Kitchen, bathroom and basement remodeling in Montgomery, IL.

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.

Kitchen remodeling in Montgomery

Kitchen remodeling in Montgomery on the river blocks 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.

In the houses west and south of that grid, a kitchen 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.

Bathroom remodeling in Montgomery

Bathroom remodeling in Montgomery is the work of a licensed and insured Illinois contractor. The consultation is free and in-home. The hall bath in older Montgomery 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. A hall bath can be remodeled on its own, and the primary can wait.

In the later subdivisions the primary bath is a separate room, drawn for the room it is in. The river-block hall bath is not the template.

Bathrooms fail because of inches. The door hits the vanity. The towel bar is behind the door. The shower curb is high enough that everyone thinks about it, every morning. We start with the door closed, because that is how the room is used. We mark what can stay: the window, the stack, and the joists if a finished room is below. The vanity, the shower or tub, and the place you stand while drying off are drawn before anyone talks about stone. Materials, dimensions, and finishes are laid out plainly so you can picture the room before a single cut is made. A slab that blocks the shower is not a remodel.

If the fixtures stay on the same walls, the finish work is the vanity, the tile, the stone, the trim, and the lighting. The vanity is wood, built to the alcove rather than shaved from a stock box. Drawers beat doors. Stone or quartz sits on that box with a backsplash that dies cleanly into the mirror or the tile. Shower walls want a tile you can live with at 6 a.m. Large panels suit a primary shower. A smaller tile, sometimes a herringbone, suits a room with a tub and one window. The niche goes where your elbow already goes. Trim at the door, the window, and the base meets the hall. Lighting is part of the drawing — a pair of lights at the mirror, not one fixture behind your head.

A new valve, a moved drain, or a fan that has to reach the outside is named before we start. A lower-level bath belongs in the plan only when a stack is close enough that we are not inventing a plumbing path across the house. Remodeling every bath at once is rarely wise. We will sequence the rooms if you want more than one.

Basement remodeling in Montgomery

Basement finishing in Montgomery is the obvious conversation in the newer subdivisions. 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.

Custom built-ins in Montgomery

Custom built-ins in Montgomery help in the older rooms: a shallow bookcase or window seat in a living room that never had a closet to spare.

The piece is fitted. The rest of the house can stay. We measure the wall, including the parts that are out of plumb, and we draw a depth that will not steal the walkway.

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