Home remodelingin Castleton, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Castleton. We are a 12-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
Castleton is the closest part of Marion County to our shop — twelve minutes down 96th Street. Residentially it is 1960s and 70s ranches and split-levels behind the commercial corridor, plus 1980s and 90s subdivisions filling in the gaps.
- Split-level plans where the half-flight between living space and bedrooms makes a second bathroom on the lower level straightforward
- Original aluminium-framed windows in the seventies stock, which are usually why a room feels cold rather than the insulation
- Eighties and nineties kitchens with solid cabinet boxes and dated doors, where refacing or repainting beats replacement
What each of them means in Castleton
Bathroom remodeling in Castleton
Castleton bathrooms sort into two jobs. In the 1960s and 70s ranches and split-levels the hall bath is a compartmented five-foot tub alcove on one wet wall, usually with a cast iron or pressed steel tub set in mortar and the cast iron stack in that same wall. In the earlier houses the tile can still be mud-set over wire lath, which is heavy, sound and slow to take out, so that demolition is a day of work rather than an hour. Where a later seventies bath has tile straight onto greenboard, the tub joint and the inside corners are normally where the failure started. The cast iron waste is worth looking at while the wall is open, because a scaled section is easier to replace then than after it is tiled. In the 1980s and 90s subdivisions the room is larger, the drains are plastic and the supply is usually copper, though the years either side of 1990 also ran polybutylene, so we identify the material before a wall closes. That job is normally a fiberglass tub-shower unit out and a tiled shower in. In a split-level the lower-level bath sits on slab: the run to the stack is short, but it is under concrete, so moving a toilet means cutting and patching rather than working from below.
Kitchen remodeling in Castleton
The 1960s and 70s kitchen here is a closed room, and what it takes to open depends on which plan you have. In a ranch the wall between the kitchen and the living room often runs the length of the house and carries the ceiling joists, so removing it means a beam, posts and a load path down to something that can carry it. Where the roof is trussed from wall to wall that same wall may carry nothing, and we establish which it is from the attic before anything is drawn. In a split-level the kitchen sits on the upper level beside the stair opening, and taking the wall over the stair down to a half-wall often buys most of the sightline for a fraction of the work. Above the wall cabinets there is nearly always a soffit. Sometimes it is empty, sometimes it carries the kitchen circuit or a bath vent, so we open a section before cabinets are ordered. These kitchens were wired with one or two general-purpose circuits and no GFCI at the counter, while the electrical code now calls for two twenty-amp small-appliance circuits and GFCI protection at the countertop, so a Castleton kitchen usually means new circuits and a panel that may have no spaces left. Floors are commonly three layers deep, sheet vinyl over particleboard over the original subfloor, which decides whether the dishwasher still fits its opening once new flooring goes down.
Basement finishing in Castleton
Lower level is the more accurate word in Castleton, because a good share of the 1960s and 70s stock has no basement. Those ranches are frequently crawl space or slab-on-grade, and a crawl has neither the height nor the headroom under the joists to become living space, so in those houses the conversation moves upstairs instead. The split-levels are the common lower-level job: roughly four feet below grade on one side and at or near grade on the other, framed as a family room when the house was built and now carrying paneling, a dropped ceiling and flooring laid straight on the slab. Height is rarely the fight in a split, the trunk duct and the beam are, and where they hang low the room gets planned around them. Full poured basements, sometimes with a bathroom rough-in already set in the slab, mostly turn up in the 1980s and 90s subdivisions. What all three share is drainage history. Houses of this age often have downspouts discharging within a foot of the wall and window wells with no drain in them, and on this clay that is where interior water starts, so we walk the outside grade before anyone talks about finishes. A radon test belongs at the start too, while a pipe route is still open rather than buried behind finished walls.
What changes on a Castleton job
We drive to Castleton from Fishers. We have no office there and no crew stationed there. Two things separate a Castleton job from the same job in Hamilton County: the permit goes through a county department whose residential review runs longer than the city offices we usually deal with, and the houses are twenty to forty years older, which puts more of the work behind the walls than in front of them.
Who can file the application
DBNS takes a residential application from a licensed Marion County contractor or from the property owner. Which of those two routes your job uses is settled in writing before work starts, along with who meets the inspector, so nobody finds out at demolition that nothing has been filed.
No historic review here
Castleton carries no local historic designation, so no Certificate of Appropriateness applies and exterior work needs the county permit and nothing else. What can still govern an exterior change in the eighties and nineties subdivisions is a private covenant, which is between you and the association rather than the county.
Clay, frost and where the water goes
Central Indiana soil is heavy expansive clay and frost depth runs roughly thirty to thirty-six inches. New footings, for a deck or a post under a new beam, bear below that line. The same clay holds water against a wall, so grade and downspout discharge get looked at first.
The corridor at either end of the day
Most of Castleton is Lawrence Township, and its streets sit behind a commercial corridor that backs up around 82nd and 86th morning and evening. The dumpster drop, deliveries and the cabinet truck get scheduled outside those hours, which is why we ask about driveway access on the first visit.
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.
Castleton and around it
- Castleton
- Castle Creek
- Sargent Road
- Geist Overlook
- Fall Creek Township
We are based in Fishers, about 12 minutes from Castleton. 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 Castleton homeowners ask us
You are based in Fishers. How far is Castleton?
About twelve minutes. It is the closest part of Indianapolis to us and we work there constantly. The only practical difference from a Fishers job is the permit office — Marion County's DBNS review runs longer than the City of Fishers.
Can a split-level get another bathroom?
Usually yes, and the split-level plan helps. The lower level typically sits close to the main stack, so a second bath there is a shorter run than the same job in a ranch.
Are my kitchen cabinets worth keeping?
In eighties and nineties Castleton kitchens the boxes are frequently solid and square. If they are, repainting to a factory-grade finish and changing doors, counter and hardware gets most of the result for a fraction of a replacement. We tell you which case yours is at the walkthrough.
My ranch is on a crawl space — can I add a second bathroom?
Usually yes, and the crawl works in your favor: the drain and part of the vent can run below the floor instead of through a slab. The vent still has to carry up through a wall and out the roof. What we check first is which way the joists run, how much clearance is down there, and whether the crawl is dry.
Can you take out the wall between my kitchen and living room?
Sometimes it carries nothing. A trussed roof spans wall to wall, and then the wall is partition and drywall. In most Castleton ranches it carries the ceiling joists, and it comes out with a beam and posts landing on something able to take the load. That is a permitted structural change with a calculated beam behind it. We look in the attic before answering.
Do I need a permit to finish the lower level?
Yes. Drain, waste and vent work, new circuits and any new sleeping room all trigger one, and it is filed with the county rather than a city office. The part people do not plan for is sequencing: rough-in is inspected before anything is closed up, so drywall waits on an inspector's date. We build the crew schedule around that date rather than the other way round.
Should I test for radon before finishing the basement?
Yes. Marion County is in the EPA's highest radon zone, where roughly one house in three tests at or above the four picocurie action level. A short-term test takes a few days. If the result is high, the mitigation pipe is far simpler to run while the slab edge and the ceiling are still open, which is the argument for testing at the start rather than at the end.
My bathroom has a window but no fan. Do I have to add one?
An openable window of the required size still satisfies the ventilation requirement, so nothing forces the change. We add a fan anyway. In a ranch that is a short duct through the attic to a roof or gable cap, terminated outside and never into the attic. Where there is living space above the bath, as in the split-levels, it goes out through a sidewall instead.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Castleton
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 Castleton 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.