Home Remodeling Contractors in Graham, WA

Graham is a census-designated place, not a city, so Pierce County Planning and Public Works reviews and issues its building permits. Homeowners and contractors submit and track applications in the county's PALS+ web portal, and the county asks applicants to research the parcel first with its Online Development Guide, which lists site constraints, zoning and the permits a project is likely to need.

The county requires a Level 1 Pre-Application Screening for projects on parcels with critical area indicators or special site restrictions, and for properties served by an on-site septic system or a private well. Septic applications are reviewed by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, and the county's residential checklist asks for proof of an approved drinking water source: a certificate from the water purveyor, or Health Department approval where a well serves the property.

After the application is accepted, a permit technician emails an invoice, and the county cancels the application if the fees are not paid within five days. Reviewers post any corrections as "request" comments in the portal. Electrical permits come from the state Department of Labor and Industries or Tacoma Public Utilities, not the county, and the stamped permit set has to be on site for every inspection until the Certificate of Occupancy is printed from the portal.

The Graham Community Plan was adopted by the Pierce County Council on October 10, 2006, and took effect on March 1, 2007, and Chapter 18J.80 of the county code carries out its design goals. Because the Graham area is one of the three places where the county's single-family exemption does not apply, an addition, a new detached structure or other exterior work on a Graham house is subject to the county's design standards in Title 18J, while a kitchen or bath remodel that stays inside the walls is not.

Every house permit in the county, Graham included, must also show significant trees on the site plan, and at least 30 percent of them are to be retained, up to the county's minimum tree density. The county sets the size at which a tree counts by species: 8 inches across for a Garry oak, 5 inches for a Pacific yew, 10 inches for a Pacific madrone and 24 inches for a Douglas fir, with any tree of 40 inches or more treated as a legacy tree.

The chapter's fire standards for urban residential development go further than the separation rule. When a variance or planned development lets a home sit closer than the 10 foot side setback, no deck, bay window, tip out or roofline may project into it; privacy fences need an emergency gate into the back yard; and a third floor exit must face the public right of way. For homes in rural areas prone to wildfire, the chapter's guidelines call for limiting trees and plants that could carry fire within 30 feet of the house and for Class C or better roofing instead of wood or shake shingles.

The Graham Community Plan area covers about 76.5 square miles, and more than half of it, about 53 percent, drains to Muck Creek, the largest of its five watershed basins. The plan describes well drained prairie soils in the northwest corner and mostly poorly drained soils across the rest of the area, the kind that the plan links to quick surface runoff and failing septic systems.

The same plan maps landslide or erosion hazard areas over about 15 percent of the plan area, mainly on Rocky Ridge and the Orting Valley Ridge, and soils that can liquefy or settle in an earthquake over about 10 percent, in the Ohop and Orting valleys and along Muck Creek and South Creek. The eastern edge, in the Puyallup River Valley, lies inside a designated volcanic hazard area.

The whole plan area sits over a sole source aquifer, and the plan puts groundwater anywhere from one foot to more than 100 feet below the surface. Where a lot has one of these hazards, a wetland or a stream buffer, the county's Pre-Application Screening lists the studies and field work the permit will need.

The Graham plan area straddles the county's Urban Growth Area line. A 2024 county staff report on the plan describes the plan area as mostly rural, with only small portions near its northern edge designated urban, so the ADU rule depends on which side of the line a lot sits.

On a lot inside the Urban Growth Area, Pierce County allows two accessory dwelling units, attached, detached or one of each, of up to 1,000 square feet of interior habitable space. Side and rear setbacks for an urban ADU may be cut to five feet, or two feet at the rear where the lot backs onto an alley, and an existing detached building in the UGA can be converted even if it sits inside a side or rear setback.

Outside the UGA, one ADU is allowed, up to 1,250 square feet, counting basements and attics but not a garage. On any lot, a new detached ADU stays out of the required yard setbacks, is no taller than the main house unless it sits above a detached garage, and, where it stands within 100 feet of the house, stays no closer to the front lot line than the house does. Properties more than half a mile from a major transit stop provide a parking space for each ADU, and street improvements cannot be made a condition of approval.

The community takes its name from Smith Graham, a Cascade Timber Company foreman who was among the first to log the area around 1900, the year the Tacoma Eastern Railroad was extended to Graham. The plan traces a residential building boom, mobile homes included, from the 1970s into the early 1990s.

Census Bureau figures for 2020 to 2024 count about 11,540 homes in the Graham CDP, with a median year built of 1999. About 72 percent were built between 1990 and 2019, and the 1990s were the busiest single decade. About 81 percent are detached single-family houses and about 11 percent are mobile homes, and roughly 82 percent of occupied homes are lived in by their owners.

A house from the 1990s or 2000s is often ready for its first kitchen and bath update, and manufactured and mobile homes are a residential permit type of their own with the county. We price the work line by line, in writing, before it starts.