Home remodelingin Sheridan, IN
Bathrooms, kitchens and basements in Sheridan. We are a 40-minute drive away in Fishers, we pull the permit through the Town of Sheridan, or the Hamilton County Plan Commission, and the crew that walks your house is the crew that builds the job.
We have been opening walls in Hamilton County since 2012
Sheridan is the oldest incorporated town in Hamilton County and the housing shows it. Most of what we see was built before 1950, on generous lots, with the original room plan still intact — small separate rooms rather than the open plan everything since has been built to.
- Pre-1950 houses with the original compartmented plan, where the change people want is one wall removed rather than a full remodel
- Farmhouse kitchens sized for a table rather than for counter run, so the fix is layout before it is cabinetry
- Rural properties on well and septic, which makes any added fixture a county health question first
What each of them means in Sheridan
Bathroom remodeling in Sheridan
A lot of the older houses in Sheridan got their first bathroom after they were built, and it shows in where the bathroom is: a corner taken out of a back bedroom, a pantry off the kitchen, a closet under the stair, or a squeeze in the hall on the second floor of a story-and-a-half. Those rooms are small, and the walls around them are plaster over wood lath on full-dimension framing that is not always where you expect it. We open a wall early to see what the last plumber did. Notched joists and an S-trap under the floor are both common here, and both are corrections rather than things to find at tile stage. The floor gets checked for deflection before tile is ordered — stiff enough to walk on and stiff enough for tile are two different standards, and a joist run that felt solid under linoleum will crack a grout line. Venting is the other recurring Sheridan problem. There is rarely an existing duct path, and a second-floor bath under a knee wall has almost nowhere to run one, so we find the route to a gable or through the roof before we quote the fan. Where a chase has to go floor to floor in an older wall, the fire blocking goes back in at the floor line rather than being left open.
Kitchen remodeling in Sheridan
The Sheridan kitchen problem is doors. In a pre-1950 town house or a farmhouse the kitchen sits at the back and everything passes through it — the back door, the cellar stair, the dining room, a pantry, and often a chimney breast still standing in the corner where the cook stove was. Add them up and a room that reads as large may hold eight feet of usable wall. We measure the openings and the traffic through them before anyone talks about door styles. The second thing is that nothing is level. Plenty of these kitchens sit in a shed or summer-kitchen addition on a shallow footing, and a floor can be off an inch across the run. Cabinets get set to a laser line and scribed to what is actually there. The tall pantry cabinet is where a discrepancy shows, so that is where we start. Then the panel. A farmhouse kitchen runs on one or two circuits, sometimes off a hundred-amp panel with no spare spaces, sometimes still a fuse box. Two twenty-amp small-appliance circuits and GFCI protection at the countertop are basic requirements now, so a subpanel or a service upgrade gets scoped with the kitchen rather than after it. Range fuel gets settled first — off the gas main it is propane or all-electric. On a well, the pressure tank and softener sit in the cellar under the kitchen, in the middle of any new sink run.
Basement finishing in Sheridan
Sheridan basements divide cleanly, and the divide decides the job. Under most pre-1950 houses in town there is a partial cellar — fieldstone or brick walls, sometimes early poured concrete, a bulkhead door outside, a coal room, and six and a half feet of headroom on a good day. Habitable space needs seven feet clear, and beams and ducts are allowed to hang lower, so we measure at the lowest duct rather than in the middle of the room. Where a converted gravity furnace left round trunk lines the size of a barrel across the ceiling, the honest answer is often that the cellar is worth more as dry storage and a mechanical room than as living space. We say that at the walkthrough. Postwar ranches at the edge of town and newer builds out in Adams Township are a different case and finish normally. Water comes first. The ground is flat, heavy clay with no fall to carry roof water away, and downspouts on these houses often disappear into clay tile that stopped working decades ago — and on flat ground, where a sump discharges to is its own question. Many of these cellars still have a dirt or thin rat-slab floor in part, which is a moisture source and a soil-gas path, and it gets sealed before anything else is decided. Cutting an egress opening through a stone wall needs a mason and a lintel — a different job from cutting a poured wall.
Flat ground, heavy clay, and nowhere for water to go
Sheridan sits on flat farm ground in the northwest corner of Hamilton County. The clay is heavy and slow to drain, it holds water against a foundation, and it moves with the freeze-thaw. Almost no lot has natural fall, so downspout runs and exterior grade have to do that work. Anything outdoors carrying load — a deck post, a porch pier, an addition — bears below the frost line, roughly thirty to thirty-six inches. In town it is municipal water and sewer; past the limits, well and septic.
Radon Zone 1 ground
Hamilton County is in the EPA's highest radon zone, where roughly one house in three tests at or above 4 pCi/L. It matters most when a cellar becomes a bedroom or an office. Test before framing starts, while a mitigation pipe still has an open ceiling to run in.
Downspouts and clay tile
Most wet basements are explained outside the house: roof water dropped at the foundation, grade that has settled toward the wall over seventy-five years, or old clay tile under the yard that collapsed and gave up. On ground this flat, where the water goes next is its own question.
Septic sets the footprint
Outside the town limits, the drain field and its reserve area decide where an addition, a deck footing or a delivery truck can sit. We locate the field and the well from the county health department record where one exists, before drawing anything rather than after.
Gravel drives and staging
Long gravel drives go soft in a spring thaw, and a loaded delivery truck finds that out first. We confirm access, take material in one drop rather than running to Westfield twice a day, and park where you can still get a car past us.
We pull the permit. You do not chase the Town of Sheridan, or the Hamilton County Plan Commission.
The Town of Sheridan permits inside its limits; the surrounding farmland is unincorporated Hamilton County, handled by the Plan Commission's building inspection division on Hamilton County Square in Noblesville through the EZ-Trak system.
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.
Sheridan and the surrounding area
- Downtown Sheridan
- Boxley
- Adams Township
- Jackson Township
- Hortonville
We are based in Fishers, about 40 minutes from Sheridan. 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 Sheridan homeowners ask us
Do you travel to Sheridan?
Yes. It is about forty minutes from Fishers, the furthest regular run we make in the county, and there is no travel charge. We schedule Sheridan work in continuous blocks rather than day trips.
Can an old farmhouse kitchen be opened up?
Usually. In houses of this age the wall between the kitchen and the next room is often bearing, and in balloon-framed examples the load path needs care. It is entirely doable — it needs a beam and a proper footing, both of which are their own lines on the estimate.
I am on a well and septic. Does that change a bathroom project?
It can. An added fixture increases the load on the septic field, and that is a Hamilton County Health Department question before it is ours. We establish the answer before designing a bathroom around it.
Will hard well water ruin a new bathroom in Sheridan?
It will not ruin it, but it decides a few choices. Groundwater out here is hard, and plenty of wells carry iron, which stains porcelain, discolors a light grout and scales up a shower valve early. Town water is hard too. Worth knowing your numbers before you settle on a grout color and a valve. If there is a softener, we plan the work around that loop.
My Sheridan house is on propane, not natural gas. Can I still have a gas range?
Yes. Most ranges ship set up for natural gas and convert with the manufacturer's LP orifice kit, and the range has to be listed for that conversion — so it gets specified when the appliance is ordered rather than discovered on install day. If the tank sits well off the house, running gas to the range is its own line on the estimate. On all-electric addresses, induction is usually simpler than bringing gas in, though it needs its own 240-volt circuit.
Can you match the trim in an old Sheridan farmhouse?
Usually close enough that you have to look for the join. Baseboard and casing from before 1950 are taller and heavier than anything on a lumberyard shelf, so we either have a knife ground and run new stock, or pull matching trim out of a closet and patch that opening with a modern profile. In a house that has been added onto, the profiles change room to room — we agree at the walkthrough which one the new work matches.
There's an old chimney in the middle of my kitchen. Can it come out?
Often, and it buys back wall. Two checks first. Whether anything still vents into it — in a farmhouse a furnace or water heater flue frequently does, and that appliance needs re-venting or a liner before the stack goes. And what carries it: masonry sits on its own footing in the cellar, so removing it below the roof means framing the floor and roof back across the hole. The estimate covers all of that, not the visible part.
Will you work on a Sheridan house that still has knob-and-tube wiring?
We do, and plenty of houses here still have some. Any circuit inside the work area gets replaced back to the panel, and abandoned runs get disconnected at the source rather than buried behind new drywall. The usual hazard is blown insulation packed over live knob-and-tube, which was designed to shed heat into open air. We tell you what is live and what is dead. Rewiring the house is a separate conversation, not a condition of the job.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Sheridan
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 Sheridan 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.