Home remodelingin Indianapolis, IN
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Indianapolis. 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
Indianapolis is a consolidated city-county, and its housing runs from 1860s downtown terraces to subdivisions finished last year. Three eras account for nearly everything we are asked to work on, and they are three different trades: the pre-war neighbourhoods inside the old city, the mid-century ranches of the northern townships, and recent building on the edges.
- Pre-war housing inside the old city — plaster over lath, balloon framing, service panels never sized for a modern kitchen
- Mid-century ranches through Washington, Lawrence and Pike townships, usually with one bearing wall between the kitchen and the living room and original galvanised supply lines
- Thirteen locally designated historic districts where the Historic Preservation Commission reviews exterior work before anyone touches it
What each of them means in Indianapolis
Bathroom remodeling in Indianapolis
Indianapolis bathrooms come in three vintages, and they are three different jobs. Inside the old city the house has one bathroom upstairs, a cast iron tub in a joist bay, and floor tile set in a mortar bed two or three inches thick that has to come out first. The walls are plaster over lath, the waste stack is hub-and-spigot cast iron with a lead bend at the toilet, and the studs measure what a 1925 mill cut, not what a stock jamb assumes. Many of these rooms have a double-hung window inside the tub surround, and glazing that close to a tub has to be safety glass once the surround is rebuilt. The code still lets an openable window serve as the ventilation; in an Indiana August it moves nothing, so we duct a fan outdoors regardless. Mid-century ranches through Washington, Warren and Pike townships are the second job: a bath and a half on galvanized supply, the full bath locked in a five-by-eight, where the gain comes from re-planning rather than expansion. The third is anything built on the county edges since the late nineties, where nothing behind the wall fights back and the work is finish level. When a second bathroom is the ask, we look first at what can stack on the existing wet wall — in the old city that is one cast iron stack in one chase, and it moves the number more than tile does.
Kitchen remodeling in Indianapolis
A pre-war Indianapolis kitchen sits at the back of the house and it is small, because it was never meant to be lived in. In a bungalow, a foursquare or one of the Indianapolis doubles, the back door, the basement stair and often a rear service stair all land in the same eight feet of floor, so circulation is the problem before cabinets are. Two things we look for on the first visit. One is the chimney chase left from a coal-fired gravity furnace, usually running up the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Taking it out is roof work, not kitchen work, and if a water heater still vents into it the job grows a venting line as well. The other is a rear kitchen framed over a crawl space or brick piers while the rest of the house sits on a basement. That change in structure under the floor decides what moving a sink costs. Township houses are as often slab or crawl as basement, which is not true of anything built in Hamilton County after 1990, and it decides whether power and drain reach an island from below or through a chase. Then there is the panel. Sixty-amp services and fuse boxes are still live in the older neighborhoods, and a service upgrade in Marion County schedules around AES Indiana rather than around us. We check it before pricing a plan, not during.
Basement finishing in Indianapolis
Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, the same as Hamilton, so roughly one house in three tests at or above 4 pCi/L. That is worth testing for before a basement becomes a bedroom, not after. The usual fix is sub-slab depressurization, and the system has to pull against the slab it sits under. A three-inch slab poured over bare dirt with no stone and no vapor retarder is a different starting point from a modern one. After that, the picture stops resembling Hamilton County. A pre-war basement inside the old city is brick or rubble stone, six feet or so to the joists, with the coal room still walled off in one corner and the footprint of a gravity furnace in the middle. Habitable space needs seven feet finished, with beams and ducts allowed down to six feet four, and a fair number of these will never get there. When that is the answer we give it, rather than drawing a plan around a soffit that cannot exist. Out in the townships a mid-century house is as often crawl space as basement. Where there is a real basement in the old core, the sewer comes first: it is a combined system, so the floor drain, the footing drains, the sump line and a backwater valve for anything draining below the next upstream manhole cover all get sorted before drywall rather than after.
Clay, combined sewers, and five permit offices
Marion County sits on the same heavy clay till as the rest of Central Indiana, is in the same EPA Radon Zone 1, and has the same 30-to-36-inch frost depth, so any new footing bears below that. What differs is age and jurisdiction. Much of the housing inside the old city limits predates the war, four excluded municipalities run their own building departments, thirteen locally designated historic districts sit on top of that, and the older core drains to a combined sewer.
Five permit offices
Unigov merged Indianapolis with Marion County but left three excluded cities — Beech Grove, Lawrence and Southport — and the town of Speedway with their own governments and their own building departments. The mailing address still reads Indianapolis. We confirm which office covers yours before we put a schedule in writing.
Clay, canopy and grade
Heavy clay holds water against a foundation and freeze-thaw moves it every season. In the older neighborhoods a mature canopy fills the gutters, and roots lift the walk until the ground slopes back toward the house. Downspout discharge and grade explain most wet basements here.
Pre-1978 paint
Much of the housing inside the old city was built before 1978. Disturbing more than six square feet of painted surface there puts the job under the federal RRP lead rule — plastic containment, HEPA cleanup, a cleaning verification. It is schedule and labor a 2004 house never asks for.
River and creek corridors
White River runs the length of the county; Fall Creek, Pleasant Run and Eagle Creek on the west side feed it. Near any of them the flood map, not the block, decides what can go below grade and how a lower level gets treated. We check the address first.
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.
Indianapolis and the surrounding area
- Broad Ripple
- Meridian-Kessler
- Nora
- Castleton
- Irvington
- Butler-Tarkington
We are based in Fishers, about 25 minutes from Indianapolis. 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 Indianapolis homeowners ask us
How long does an Indianapolis remodeling permit take?
Residential review at the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services typically runs ten to fifteen business days — noticeably longer than Fishers or Carmel. We apply as soon as scope is agreed so the review runs while materials are being ordered rather than after.
Does my contractor need a Marion County licence?
DBNS requires the permit applicant to be either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner. It is a fair question to ask any contractor quoting your job, and you should ask it before signing rather than after.
Is my neighbourhood in a historic district?
Thirteen districts and five conservation areas are under Historic Preservation Commission jurisdiction, including Irvington, Fountain Square, Lockerbie Square, Old Northside, Chatham Arch, Herron-Morton Place and Woodruff Place. If yours is one of them, exterior work needs a Certificate of Appropriateness and the timeline is longer. We check the address before quoting.
Do you work all over Indianapolis, or just the north side?
All of Marion County. The northern townships are twelve to twenty-five minutes from Fishers and we are in them constantly. The south and west sides run thirty-five to forty-five. Distance changes how we schedule rather than whether we take the job — far-side work gets run in continuous blocks instead of split across a day, and the estimate carries that schedule.
My Indianapolis house was built in 1925. What is behind the walls?
Usually plaster over wood lath, framing milled to full dimensions a stock jamb does not expect, hub-and-spigot cast iron waste with a lead bend at the toilet, and wiring from three or four decades sharing one panel — sometimes with knob-and-tube still run through the attic. We read the basement and the attic first, because that is where the framing and the wiring are still visible without opening anything up.
Is my Indianapolis basement tall enough to finish?
Measure from the slab to the lowest thing in the room — the trunk duct, the main beam, a drain line — not to the joists. The residential code wants seven feet of finished height in habitable space, and lets beams and ducts drop to six feet four. Post-war basements out in the townships usually clear it. Pre-war basements inside the old city often do not, and we will say so.
Do you take jobs in Beech Grove, Speedway or Southport?
Yes. Those are the excluded municipalities — Unigov left them their own governments, so the building permit may come from the city or town rather than from the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services downtown. The City of Lawrence is the fourth, and it is not the same thing as Lawrence Township. A mailing address does not tell you which applies, so we establish the issuing office from the address before a schedule goes in the estimate.
Why does my Indianapolis basement get water when it rains hard?
It usually starts outside. Clay holds whatever the downspouts drop next to the foundation. Inside the old core there is a second path: those houses sit on Citizens Energy Group's combined sewer, many have footing drains tied straight into it and no sump at all, and when the system surcharges in a heavy storm the water comes up through the floor drain. We follow the water before anyone quotes an interior system.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Indianapolis
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 Indianapolis 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.