Home Remodeling Contractors in Fox Island, WA

Pierce County does. Fox Island is unincorporated, with no city hall of its own, so every building, land use and site development permit for the island comes from the county's Planning and Public Works department through its Development Center. Applications are submitted and tracked online in PALS+, the county's permit portal, which also books inspections.

Before applying, the county points owners to its Online Development Guide, which works from a parcel number or address and lists the permits and documents a project will need; the guide itself does not accept applications. Remodels, additions, decks and accessory dwelling units all go through the residential permit path, while a straight swap of plumbing or mechanical fixtures is issued as soon as the fee is paid.

A lot served by a septic system or a private well, or one flagged with critical areas, needs the Level 1 Pre-Application Screening before the main application. We put that screening at the start of the schedule, and the drawings follow its findings.

The county's Gig Harbor Peninsula Community Plan describes Fox Island as a 5.2 square mile island joined to the mainland at Artondale by the Fox Island Bridge over Hale Passage. Its center is mostly rural, wooded acreage, and houses line the water around the whole shore; the neighboring Tanglewood Island holds a few homes of its own. The 1994 county plan placed the island in the rural area, and an earlier 1989 revision had already set a rural residential density of one home per acre.

The bridge opened in August 1954 and charged a toll until 1965. It is the only road link. Every truckload of cabinets, tile, lumber and debris for an island job crosses that span.

Most island lots touch Puget Sound, so the Pierce County Shoreline Master Program applies to a large share of Fox Island projects. The county's customer guide says interior remodeling, and exterior work that keeps the existing footprint such as a new roof or replacement windows, needs no shoreline review at all. A house, and the normal things that go with it like a garage, deck, shed or septic system, usually moves through the exemption process rather than a substantial development permit, but the exemption is still an application of its own.

The standard buffer is measured from the ordinary high water mark. In limited cases it can be averaged or reduced by up to 25 percent, and a reduction on Residential land is only available where the buffer slopes less than 15 percent. The county updated its shoreline program in 2018.

Pierce County code, as amended in December 2025, allows one accessory dwelling unit per lot outside the Urban Growth Area, attached to the house or detached from it. Outside the growth area the unit may reach 1,250 square feet of interior living space, counting a basement or attic but not a garage.

A new detached unit cannot sit in the required setbacks, and it cannot stand taller than the main house unless it is built as one story over a detached garage. The county's rule keeping a detached unit behind the front of the house does not apply to waterfront lots under the shoreline code. On a property more than half a mile from a major transit stop, the county asks for an off-street parking space for the ADU.

The Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey counts about 1,560 homes on Fox Island. Nine in ten are detached single-family houses, and about 93 percent of occupied homes are owner occupied. The median house was built in 1990, the 1990s are the largest single decade of construction, and about 8 percent date from 1939 or earlier, with a small number kept for seasonal use.

That mix means a typical island project is a 1980s or 1990s house ready for new baths, a kitchen, windows and insulation, alongside a few much older waterfront homes that need their framing and wiring opened up before a plan is final. Either way, the scope is priced line by line in writing before anything is removed.