Home remodelingin Fountain Square, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Fountain Square. We are a 30-minute drive away in Fishers, we pull the permit through Marion County DBNS and the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, and the crew that walks your house is the crew that builds the job.
We have been opening walls in Marion County since 2012
Fountain Square is a locally designated historic district southeast of downtown, built out largely between the 1870s and the 1920s as a working neighbourhood. The houses are compact cottages and doubles on narrow lots, and many have been through at least one unsympathetic remodel already.
- Small footprints where the gain comes from reorganising the plan, not from adding rooms that will not fit on the lot
- Previous remodels that dropped ceilings, boxed in stairs or covered original material — often worth reversing
- Doubles converted to single-family, where the leftover second kitchen or stair is the obvious space to reclaim
What each of them means in Fountain Square
Bathroom remodeling in Fountain Square
The oldest cottages here were built before indoor plumbing was routine, so the bathroom is not original to the house. It was carved out of a bedroom, a rear hall, or a corner off the kitchen, and that history is what we find when the wall comes open: a cast-iron stack on an outside wall, galvanized supply closed down to the width of a pencil, and joists notched deep for a tub drain somebody set from below. What makes it a Fountain Square problem is that there is usually no basement under the bathroom to work from. The partial cellar sits under one section of the house, so a moved drain has to travel through a crawl or along a joist bay to reach the stack at the back. We get under the floor where we can before quoting tile, because the tile industry asks for deflection no worse than L/360 under ceramic and L/720 under natural stone, and an 1890s joist spanning the full width of a narrow cottage often does not get there without sistering or a new bearing point. That belongs on the estimate rather than in a callback about cracked grout. One local wrinkle: if the fan has to terminate through a street-facing wall or roof slope, that termination is exterior work and the Commission sees it, even though the bathroom itself does not.
Kitchen remodeling in Fountain Square
The kitchen in one of these cottages is the room at the back, and often it is a porch somebody enclosed: framed on piers or a shallow footing that never went down to the thirty-inch frost depth, uninsulated underfoot, and out of level with the rest of the house by an inch or more. We measure that first, because cabinet boxes get scribed and shimmed to level and no countertop can be templated until they are. Ceilings in the older cottages run high, often nine feet or more, so a standard wall cabinet stops well short of the plaster and the decision is a soffit, a stacked upper, or a band of wall left alone. Electrically these houses rarely start from anything: one circuit doing the whole room, knob-and-tube remnants above the ceiling, and a service sized for a house that had a radio in it. That makes the panel a walkthrough conversation rather than a rough-in surprise. In a double that was split into two flats, the two old kitchens usually sit back-to-back or stacked on one waste stack, and that stack is the cheapest place to put anything wet. Cabinets stage off the alley, because there is no side yard here to stage them in.
Basement finishing in Fountain Square
Most houses in Fountain Square have no basement to finish. What is under them is a partial cellar under one section of the footprint: stone or soft brick walls, a dirt floor or a thin slab, five to six and a half feet of headroom, and stairs built for coal rather than for carrying a sofa. Habitable space needs seven feet finished, with beams and ducts allowed to drop to six feet four, and no framing gets a five-foot cellar there. Lowering the floor under an unreinforced stone wall is underpinning, with an engineer's drawings behind it, and it is a structural job rather than a finishing one. We say that at the walkthrough instead of drawing a plan that cannot be built. Where a cellar does have the height, three lines go on the estimate before framing does. Water, because clay holds it against a wall laid up without a footing drain. Radon, because Marion County is EPA Zone 1 and roughly one house in three tests at or above the action level. And the sewer, because this older part of the city drains to combined sewers that surcharge in a hard rain, and any fixture with a flood rim below the next upstream manhole cover needs a backwater valve. Egress makes a fourth: a new well is exterior site work, and one cut into a rear or alley elevation is a simpler application than one facing the street.
What a job here has to work around
We drive to Fountain Square from Fishers, about thirty minutes each way. There is no office here and we do not claim to be from the neighborhood. That shapes how the work runs: materials come in planned deliveries rather than a daily trip for one part, and the crew arrives as a crew and stays until the day is closed out and the site is swept. The rest is the neighborhood itself, these Center Township lots, the district, and what the ground does.
Narrow lots, and an alley behind
Frontages are narrow and the houses sit close to the sidewalk, so there is no side yard to work from. Most blocks have a rear alley, and that is where the dumpster and the deliveries go when it is passable. We confirm that before the first day, not on it.
Where the Commission's review starts
A Certificate of Appropriateness covers exterior and site work: a new window opening, an egress well, a stoop, a rear deck, a change of roof color. Straightforward items clear administratively, anything visible from the street may need notice and a hearing, and the COA comes ahead of the permit.
Clay, and thirty-six inches of frost
Central Indiana frost depth runs roughly thirty to thirty-six inches, and the soil is expansive clay that holds water against a foundation and moves with every freeze and thaw. Anything with a new footing gets dug to depth, and downspouts get carried away from the wall while we are there.
Neighbors within arm's reach
These houses sit a few feet apart and are usually occupied on both sides. We agree the start time and where the saw sets up before day one, and in a double still split in two, the work may share a party wall with somebody's tenant.
We pull the permit. You do not chase Marion County DBNS and the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission.
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. This is a locally designated historic district, so the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission has jurisdiction on top of the standard permit. IHPC oversees thirteen historic districts and five conservation areas, and a Certificate of Appropriateness is required for renovation, new construction, demolition and site work — down to a change of roof colour. Straightforward applications can be approved administratively; anything visible from the street may need public notice and a hearing. That is weeks, not days, and it belongs in the schedule from the start rather than as a surprise.
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.
Fountain Square and around it
- Fountain Square
- Fletcher Place
- Bates-Hendricks
- Holy Rosary
- Virginia Avenue
We are based in Fishers, about 30 minutes from Fountain Square. 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 Fountain Square homeowners ask us
Is Fountain Square under historic review?
Yes — it is one of the thirteen locally designated districts, so exterior and site work needs a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission. Interior remodeling generally does not.
My house was a double. Can it be made into one house properly?
Often, and it is some of the most satisfying work here. The second kitchen and the duplicated stair are usually the space that makes the rest of the plan work. It is real structural work, not a cosmetic change.
Should a previous bad remodel be undone?
Sometimes. Dropped ceilings and boxed-in stairs frequently hide the proportions that made the house good. We look above the tiles before quoting, and tell you what is actually up there.
Which parts of a kitchen or bathroom job can trigger historic review?
The parts that break the exterior plane. A new or enlarged window, a range hood cap, a bath fan or dryer termination, a mini-split line set, a condenser on a street-facing side: those pull a Certificate of Appropriateness onto an otherwise interior job. We settle them while the layout is still on paper, because a vent is easy to move there and hard to move once the drywall is up.
There's no real basement under my house. Is finishing it off the table?
For habitable space, usually yes, and it is better heard at the walkthrough than after a plan is drawn. A five- or six-foot cellar under part of the footprint cannot meet the seven-foot finished height, and lowering the floor under a stone wall is underpinning with an engineer behind it. What that cellar can become is dry, lit, orderly storage and mechanical space.
Can we put a second bathroom upstairs under the roof slope?
Often. A bathroom needs six feet eight inches of ceiling at the front clearance of the fixtures and over a thirty-by-thirty-inch area at the showerhead, so the slope can come down across the rest of the room. What decides it is where the existing stack runs, whether the joists carry a wet floor without help, and how the vent gets out without a new penetration on the street elevation.
You're in Fishers. Can you pull my Marion County permit?
DBNS takes the application from either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner, so which of those two routes a job runs on is worth settling before anything is scheduled. We tell you at the walkthrough which one applies to your project and who files what. Where the work is also reviewable, the Certificate of Appropriateness comes ahead of the building permit, and both dates go in the schedule.
Is my house actually inside the historic district?
Worth checking, because the designated boundary and the area people mean when they say Fountain Square are not the same shape. A house a block off can sit outside review altogether, or inside a neighboring district or conservation area with its own guidelines. We look the address up on the Commission's map before quoting, since it changes the schedule more than it changes the work.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Fountain Square
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 Fountain Square 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.