Home Remodeling Contractors in Chehalis, WA

The City of Chehalis Community Development Department runs building permits, and applications go in through its online permitting portal, where the required forms are uploaded as submittals. Every application starts with the city's cover sheet, plus the attachment forms that fit the job, an energy code worksheet for any occupied building, and fees paid when the application is submitted.

For a remodel of an existing house the city wants construction plans drawn to scale that show what exists and what is proposed. An addition also needs a site plan of the whole parcel with existing and new structures, water and sewer lines, the driveway, easements and any critical areas that Lewis County GIS lists for the site.

Two items often surprise owners of older houses. The city notes that replacing siding on a home built before 1990 may need a separate permit from the Southwest Clean Air Agency, and a demolition permit needs the agency's approved demolition permit showing that all asbestos has been removed.

The municipal code gives the city 28 days to say whether an application is complete, and the review clock pauses while the city waits on revisions from the applicant.

The flood chapter of the municipal code opens with the finding that the city's flood hazard areas are subject to periodic inundation, and it applies to every area subject to the base flood. Inside a special flood hazard area, a development permit is needed before any construction, fill or other development begins.

For homes the 2025 update of the code raised the bar: the lowest floor, basement included, and the mechanical equipment and utilities go at least two feet above the base flood elevation, or two feet above the flood of record, whichever is higher. Enclosed areas below that floor must let floodwater in and out through openings sized by the code.

The city runs a zero rise policy. Fill placed in the floodplain needs compensatory excavation so the flood level does not rise, and fill over 500 cubic yards also needs a report from a licensed engineer. In a designated floodway, residential construction is prohibited except for repairs and improvements that add no ground floor area and cost no more than half the structure's market value.

Four waters inside the city are shorelines of the state: the Chehalis River, which the state ranks as a shoreline of statewide significance, the Newaukum River, Salzer Creek and an unnamed lake commonly called Airport Lake. The shoreline program reaches 200 feet landward of each one's ordinary high water mark, plus mapped floodways, 200 feet of floodplain beyond them and associated wetlands. The Newaukum alone gives Stan Hedwall Park 2.25 miles of riverbank.

Chehalis adopted an update to its 1982 shoreline program in 2023. The updated program sets a 75 foot buffer from the ordinary high water mark for a single-family home, so a riverside deck or addition is planned knowing which version governs on the day the permit is filed.

The city's geologic hazard chapter treats slopes steeper than 30 percent with at least 10 feet of vertical relief as landslide hazard areas, along with ground that shows past movement. A buffer of at least 50 feet applies at both the top and the toe of such a slope, or the distance a geotechnical report recommends if that is greater.

That buffer can shrink to as little as 10 feet when a qualified professional's analysis of the actual plans satisfies the director. Seismic hazard areas follow the state Department of Natural Resources maps for western Washington, so a site on soft or sloping ground may call for an engineer before the drawings are final.

Outside the historic districts, the city's use definitions allow up to two accessory dwelling units, one attached and one detached, on any lot in the urban growth area where a single-family house is allowed, matching state law. An existing, legally built structure that no longer meets current setback or lot coverage rules may be converted into an ADU.

Parking is capped by code: no off-street space is required within half a mile walking distance of a major transit stop, at most one space per ADU on a lot of 6,000 square feet or less, and at most two on a larger lot. The city also may not require public street improvements as a condition of an ADU permit.

Inside the Westside, Hillside and Downtown historic districts the answer is different: ADUs are prohibited there, and new houses in the Westside and Hillside districts must be architecturally compatible with the buildings around them, as judged by the historic commission.

The Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey puts the median Chehalis home at 1965, and about 29 percent of homes were built in 1939 or earlier. Roughly 70 percent predate 1980, and about six in ten homes are detached single-family houses.

Opening a wall in a house of that age tends to turn up older wiring, plumbing and insulation. We name those possibilities in the itemized price rather than meeting them halfway through a kitchen or bathroom.