Home Remodeling Contractors in McKenna, WA

McKenna has no city government, so the building permit for a remodel, an addition, a deck or an ADU comes from Pierce County Planning and Public Works. Applications go in online through the county's PALS portal, and the county's Online Development Guide lets anyone search an address to see its site constraints, zoning and the permits a project is likely to need.

Some projects start with a Level 1 Pre-Application Screening, which the county requires where a property shows critical area indicators or special site restrictions, or is served by an on-site septic system or a private well. Along the Nisqually, with its floodplain, shoreline and lahar mapping, a McKenna parcel can meet more than one of those conditions.

The county issues residential plumbing and mechanical permits immediately after payment, and its exempt list leaves out painting, tile, cabinets and counters, reroofing a pitched roof where the sheathing stays, and new siding over existing sheathing. Exempt work still has to meet the code, and the county reminds owners that its location must be allowed by every regulatory department.

Measured against the county's regulated floodplain layer, a bit over a quarter of McKenna sits in the river's AE flood zone and about an eighth in its FEMA floodway. The floodway rule is strict: new construction, filling and substantial improvements are prohibited there, and an existing house can be repaired inside its footprint only while the work stays below the substantial improvement line.

In the flood fringe outside the floodway, the county allows new building only on a lot of record created before March 1, 2005, and only when the owner shows it cannot reasonably go outside the flood hazard area. A new or substantially improved house, or an addition built onto its side, has its lowest floor at least 1 foot above base flood elevation on a crawlspace or 2 feet on a slab. Any fill must be matched by an equal volume of new flood storage dug elsewhere on the site.

Once the floor is built, a Washington licensed land surveyor completes a FEMA elevation certificate for the county's file. That certificate is required for new construction, for additions fixed to the side of a structure and for substantial improvements anywhere in a flood hazard area.

Pierce County counts the Nisqually, from its mouth to the mouth of Mineral Creek, as a shoreline of statewide significance, where state law puts long term and statewide interests ahead of local ones. The county's part of the river corridor here is the north shore, which it follows from the edge of Joint Base Lewis-McChord upstream to Alder Dam.

Shoreline jurisdiction covers the land within 200 feet of the ordinary high water mark, associated wetlands, the floodway and any floodplain within 200 feet of it. Inside that band, the standard buffer is set by the environment designation the county has mapped: 75 feet for Shoreline Residential, 100 feet for Conservancy, 150 feet for Natural and 50 feet for the parts of a High Intensity use that do not depend on the water.

When the site conditions in the code are met, a buffer may be averaged by up to 25 percent, provided the total buffer area does not shrink. Changes beyond 25 percent go through a shoreline variance, and the county's fish and wildlife habitat rules apply alongside, with the stricter width winning where the two differ.

Roughly seven eighths of McKenna falls inside the county's inundation zone for Case I lahars, the cohesive mudflows that begin as huge avalanches of weakened rock on Mount Rainier and recur on average every 500 to 1,000 years. It lies in Travel Time Zone D, the band where a flow on the Nisqually is estimated to arrive more than two hours after it starts.

The county reviews its volcanic hazard maps for every development proposal and requires a notice on title where a critical area is present. Inside the lahar zones the code prohibits density incentives, essential facilities and hazardous facilities, and in Zone D it caps special occupancy structures at 5,000 people.

About a fifth of McKenna is also flagged on the county's landslide hazard layer, mostly where the ground drops toward the river. The code watches for signs such as slopes steeper than 20 percent with at least 20 feet of relief, springs and seeps, and tension cracks near the top of a bank.

About 95 percent of McKenna is zoned Rural 10, which allows one home per ten acres on a ten acre minimum lot and asks for 25 feet of front setback, 10 feet at the sides and 30 feet at the rear, with a 40 foot height limit. The rest is zoned Rural Activity Center, which county code calls the McKenna Rural Activity Center when it gives two seats on the Roy-McKenna Area Advisory Commission to members of its business community; there the side and rear setbacks drop to 5 feet.

Outside the Urban Growth Area, which covers all of McKenna, Pierce County allows one accessory dwelling unit per house, attached or detached, with up to 1,250 square feet of interior habitable space counting basements and attics but not a garage. A new detached unit stays out of the required setbacks and no taller than the house, except that it may rise one story higher when built above a detached garage. The owner applies for a building permit showing those limits are met, the county cannot require street improvements as a condition, and on lots more than half a mile from a major transit stop the ADU gets parking under the county's parking chapter.

Two water systems serve McKenna on the county's purveyor map: the McKenna Water District, which holds a county franchise for its waterlines in the public roads, and the Riverview system run by Rainier View Water Company. A project that adds a unit or plumbing fixtures starts from whichever one serves the parcel.

McKenna began as a sawmill town. A state historic property inventory records that the Salsich Lumber Company built a major mill here in 1907 and laid out a company town, mostly on the Pierce County side of the river, with a company store, a hotel and a post office. The McKenna Lumber Company bought the holdings in 1916 and ran the mill until the Depression closed it in 1932.

Little of that housing survives in the count today. The Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey estimates about 234 homes in the McKenna CDP, with a median build year of 1997, some four in ten dating from the 1990s and none estimated from before 1970. Roughly one in five is a mobile home. The sample is small and the margins are wide, so these are rough shares, not a house by house count.

For a remodel, that usually means kitchens and baths two or three decades old. The written price lists what is expected behind the walls before any demolition.