Home remodelingin McCordsville, IN
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in McCordsville. We are a 15-minute drive away in Fishers, we pull the permit through the Town of McCordsville, and the crew that walks your house is the crew that builds the job.
We have been opening walls in Hancock County since 2012
McCordsville was farmland with a crossroads on it until the 2000s, and it is now one of the fastest-growing towns in the metro. The result is a split stock: original farmhouses and ranches on acreage, and dense new subdivisions built since 2005 right beside them.
- Original farmhouses on acreage with additions made in three different decades, each framed differently
- Newer subdivision houses on slab or shallow crawl where a bathroom addition means cutting concrete rather than working from below
- Properties still on septic, where adding a bathroom is a Hancock County Health Department question before it is a plumbing question
What each of them means in McCordsville
Bathroom remodeling in McCordsville
McCordsville hands us two different bathrooms, sometimes on the same road. In the subdivision houses, the primary bath is close to a known quantity before we open it: a corner garden tub, a separate fiberglass shower with a molded pan, a cultured marble top with two integral bowls, and a fan ducted out through the attic. The plans repeat down the street, so we usually know where the stack and the joists run before demolition starts. The common request is to lose the tub nobody uses and build one tiled shower across that corner. Both drains are already there, so the work stays inside that footprint. The hall bath is normally a one-piece tub-shower unit that will not fit back out through the door, so it gets cut apart in place. The acreage houses are the opposite. Their bathrooms were carved out of a bedroom or a back porch decades after the house was built, so the drain is undersized, the venting was improvised, and supply lines often run in an exterior wall — which in an uninsulated cavity is a freeze risk as much as a plumbing one. Upstairs, the roof slope decides where a shower can stand: the code wants six feet eight inches over a thirty-inch square at the showerhead. Long joist spans flex, and tile wants a floor that does not, so stiffening it is a line on the estimate rather than a change order later.
Kitchen remodeling in McCordsville
Most kitchens we look at in McCordsville do not need a wall moved. The plans built here since 2005 already run the kitchen into a breakfast area and a great room, so the work is cabinets, counters, lighting and the island rather than structure. That changes what the estimate is mostly made of. There is no door to shut, so containment and dust control get planned into the job rather than improvised on day one. Ventilation is the other consequence of the open plan. The range usually sits on an interior wall under a recirculating microwave, so a real hood means finding a route out — up through a cabinet into the attic on a ranch, or through the second floor on a two-story. That gets settled before anyone picks a hood. Builder islands are the recurring item: narrow, no overhang to sit at, the receptacle in the end panel, and the vinyl plank laid up to the base rather than under it. Growing one means dealing with the floor and the power both, and the original plank is usually out of production. Farmhouse kitchens usually sit in a rear addition. One wall used to be outside, the ceiling is lower than the rest of the house, and nothing is plumb, so cabinets get scribed rather than set. Solid doors and wide plank move through an Indiana summer, so material sits in the house before it goes up.
Basement finishing in McCordsville
The first question in McCordsville is whether there is a basement at all. Builders sold slab and crawl plans on the same streets as full-basement plans, so we confirm what is under the house before anyone talks about what goes in it. Where there is one, it is usually a recent pour: eight- or nine-foot poured walls, a sump pit with perimeter tile, and sometimes a builder stud wall already standing. Headroom is rarely what limits the plan. The HVAC trunk and the main drain line are, and on a mirrored plan they do not run where the neighbor's do. Some were poured with a bath rough-in, and the stub sits where the builder's plan put it rather than where you would want it. Water here is a grade problem more often than a foundation problem, and on this ground the causes are outside: a downspout discharging at the corner, a sump line ending a few feet out on clay, backfill that has settled the fall out of the lot, or a farm tile line cut when the street went in. We correct that before we frame, not after. The walkouts on ground this flat exist because a builder graded a bank at a pond. That lower wall and the door in it get read differently from the other three, and we do that outside before we chalk anything on the slab.
Flat row-crop ground, built on since 2005
Almost every subdivision here was row crop within living memory, platted onto flat ground that drains slowly because the soil under it is heavy clay. Clay holds water at a foundation wall and cycles with each freeze, and footings for a deck, a pergola or an addition still have to bear below frost, roughly 30 to 36 inches. What is particular to McCordsville is how recent the disturbance is, and how little fall these lots were given.
Backfill still settling
Foundation backfill keeps compacting for years after a builder leaves. On ground this flat, the small fall around the house goes level, then negative, and water that used to run off stands at the wall. It is the first thing we check on a damp basement.
Old field tile and swales
This ground was tiled for drainage before it was platted, and those lines were cut and crossed when streets went in. A broken one still moves water under a yard. The swale platted between two houses carries the rest, until a shed or a raised bed sits down in it.
Radon Zone 1
Hancock County is EPA Radon Zone 1, where roughly one home in three tests at or above 4 pCi/L. It only becomes a remodeling question when a basement turns into living space, and the result changes how the slab, the sump lid and the wall joints get sealed.
Covenants, then permits
A house in a post-2005 subdivision answers to an architectural review committee for anything visible from the street, and that approval is separate from the building permit. Neither replaces the other. A farmhouse on acreage has no committee, only the permit. It changes the calendar more than the build.
We pull the permit. You do not chase the Town of McCordsville.
McCordsville issues its own permits through the town's building department. It sits in Hancock County rather than Hamilton, so the county-level offices behind the town — assessor, recorder, health department for septic — are all in Greenfield, not Noblesville.
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.
McCordsville and the surrounding area
- Geist Woods
- Bay Creek
- Emerald Springs
- Villages at Brookside
- Gateway Crossing
We are based in Fishers, about 15 minutes from McCordsville. 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 McCordsville homeowners ask us
I am on septic. Can I still add a bathroom?
Sometimes, and it is a Hancock County Health Department question first — the system has to be rated for the additional load. We find out before designing around it rather than after, because the answer occasionally changes the whole plan.
Is McCordsville in Hamilton County?
No — Hancock County, which surprises most people because the postal address and the school district read as Geist. It matters for permits and for any county-level approval, and it is why we confirm the jurisdiction from the address.
Can you work on an older farmhouse?
Yes, and it is careful work. Additions made across different decades meet at framing that does not line up, and floors rarely sit at one level. We open up and measure before quoting, because on these houses the surprises are structural rather than cosmetic.
My mailing address says McCordsville. Who issues my permit?
It depends on whether the house sits inside town limits, and the boundary has moved with annexation since the 2000s, so a road can be town on one side and not the other. Inside, the town's building department issues it. Outside, in unincorporated Vernon Township, it is a Hancock County matter handled in Greenfield. We confirm which from your address before the estimate goes out.
Our lot backs onto a retention pond. Does that affect finishing the basement?
It affects what we check, not usually whether you can. The pond is the low point the whole street drains to, so the back of your lot carries other people's water and the ground there stays wet longer. We look at where the sump discharges, whether it runs toward the pond or back at the house, and whether the rear swale is still open before we frame anything.
There is a plastic pipe coming out of my basement slab. Is that a radon system?
Usually a passive rough-in, not a system. Some builders here set a tee in the stone under the slab and run a pipe up through the house to the roof with no fan on it. It is not proof of a low reading. Hancock County is EPA Radon Zone 1, so test before you frame. We do not test or mitigate; that is a separate trade. If a fan is needed later, that pipe is the route it takes.
Can the kitchen cabinets in a newer McCordsville house be painted?
Often not. Kitchens built here since 2005 frequently have particleboard boxes with thermofoil doors, and thermofoil is a vinyl film heat-pressed over fiberboard, so paint has no wood to hold. It also lifts beside the dishwasher and above the range once heat has worked on it. If the boxes are sound and square, new doors and drawer fronts get you the same change. We look at a door edge before saying which yours is.
We are on a well outside town. Does that change a bathroom or kitchen remodel?
It changes fixtures and finishes more than plumbing. Groundwater here is hard and often carries iron, which stains a new sink, a pale grout and a brushed or polished faucet faster than treated town water does. We check whether the softener treats the whole house or only the water heater, and where the line to a new fixture picks up, before we settle materials with you.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in McCordsville
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 McCordsville 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.