Interior remodeling in Montgomery Illinois.

A river village and a later map

The older Montgomery is the compact grid near the river, south of Aurora and just west of Oswego. Lots are smaller. Houses run from early twentieth-century cottages and foursquares to mid-century ranches tucked along those same streets. US-30 and Orchard Road carry the commercial traffic; the residential work we care about is a block or two off them, where a kitchen was planned for a household that cooked one meal at a time.

West and south of that grid, the village filled in from the 1990s onward with two-story houses, attached garages, and basements that were left unfinished or finished once in carpet and a dropped ceiling. Those two Montgomerys want different rooms. Treating them as the same housing stock is how a remodel ends up looking borrowed.

Kitchens on the older streets

In the river blocks, a kitchen remodel usually means staying inside the walls you have. The sink is on an outside wall because that is where the plumber could vent it. An island that seats four will delete the path to the back door. The better project is new cabinets on the existing run, a counter you can actually land a dish on, and a tall pantry if a corner is wasted on a dead cabinet.

A hall bath in the same houses is often the original tub and a vanity that collides with the door. We remodel that room in inches, not in a primary-suite fantasy. Built-ins help here too: a shallow bookcase or window seat in a living room that never had a closet to spare.

Basements where the village grew later

The newer subdivisions are where basement finishing is the obvious conversation. Headroom is usually kinder, the stair is a straight run, and the upstairs is a standard four-bedroom plan that filled up. What those basements rarely have is a layout. Ducts cross the middle. The water heater sits where a bedroom corner wants to be. We draw rooms around that, and we leave the mechanical closet large enough to service.

A kitchen in those same houses is a different problem from the river cottages: more floor, a peninsula the builder used instead of an island, and oak or maple that has dated all at once. Replacing the cabinet run without moving the sink is the common scope. Opening the wall to the dining room is the less common one, and only after we know the wall is not holding the floor above.

Permits, stated generally

Interior work inside the village is reviewed by the Village of Montgomery. Because the town lies in two counties, people sometimes assume a county counter is the permit office. For a house in the village, it is the village. Projects that change structure, add a bath, or move plumbing and electrical are the ones that usually need a permit. A cabinet replacement that leaves the walls and the drains alone can be simpler. We look up the current checklist for the address before we schedule the build. We will not tell you a fee or a number of review days we have not confirmed, because both move.

Neighbors in Oswego and, a bit farther, Naperville call with the same four kinds of work. Montgomery is simply where we start the morning.

Montgomery questions