Home Remodeling Contractors in Bremerton, WA

Since March 16, 2020 the Department of Community Development has taken applications and payments online only, through the city's SmartGov public portal. Before applying, the city's Camino Permit Guide uses project type and GIS mapping to show which permit a job needs, the minimum submittal and any site constraints on the property; it gives guidance only, and the application itself is filed in the portal.

The residential site plan questionnaire asks about slopes, standing or flowing water and wetlands on the lot and within 200 feet of it. Grading of more than 50 cubic yards needs its own permit, and more than 2,000 square feet of new or replaced hard surface brings a stormwater management plan under BMC 15.04 and the state's 2019 stormwater manual for western Washington.

State law requires the city to report its permit timelines, and its monthly reports set a 60 day target for a new ADU and for smaller residential repairs, remodels and additions, and 90 days for larger ones. A shoreline exemption has a 45 day target. These are targets, not promises, and the reports show some months running over.

The city adopted its Shoreline Master Program on December 4, 2013, with limited amendments that took effect on September 7, 2017 and July 10, 2021. The marine waters of Puget Sound around Bremerton are a shoreline of statewide significance, which carries added policies.

The program is not retroactive. A house that was legally built but no longer meets today's shoreline height, buffer or setback standards counts as nonconforming and can be repaired and maintained, while an expansion or alteration is reviewed under the current rules.

The city is revising the Shoreline Master Program and the critical areas ordinance together, and a joint city and Department of Ecology public hearing was held on January 26, 2026. We check which version applies when your application is prepared.

BMC 20.14 covers five kinds of critical area: wetlands, critical aquifer recharge areas, frequently flooded areas, geologically hazardous areas and fish and wildlife habitat. The city sends owners to the Kitsap County parcel search, set to its critical areas theme, as a first look, but the code calls every such map a guideline and settles each boundary on the site itself.

Steepness is not the only trigger. Ground prone to liquefaction in an earthquake, hydric soils and loose fill count as a moderate geologic hazard whatever the slope, and the department can ask for a geological report on any site with slopes of 15 percent or more and 10 feet of relief, or for a geotechnical report on land work within 200 feet of a hazard area.

Bremerton loosened its ADU code with Ordinances 5410 and 5416. A lot may hold one house and two accessory units, attached or detached, and the owner does not have to live on site. Each unit may reach 1,000 square feet or 60 percent of the house's habitable floor area, whichever is larger, so a house over 1,667 square feet can support a bigger unit. Since June 16, 2025 no parking space is required.

An ADU follows the zone's setbacks, height and lot coverage; in R-10 that means 15 feet front and rear and 5 feet on the sides. A unit can sit on a rear lot line that backs onto an alley, or 3 feet from a side line when that wall meets fire separation standards, and its siding and roofing should match the house.

Existing detached buildings put up before December 31, 2020 can be converted under relaxed standards, and the city takes part in a countywide program of six pre-approved ADU plans from 480 to 1,000 square feet. Either way, the application goes through the portal with a dimensioned site plan.

Bremerton's housing leans old. The Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey puts the median year built at 1969, close to one home in five dates from 1939 or earlier, and another one in seven went up in the 1940s, the wartime boom the city's own ADU guide recalls. Nearly two thirds were built before 1980.

Only about half of the housing is detached single-family, and slightly more households rent than own. For an owner of an older house, opening a wall can reveal wiring, plumbing or insulation that has to be brought up to current code, and we price that possibility in writing before work starts.