Remodeling contractor in La Grange, IL

The Community Development Department at 53 S. La Grange Road handles plan review, permits and inspections. Everything runs through the village's OpenGov portal: applications, plans, payment and inspection requests. There is no paper route, so drawings need to be ready as clean PDFs before anything is filed.

Every contractor on the job has to be registered with the village, and the village publishes its list of registered contractors. Registration runs from January 1 to December 30 and is renewed each year. We register before we pull. Most inspections happen Monday to Friday between 8 am and noon and need to be booked at least a day ahead, which matters when a plumber and a drywall crew are waiting on the same visit.

F. D. Cossitt founded La Grange in 1879, and the older sections of the village hold houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in a mix of styles. Those blocks were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Village of La Grange Historic District in 1979.

The village is clear that National Register listing is honorary. Private owners are free to maintain, alter or sell as they choose unless there is federal involvement. So a kitchen or rear addition in the district is not held up by the listing itself, though the house's age still decides what you find behind the walls.

In a house of that age a kitchen or bathroom job usually means rerouting drains and supply lines, and La Grange counts fixtures. The village publishes a Water Fixture Calculation Worksheet alongside its permit forms, so a new powder room or a second sink means filling in that worksheet with the application.

Plans go in through the portal with the rest of the application, and the village lists its plan review requirements and required inspections for construction projects as separate handouts. We follow those lists rather than guessing what a reviewer wants.

The village says plainly that high intensity storms have produced more stormwater than its sewers can carry, leading to flooded basements, overland flooding and water on private property. When the combined sewer is overloaded, wastewater can come back up through the lowest fixture in the house, usually a basement floor drain.

That shapes any basement finish here. La Grange runs a Sewer Backup Prevention Grant for detached single family and two family homes that covers part of the cost of an overhead sewer or a backflow prevention valve, plus the trenching and floor replacement that go with it. Permit fees are waived for work funded through the program, and downspouts and sump pumps have to be disconnected from the combined sewer to qualify. Homes in the South Lyons Sanitary District are not on village sewers and are not eligible.

If the basement gets a bedroom, the village's egress handout spells out the code: a clear opening of at least 5.7 square feet, at least 20 inches wide and 24 inches high, with the sill no more than 44 inches off the floor. Most old basement windows are nowhere near that, so plan for a new well.

Every residential district from R1 to R5 has a maximum lot coverage of 45 percent, and the rear yard is 20 percent of lot depth or 25 feet, whichever is greater, up to 35 feet. The village asks for a Site Development Data Sheet to show the arithmetic, and it has a separate instruction sheet because the calculation trips people up.

Stormwater rules are stricter than the regional minimum. The village says its drainage requirements go beyond what the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District requires, and that additions and new patios on existing homes have to show compliance with village grading and stormwater standards. New single family homes need on site detention, mostly built underground. The village is also partway through a zoning code update, so we check the current text before we draw.

A permit is needed for any pool 24 inches deep or more, or with 250 square feet or more of water surface, above or in ground. The pool sits at least 10 feet from side and rear lot lines and cannot go in a required side yard. Equipment stays at least 5 feet from any lot line, meets the village noise standards and is screened wherever it can be seen from a public way.

Barrier rules: a fence at least 4 feet tall with a self closing, self latching gate, or a locking cover meeting ASTM F1346 instead. Separately, the pool has to be screened on all sides by a 6 foot privacy fence or 6 foot landscaping, and it has to be visible from inside the house. Keep it 8 feet from any building, roofed porch or balcony, 10 feet horizontally from overhead wires and 5 feet from buried power lines. If the pool and deck add 250 square feet or more of new hard surface, a topographic survey and grading plan are part of the submittal.