Home remodelingin Lockerbie Square, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Lockerbie 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
Lockerbie Square is the city's oldest preserved residential district, immediately northeast of downtown, with cottages and townhouses from the 1850s onward on brick streets. It was the first district IHPC produced a preservation plan for, and it is the most closely reviewed neighbourhood we work in.
- Mid-nineteenth-century construction with framing and foundations that predate any dimensional standard
- Brick streets and no off-street parking, which makes staging, delivery and daily clean-up a scheduling problem before it is a courtesy
- Interiors already restored once or twice, so the work is often correcting a previous restoration rather than an original condition
What each of them means in Lockerbie Square
Bathroom remodeling in Lockerbie Square
The earliest houses here were built before indoor plumbing, so the bathroom was cut into something else later — a back bedroom, a pantry, the rear ell, or the space under the stair. What you have now is usually the third or fourth version of that decision, and the first job is working out what the last person did. We pull the toilet and open the floor at the flange before pricing anything. A joist cut through for a closet bend and never headed off is the first thing we look for in a bathroom of this age, and it decides whether the room is a finish job or a framing job. Second-floor baths in a story-and-a-half cottage run into headroom before they run into anything else. Code wants six feet eight inches of clear height over an area thirty inches by thirty inches at the showerhead, and the roof slope decides where that area can sit. The room is small enough that fixture clearances set the rest of the layout: fifteen inches from the toilet centerline to whatever stands beside it, twenty-one inches clear in front. Walls are plaster on wood lath, or on the brick doubles, plaster furred off masonry. Neither is flat enough to tile against as found. And the fan has to exhaust outdoors, so where that cap lands on the elevation is a Historic Preservation Commission question rather than an interior one.
Kitchen remodeling in Lockerbie Square
The kitchen in a Lockerbie cottage is usually a small room in a rear ell, with an exterior door, a window, and either a stair or a chimney breast taking a wall. There is rarely a straight run longer than about eight feet. That plan settles most of the argument early: an island seldom fits, a peninsula or a freestanding work table often does, and we would rather say so at the walkthrough than let the tape settle it after the cabinets are ordered. Nothing is square. Masonry has moved, plaster has been patched in three eras, and the floor usually falls toward the ell, which was built on a shallower foundation than the house it was added to. Cabinets get scribed to the wall as it actually runs, and filler strips are planned at the drawing stage rather than improvised on the last day. Behind the finish: joists already cut for the last two kitchens, supply piping that may still be galvanized, and a service that was last enlarged decades ago in a house wired long after it was built. Two twenty-amp small-appliance circuits and GFCI protection at the countertop receptacles is the floor the code sets, so this is often a panel conversation before it is a cabinet conversation. A ducted hood has to reach an outside wall or the roof; a recirculating one needs no penetration, and the available route usually decides which you get.
Basement finishing in Lockerbie Square
Plenty of these houses have nothing underneath worth finishing, and we say so on the first visit rather than in week three. The common condition is a brick or rubble-stone foundation over a crawl space, or over a shallow cellar dug for coal and preserves: dirt or thin unreinforced concrete underfoot, six feet of headroom at best, walls never built to stay dry, and often a bulkhead as the only way in. Habitable space needs seven feet of ceiling height, and a cellar like that does not reach it without underpinning or benching an original foundation — an engineered structural project, not a remodel. Some houses in the district do have a full basement. That is a measurement, not an assumption. What is usually worth doing down there is the work that improves the house above it. Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, the highest, where roughly one home in three tests at or above the action level, so a test comes first and an open dirt floor under occupied rooms is why it matters. Then a sealed vapor barrier and a vent stack, mechanicals set on a dry platform, joists sistered where an earlier bath or kitchen cut them, and water carried away from stone that wicks whatever sits against it. Grading, downspouts and window wells are site work, and site work in this district is reviewed. So is cutting an egress opening through a foundation wall.
What we plan around in Lockerbie Square
Two things shape a job here before the work itself does. One is where the line falls between what the Historic Preservation Commission reviews and what it leaves alone. The other is that we are not from this neighborhood. The district sits in Center Township between East Street and College Avenue, and we drive in from Fishers, about thirty minutes each way. Both belong in the schedule before you take bids.
The review line runs at the exterior wall
Interior remodeling — bathrooms, kitchens, floors, plaster, wiring — is generally outside Commission review. Exterior alteration and site work are not, down to a change of roof color. Most of what we do here sits on the interior side of that line, and the exceptions are predictable.
The exceptions are nearly always penetrations
A bath fan, a ducted range hood, a dryer, a sealed-combustion furnace and an air-conditioning condenser all have to reach the outside. Where those land on a street elevation is what turns an interior job into a Certificate of Appropriateness, so we settle the routes before writing the estimate.
We drive in from Fishers
About thirty minutes each way, and no office downtown. What that means in practice: the crew arrives together and stays the day, material comes in planned deliveries instead of four trips, and the truck is loaded for the day's work before it leaves Fishers.
Your neighbors are a few feet away
Side yards here are a few feet wide and the brick doubles share a wall outright, so demolition noise, dust and vibration travel into someone else's rooms. Cutting and demo run in agreed hours, openings get sealed containment, and a shared wall is protected from our side before work starts.
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.
Lockerbie Square and around it
- Lockerbie Square
- Chatham Arch
- Massachusetts Avenue
- Cottage Home
- Downtown
We are based in Fishers, about 30 minutes from Lockerbie 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 Lockerbie Square homeowners ask us
How strict is review in Lockerbie Square?
It is the most closely reviewed district in the city and the first IHPC wrote a preservation plan for. Exterior and site work needs a Certificate of Appropriateness, and visible changes are likely to need public notice and a hearing. Plan in weeks.
Can you work on a house from the 1850s?
Yes, carefully. Nothing is dimensionally standard, floors are rarely level and framing was site-built. We open up and measure before quoting, because on a house this old an estimate written from a walkthrough alone is a guess.
There is nowhere to park. How does that work?
It gets planned. Delivery windows, an agreed skip position and the site swept every evening. On brick streets with no driveways that is the only way to work without becoming the neighbourhood's problem.
Do I need historic approval to remodel the inside of my house?
Generally no. The Commission reviews exterior alteration, new construction, demolition and site work, and interior remodeling normally sits outside that. The catch is anything that has to pass through an exterior wall or the roof — a vent cap, a new window, a condenser, a window well. Those stay exterior work even when the project is a bathroom.
Which comes first, the historic approval or the building permit?
We treat the Certificate of Appropriateness as the first item, because the permit for regulated exterior work depends on it — the two do not run side by side. A straightforward application can be handled administratively; anything visible from the street may need public notice and a hearing. So the exterior scope has to be fixed early rather than decided during the build.
Can I replace my windows with something more efficient?
Replacement is exterior work, so it needs a Certificate of Appropriateness, and review in this district starts from repair rather than replacement. Original sash on a house this old is frequently repairable — reglazed, weatherstripped, with a storm added. A storm is still an exterior change and still gets reviewed, usually as the simpler application. We look at the sash before quoting either route.
There's no real basement — where do the furnace and water heater go?
Usually a crawl space, a first-floor closet or the back of the ell, and that placement drives the plan more than people expect. Combustion air, working clearance, a condensate route and a flue path all have to work, and the flue is an exterior penetration. We fix the mechanical location early, because moving it later moves the kitchen with it.
Do we have to move out while you work?
For a bathroom, plan on losing it entirely for a stretch, and if it is the only one in the house that usually means staying elsewhere for those days. There is no basement to stage from and one stair serving everything, so the work spreads through the house. We sequence to keep a kitchen or a bath usable as long as the job allows, and name the difficult weeks at the estimate.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Lockerbie 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 Lockerbie 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.