Remodeling contractor in Dunning, Chicago

Dunning is inside the city, so the City of Chicago Department of Buildings issues the permit, and the city requires a general contractor licence for most construction and alteration work. We pull the permit and handle the inspections. The department issues many permits the same day through its Express Permit Program.

Dunning is mostly single family. CMAP's 2026 snapshot shows 66.5 percent of homes are detached single family houses and only 9.4 percent are in two unit buildings. Just over half, 50.9 percent, were built between 1940 and 1969, and 27.1 percent before 1940, for a median year built of 1953.

So the typical Dunning house is not a 1920s bungalow. It is more often one of the styles the Chicago Bungalow Association dates to those post war decades: the one and a half story brick Cape Cod with a front gable, the Georgian, or the one story ranch.

For about 70 years Cook County buried its poorest residents here, near the county poor house, on land around Irving Park Road between Oak Park and Narragansett avenues. The state bought the 320 acre property in 1912 for a mental institution, and the burial ground was forgotten until 1989, when construction workers building what is now the Dunning Square shopping center found remains. Read Dunning Memorial Park now marks the site.

When the city rebuilt Oak Park Avenue in 2016, archaeologists confirmed that a 1930s section of the road crossed part of the old cemetery. It is a reminder that much of Dunning was institutional land long before it was a grid of houses.

The April 2013 storm turned Dunning streets into rivers and left two to three feet of water in some basements for weeks, according to the local alderman. The city responded with sewer and catch basin cleaning in the area between Belmont, Berteau, Pacific and Cumberland avenues, and with one of the first projects in its Green Stormwater Infrastructure Strategy on Oak Park Avenue: open bottom planters, pavement that lets water through, and bioswales.

You can do the same thing on a smaller scale. Disconnect downspouts from the sewer and carry them at least ten feet from the foundation, as the Chicago Bungalow Association advises. Inside, a finished basement in Dunning should have backup protection planned in, whether that is a backwater valve, a standpipe on the floor drains or an overhead sewer.

In a Cape Cod the second floor sits under the roof slope, which limits headroom. A dormer is the usual way to get a full bathroom and usable bedrooms up there. In a ranch, everything is on one level, so a bigger kitchen or a family room usually goes out the back.

Either way, the zoning sets the limits. A detached house must keep a rear setback of 28 percent of lot depth or 50 feet, whichever is less. In RS3 the two side setbacks must add up to 20 percent of lot width, floor area is capped at 0.90 of the lot and the height limit is 30 feet. We check your lot's numbers before we design.