Oak Park general contractor for additions and whole-home remodeling
Bofran Builders is a Chicago construction company based at 3922 N Ashland Ave, about nine miles east of Oak Park. If you are looking for an Oak Park general contractor who is comfortable opening up a 1920s frame house — and who frames the structure with an in-house crew instead of subbing it out — that is the work we have built our name on since 1999.
Home additions and home remodeling in Oak Park
These are the projects Oak Park's housing stock asks for most — more space without moving, updated interiors behind vintage facades, and repair of the structures that hold both up. Each service below has its own page with process, costs, and photos.
Home additions
Rear additions, second stories, dormers, and sunrooms. On a pre-1939 house the addition is a structural project first — new loads on old walls and foundations — and that structural work is exactly what our own framing crew does every week.
Home addition servicesWhole-home remodeling
Gut rehabs and layout changes that bring a vintage floor plan up to how families actually live — opened kitchens, added baths, main-floor powder rooms — while keeping the trim, proportions, and character that made you buy the house.
Whole-home remodeling servicesRestoration
Fire, water, and structural restoration for older homes — from sagging floor systems and failing porches to rebuilding after storm or water damage. We repair the original structure where it can be saved and rebuild it where it cannot.
Restoration servicesKitchen remodeling
Kitchens are where vintage layouts pinch hardest. We remove walls safely — sized headers, real load paths, not guesswork — and build kitchens that fit the way the rest of the house is put together.
Kitchen remodeling servicesWhat an Oak Park general contractor deals with in pre-1939 houses
Roughly 59 percent of Oak Park's homes were built before 1939. That means balloon framing, true-dimension lumber, plaster-and-lath walls, and foundations of brick or stone rather than poured concrete. None of that is a problem. It is simply a different kind of building than a 1990s house, and it rewards a contractor who has opened up a lot of old walls and knows what tends to be behind them.
Old framing is a condition, not a crisis
The structure is where old-house surprises live: joists notched by generations of plumbers, headers never sized for the opening you want, sills and posts that have settled a half inch here and an inch there. Because Bofran runs its own structural framing crew rather than subcontracting the frame, the people who find those conditions are the same people who fix them — sistering joists, resetting bearing points, and tying new steel or lumber into the original structure so the finished work sits level and stays that way.
That matters most on additions. A second story or rear addition puts new loads on walls and foundations that were sized for a different house. We check the load path all the way down — roof to ridge to wall to sill to foundation — before we price the project, not after the drywall is open.
Permits and historic-district review at the Village of Oak Park
Additions and major remodels in Oak Park go through the Village's permit review, and exterior changes in the Frank Lloyd Wright, Ridgeland-Oak Park, and Gunderson historic districts can require an additional architectural review. We prepare the drawings and structural details reviewers ask for and manage the process as your general contractor, so the project gets approved as designed instead of stalling mid-application — or worse, mid-build.
The move-or-add-on math
A lot of Oak Park families hit the same fork: love the block, out of bedrooms. Before you price a move, it is worth pricing an addition on the house you already own. A rear addition, a dormered attic, or a full second story often solves the space problem without giving up the street, the schools, or a mortgage rate you would rather keep. Our home addition cost calculator gives you a working range in about a minute, and a free estimate turns that range into a real number for your house.
The kind of work Oak Park houses need
Structural additions, interior reframing, foundations, and finished interiors from recent Bofran projects around Chicagoland.
Oak Park FAQs
Yes. Oak Park is part of our core service area. Our shop is at 3922 N Ashland Ave in Chicago, about nine miles east of the village, so crews and supervision are close by rather than driving in from a distant suburb. We serve Oak Park along with Chicago's West Side and the near-west suburbs.
Yes. An addition or exterior remodel in the Frank Lloyd Wright, Ridgeland-Oak Park, or Gunderson historic districts may need architectural review by the Village on top of the standard building permit. We design the structure and the exterior details with that review in mind and handle the submissions as part of the job, so approval happens before construction starts, not during it.
We do. As your general contractor, Bofran prepares the permit application, the drawings, and the structural documentation the Village asks for, and we manage the review and the inspections from application through final sign-off. You are never the one standing at the permit counter.
If the bones are sound, and in Oak Park they usually are, an addition or whole-home remodel is often the cheaper path to the house you want on the block you already like. Moving means commissions, moving costs, and giving up your street and possibly a mortgage rate you would rather keep. We give you a written scope and price so you can make that comparison with real numbers instead of guesses.
It depends on the size, the structure underneath, and the finish level you choose, and a pre-1939 house deserves a structural look before anyone quotes you a firm number. For a working range in about a minute, try our home addition cost calculator. For a real number, request a free estimate and we will look at the house with you.
Talk to a contractor who knows old houses
Tell us what your Oak Park house needs — more space, a new layout, or repair of what is already there — and we will walk you through scope, structure, and a written price. Every project carries our 5-year structural warranty.
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