Home Remodeling Services in Edina, MN

Yes — a building permit through ePermits, with plan review handled separately through Edina's ProjectDox portal for anything touching a wall. In the Country Club District, there's an extra step for exterior changes: a Certificate of Appropriateness is required, but only for street-facing facades, so most kitchen expansions don't trigger it since they push out toward the back of the house.

Usually, and the historic overlay is narrower than most homeowners assume — the Certificate of Appropriateness requirement covers significant structural changes to street-facing facades and demolition, not interior work or a rear-facing addition. A kitchen bump-out toward the back yard typically doesn't require the extra review; the same change to the front of the house would. We confirm which facade a project affects before design starts.

It depends heavily on the neighborhood's era. In Morningside, platted in 1905 and built out mostly as bungalows, kitchens are small and closed off from a smaller original footprint than the rest of the city carries. In Parkwood Knolls, Edina's newest and largest-lot neighborhood, the homes are recent enough that a kitchen project is more often a full-scale renovation than a structural rescue.

Often, particularly in Morningside and White Oaks, where the housing predates the attached garage and the electrical service was sized for a much smaller household's appliance load. A kitchen remodel with new appliances is frequently the project that surfaces it — we check panel capacity at the estimate stage rather than after the new range arrives.

Yes, for plumbing and electrical work, through ePermits with plan review in ProjectDox for anything structural. In the Country Club District specifically, adding, moving, or resizing a window on a street-facing wall needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before the building permit — a requirement that doesn't apply anywhere else in the city.

It's one of the more common requests in Morningside and White Oaks, where houses from the 1905-1936 development era were mostly built with a single bath. The lower level is the usual candidate, governed by the state's 6-foot-4-inch minimum ceiling height for an existing basement — the number that most often decides whether the project fits, not the budget.

Mostly the exterior review, not the interior work. Interior layout changes, fixtures, and finishes go through the standard permit process like anywhere in Edina. It's specifically a new or resized window on a street-facing wall that needs a Certificate of Appropriateness first, because the district's overlay protects what's visible from the street rather than the floor plan behind it.

Only if it's a lower-level bathroom, and only in certain parts of the city. Edina sits across two watersheds, Nine Mile Creek and Minnehaha Creek, and the low ground between them near Lake Cornelia was historically wetland before it was drained and put under storm sewers. A basement bath there is a different proposition than one in higher ground like Parkwood Knolls, which is why we check the lot before finalizing a lower-level plan.

6 feet 4 inches minimum, including under beams and ducts, per the state building code Edina enforces. In Morningside's 1905-1936 bungalow stock especially, that's the number that decides whether a lower level is finishable before a single design decision gets made.

5.7 square feet of net clear opening at minimum, a 9-square-foot well with no dimension under 36 inches, and a ladder if the well runs deeper than 44 inches. Edina's own policy adds a detail we haven't seen published elsewhere: the well needs 48 inches of clearance measured from the escape opening up to a public way — not just the well's own depth — which occasionally changes where a well can go on a tight urban lot.

One worth knowing: any non-treated wood has to maintain a minimum 6-inch clearance from earth, called out specifically in the city's own escape-and-rescue policy alongside the window-well rules. It's a small dimension that's easy to lose sight of when a window well and a grade change meet at the foundation.

Rarely, and that's worth saying plainly. The district's Certificate of Appropriateness requirement covers street-facing facades and demolition — a basement finish that doesn't change a window visible from the street typically doesn't engage it at all. Where it does apply is a new egress window cut into a street-facing foundation wall, which is worth flagging with us early rather than at permit submission.

A building permit through ePermits with plan review handled separately in ProjectDox. If the project changes a street-facing facade in the Country Club District, a Certificate of Appropriateness comes first — a review layer specific to that one neighborhood and not required anywhere else in the city.

It's the hardest version of this question in Edina. The district's overlay presumes a home built between 1924 and 1944 contributes to its historic character, and demolition is not allowed unless the owner can demonstrate otherwise. Most owners in the district end up planning a whole-home renovation around the existing structure rather than a teardown — worth knowing before a project is scoped as new construction.

Alarms have to be installed in every sleeping room, outside each separate sleeping area, and on every additional story and basement, and they have to draw power from the building's wiring rather than run on batteries alone wherever an attic, crawl space, or basement makes that wiring accessible without opening up finished walls elsewhere. On a full remodel that's opening up walls anyway, that access usually exists — which is exactly when the code expects hardwired alarms rather than battery ones.

It depends on the neighborhood as much as the house. In Morningside and White Oaks, both built out before 1940, a whole-home scope usually means bringing wiring, insulation, and a smaller original footprint up to current standards. In the Country Club District, the interior gets the same treatment, but any change to a street-facing facade needs a Certificate of Appropriateness first. In Parkwood Knolls, the newest and largest-lot neighborhood in the city, the systems are usually current and the project is closer to a full-scale renovation than a structural rescue.