Remodeling contractor in Portage Park, Chicago

Portage Park is inside the city, so the permit comes from the City of Chicago Department of Buildings. The city also requires a general contractor licence, issued by that same department, for most construction, alteration and repair work. We pull the permit and handle the inspections. The department issues many permits the same day through its Express Permit Program. Work that needs drawings, such as a dormer, goes through plan review.

Portage Park is old by Northwest Side standards. CMAP's 2026 snapshot puts the median year built at 1939, and 51.5 percent of homes went up before 1940. That is older than Jefferson Park, Norwood Park, Edison Park or Dunning. About 44.7 percent of homes are detached single family houses, 19.3 percent are in two unit buildings and 15.7 percent are in three and four unit buildings.

The bungalow is the house most people picture here. The Portage Park Bungalow Historic District, on the National Register since 2014, sits in the north central part of the area near the park. Brick Chicago bungalows make up 189 of its 225 buildings, and most were built between 1920 and 1930, peaking in 1923 and 1924. Schorsch Irving Park Gardens started in 1917 with 16 bungalows on the 6000 block of Grace Street, the first of more than 600 the Schorsch company built.

A Chicago bungalow is brick, one and a half stories over a full basement, narrow at the front and back and long on the sides. That shape limits how wide a kitchen can get. Most good layouts work inside the existing rear rooms rather than fighting the side walls. Plan for opening plaster and checking original wiring and drain lines before the layout is final, because a century old house has often been patched before.

In a two flat, the upstairs kitchen and bath sit over the downstairs unit, so drains and supply lines run through someone else's ceiling. We schedule that work so the lower unit is not left without water for long.

Six Corners has a reminder of how long kitchens have been sold here. The Peoples Gas store at 4839 W. Irving Park Road, a Chicago Landmark from 1926, was designed by George Grant Elmslie for a gas company promoting new gas home appliances.

Basement flooding is the main issue in Portage Park. After the storm of September 11, 2022, WBEZ reported that one in four of the more than 1,400 water in basement and water on street complaints logged that Sunday came from Portage Park. CBS counted 343 basement flooding calls from Portage Park from Sunday to Monday morning, the most of any community area it looked at. In July 2023, CBS reported residents on the Northwest Side still drying out after another round of sewer water in their basements.

The city replaced century old eight inch sewer mains south of Dunham Park in 2015 to cut flooding there, but the system is still combined, so storm water and sewage share the same pipes. Before we finish a basement, have a licensed plumber televise the building sewer, then decide on a backwater valve, standpipes, an ejector pump or an overhead sewer. We use finishes that can take a wet day, and we keep the mechanicals off the floor where we can.

The Chicago Bungalow Association, working with AIA Chicago architects, published design schemes for bungalow dormers that add two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs, and for rear additions that put a family room next to the kitchen. Its StopThePop campaign argues for adding space without a full second storey that changes the street.

The zoning still decides what fits. In RS3 the floor area ratio is capped at 0.90, the rear setback for a detached house is 28 percent of lot depth or 50 feet, whichever is less, and the two side setbacks must add up to 20 percent of lot width. Check your lot's zoning class first. We draw the addition to those numbers before anyone prices it.