Remodeling contractor in Roscoe Village, Chicago

Roscoe Village is not on the city's official map. It sits inside the North Center community area, so permits come from the City of Chicago Department of Buildings like anywhere else in Chicago. The city requires a licensed general contractor for permitted work. We pull the permit and handle the inspections.

There is no landmark district here. The one Chicago Landmark in the neighbourhood is the former Schlitz Brewery tied house at 2159 W. Belmont, built in 1903 and 1904 to a design by Charles Thisslew and designated in 2011. If a building you want to replace is rated red or orange in the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, the city can hold the demolition permit for up to 90 days.

Roscoe Village has no census figures of its own, so the best numbers are CMAP's for the whole North Center community area. Half the homes there, 51.4 percent, are in buildings from before 1940. Two to four unit buildings hold 42.8 percent of homes, and a third of all homes went up in 1990 or later.

That mix shows on the street, with prewar flats next to houses from the last 30 years. The west end has its own history. From 1904 to 1967 Riverview Park, a 76 acre amusement park, filled the land from Belmont north toward Lane Tech and from Western to the river. DePaul College Prep, the Area 3 police headquarters and Riverview Plaza stand there now.

A house on a narrow lot has a long, thin plan. The kitchen often sits at the back, and the question is whether to open it to the rooms in front or to push it into new space at the rear. Opening up a long plan means finding out which interior walls carry the floor above, and in an old house the answer is not always obvious from the floor plan.

For bathrooms, the common request is a second full bath upstairs. On a narrow house the stair and the plumbing stack decide where it can go, so we work out the drain route before the layout.

FEMA maps a Zone A strip along the North Branch, on the west side where Riverview once stood. On the rest of the neighbourhood, flooding means sewer backup. Chicago's Department of Water Management says heavy storms fill the sewer mains and push water into basements through private drains, and that older city code tied downspouts into the house drain.

Before we finish a basement here we look at where the downspouts go, test the floor drains and check backflow protection. A basement family room or guest suite is a common way to add space when the lot has no room left to build on, so it is worth getting the water side right first.

Roughly half of Roscoe Village's land is zoned RS3 on the city zoning map. Under the Chicago Zoning Ordinance, RS3 allows a floor area ratio of 0.90 and a height of 30 feet. Side setbacks must add up to 20 percent of lot width, with neither under 2 feet or 8 percent. The rear setback is 28 percent of lot depth or 50 feet for a detached house.

The rule people forget is rear yard open space. In RS3 you must keep at least 225 square feet per unit or 6.5 percent of the lot, whichever is greater, as open space in the rear yard, and a 15 foot circle has to fit inside it. A rear addition and a garage both eat into that. We draw the lot to scale before we propose anything.

Chicago's ADU ordinance also allows coach houses and basement or attic conversion units on eligible lots, after a Department of Housing pre certification and Department of Buildings permits. We check eligibility for your address before you plan around one.