Home remodelingin Old Northside, Indianapolis
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Old Northside. We are a 28-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
The Old Northside is large late-Victorian housing just north of downtown — Italianate, Queen Anne and Romanesque houses built for the city's nineteenth-century wealth, many subdivided into apartments in the mid-twentieth century and converted back since.
- Grand original volumes — twelve-foot ceilings and wide stair halls — that make mechanical routing genuinely difficult
- Apartment-era conversions leaving redundant kitchens, bathrooms and stairs in odd places
- Original millwork of a quality that cannot be bought new, where the right answer is nearly always repair
What each of them means in Old Northside
Bathroom remodeling in Old Northside
None of these houses was built with a bathroom, so nearly every bath in the district is a retrofit — a dressing room off the primary bedroom, a closet at the back stair, a corner taken out of a bedroom. That history sets the work. The waste line from a fixture that was never meant to be there runs long and shallow, and successive plumbers have taken notches out of the joists to make it fit. We open the floor and look at what is carrying the room before committing to a fixture layout. What is usually behind the wall: a cast iron stack, galvanized supply, a lead bend at the closet flange, and one apartment-era bath tied into the nearest line with no vent of its own. Many of these are solid masonry houses, the exterior walls furred out and plastered rather than framed, so a shower on an outside wall has nowhere to put a valve or a drop without building the wall out first — which changes the room's dimensions. Heat is the other constraint. Cast iron radiators are common here, and the riser is often in the corner the shower wants. Moving it is a real line on the estimate; leaving it means planning the room around it. Interior bathroom work is generally outside Historic Preservation Commission review. Glass block in a street-facing window, or a fan terminating on a visible elevation, is not.
Kitchen remodeling in Old Northside
The kitchen in an Old Northside house was a service wing, not a room anyone sat in. It is at the back with a pantry, a back stair and often an enclosed rear porch, separated from the front rooms by a door that existed to keep it separate. Most of the work is deciding how much of that wing comes into the kitchen and what happens to the stair. Two things make the layout harder than the plan suggests. The windows are tall with sills below counter height, so a base run on an exterior wall either stops at the window or ends up with a cabinet across it — settle that at the layout stage, not on install day. And with the ceiling this high there is four feet of bare wall above a standard upper cabinet. Stacked cabinets, open shelving or plain plaster are all defensible; the choice changes the cabinet order. The interior chimney mass is often still an active flue for a furnace or water heater, so it gets confirmed rather than assumed before anyone plans to remove it. The front rooms usually carry a border inlaid around the floor's perimeter, and taking out a wall leaves that border running through open floor. And a house wired in stages since gas light has none of the small-appliance circuits, GFCI or arc-fault protection a kitchen now needs — often with knob and tube still in the walls.
Basement finishing in Old Northside
A late-Victorian basement here is a cellar, not a lower level: brick or rubble stone walls, a floor that is often a thin slab poured over dirt long after the house went up, and joists you can reach up and touch. The seven-foot rule and the six-foot-four allowance for beams and ducts are the same here as anywhere in Indiana; what matters in a cellar of this age is which number is short. The allowance covers obstructions, not the ceiling itself, so if the underside of the joists is already under seven feet, no soffit detail rescues it. We measure floor to joist first, then floor to the lowest duct. Two other things. The walls are masonry rather than poured concrete, so how they dry — inward, into the room — decides what can be put against them, and that is a different decision than in a 1990s basement. And Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, the highest zone, where about one home in three tests at or above the action level; a floor that is not continuous changes how a system gets built. Where the height is not there, the honest project is a dry, orderly utility basement — mechanicals, laundry, storage, light, a safe stair — and the extra room comes from the third floor instead. Enlarging the areaway, adding a window well, converting a carriage house: those are exterior and site work, which the Commission does review.
What a job in the district actually involves
We drive to the Old Northside from Fishers, about twenty-eight minutes. There is no office here, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It shapes how we schedule: full days with the whole crew on site rather than a morning here and an afternoon somewhere else. The other thing that shapes a job on these blocks is that two approvals run on two different clocks, and only one of them is the building permit.
Two clocks, not one
The building permit and the Certificate of Appropriateness are separate applications to separate offices, and they do not queue behind one another. We treat the COA as the gating item on anything exterior and start it first, because it is the one with a hearing calendar attached.
Interior scope, shorter path
An interior kitchen, bathroom or basement that never changes the outside of the house is a building permit question only. What pulls it back onto the Commission's clock is small: a hood or fan termination, a new window, a condenser, a rear stair. We say which at the walkthrough.
Staging from the alley
These houses sit close to the sidewalk, most with no driveway off the street and a service alley behind. Where the dumpster stands, whether that is the alley or the street, and when material lands get agreed before the first day rather than on the morning of it.
Plaster does not like vibration
Plaster ceilings hang on keys squeezed through lath, and some let go decades ago. Tearing out a second-floor bathroom shows up in the ceiling below it. We isolate the work area and say in advance where hairline cracking is likely, so patching is a line item rather than an argument.
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.
Old Northside and around it
- Old Northside
- Herron-Morton Place
- Chatham Arch
- St. Joseph
- Fall Creek Place
We are based in Fishers, about 28 minutes from Old Northside. 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 Old Northside homeowners ask us
The house was cut into apartments. What does reversing that involve?
Structural and mechanical work rather than decoration — removing duplicated kitchens and baths, dealing with the stair that was added, and reconciling several vintages of wiring and plumbing. It is substantial, and it is why we open up and look before putting a number on it.
How do you run ductwork in a house with twelve-foot ceilings?
With planning, and sometimes by accepting a soffit in a place you would rather not have one. We show you where those have to go before work starts, not after they appear.
Should original millwork be replaced?
Rarely. Nineteenth-century millwork of this quality is not commercially available today at any sensible price. Repair and matching is nearly always the better result and often the cheaper one.
Do we need historic commission approval to remodel our kitchen?
Generally no, as long as the work stays inside. The Commission reviews exterior alterations, new construction, demolition and site work, and a Certificate of Appropriateness covers the outside of the house and the ground around it, down to a change of roof color. Interior remodeling sits outside that. It comes back the moment the plan adds a vent, a window or a rear deck. Local designation is what triggers review; a National Register listing on its own does not.
Who pulls the permit for a project in Marion County?
Permits go through the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services at 200 E Washington Street, and residential review typically runs ten to fifteen business days. DBNS requires the applicant to be either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner, so the application goes in under one name or the other. We settle which route your job uses before the estimate goes out, and build the schedule around a real filing date rather than an optimistic one.
Can we put a bathroom on the third floor?
Sometimes. Three things decide it. Clear height under the roof: a bathroom needs six foot eight, and that has to hold over a thirty-by-thirty-inch area at the showerhead. Then whether the attic stair can take a tub and a vanity, or whether they come up in pieces. Then the waste run, which wants to stack over the second-floor wet wall. Where it cannot, the run gets long and shallow and the joists start to matter. We measure before saying yes.
Our basement has a dirt floor under part of it. Is it worth finishing?
Usually not as living space, and we would say so at the walkthrough rather than after the framing is up. What is worth doing is a sound utility basement: dry, lit, a safe stair, mechanicals in order. Marion County is EPA Radon Zone 1, where one home in three tests at or above the action level, and a floor that is not continuous changes how a mitigation system has to be built. Solve the floor before anyone discusses a family room.
We want to replace the windows on the front of the house. Can you just do that?
Not without a Certificate of Appropriateness. Windows on a street-facing elevation are exterior work, and replacing original sash is reviewed against the district's guidelines rather than approved as routine. Repairing and weatherstripping what is there is often the shorter path and keeps the glass that came with the house. Work at the rear, out of view from the street, can sometimes be approved administratively, but it is still reviewed and it is still an application.
Are you based in the neighborhood?
No. We are in Fishers, northeast of the city, and we drive down. We are not going to call ourselves local to the Old Northside when we are not. What travels with us is a crew that arrives together and stays the day, and the person who quoted the job running it. We prepare the paperwork from here and tell you which name the permit goes in under before you sign anything.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Old Northside
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 Old Northside 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.