first, because that is where a landlord's shortcuts hide.
Can the basement become a proper room?
Often, but the stair usually has to be rebuilt. Pre-war basement stairs are steeper and narrower than code allows for habitable space, and that is a real line on the estimate rather than a detail.
Do you work near Butler during term time?
Yes. Parking is the constraint, not the work. We arrange staging and skip placement in advance so the crew is not circling the block at seven in the morning.
Is my house solid brick, or brick over a wood frame?
Most Butler-Tarkington houses are brick veneer over a wood frame, with an air space behind the brick. The earlier ones can be solid masonry, where the wall itself is the structure and the inside is furred out for plaster. The basement usually answers it, and so does the depth of the window reveals. It decides what a range hood duct, a dryer vent or a new window opening costs to cut.
We have one bathroom for three bedrooms. Where would a second one go?
Usually not by enlarging the one you have. The candidates are the space over the kitchen or rear hall, a bedroom closet backing onto the existing wet wall, or the basement. Staying near the existing stack keeps the number down, because the drain has somewhere to fall to. We check which way the joists run first, since that decides where a closet bend can physically sit and whether the drain crosses joists or runs with them.
Can the wall between the kitchen and the dining room come out?
Often, but it is rarely just a wall. If it carries the second floor it needs a beam, and the beam needs a load path down through the first floor to a post in the basement. That post cannot land on the basement slab; it needs a footing under it, which means cutting concrete. And where it lands may change what the basement can be later. We work that path out before quoting, not during demolition.
Should I test for radon before finishing the basement?
Yes, and before rather than after. A short-term test runs a few days. The county radon zone is a prediction for the county, not a reading for your house, and only a test tells you which you have. If mitigation turns out to be needed, running the pipe while the walls are still open puts it inside the framing instead of standing in the corner of a finished room, and the sub-slab work happens before the floor goes down.
Does my house need historic commission approval before I remodel?
Butler-Tarkington is not one of the thirteen districts or five conservation areas the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission oversees, so exterior work here does not need a Certificate of Appropriateness. The Meridian Street edge is worth checking, since a designated district can start at a street rather than a neighborhood boundary. National Register listing is not the same as local designation and does not by itself restrict what you do to your house. Interior work is generally outside that review.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Butler-Tarkington
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 Butler-Tarkington 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.