Fuller Park General Contractor

Fuller Park is one of Chicago’s smallest community areas — a narrow strip of the South Side between Pershing Road and Garfield Boulevard, hemmed in by the Dan Ryan Expressway and rail lines, that grew up around the railroads and the Union Stock Yard. Renovating here means knowing its housing stock, from wood-frame homes dating to the 1870s and 1880s to brick homes like the 1967 ranch we rebuilt. As a licensed Chicago general contractor (Class D #TGC132820) that self-performs its core trades, we’ve taken a Fuller Park home down to the studs and back — permitted, inspected, and documented room by room.

What Fuller Park Renovations Cost

The honest tiers we publish for the whole city apply here. Kitchens run from a refresh at $8,000–$20,000 up to a full remodel at $20,000–$50,000, and bathrooms from a refresh at $8,000–$15,000 to a full remodel at $15,000–$35,000; a full single-unit gut runs $100,000–$250,000 depending on finish level, and finishing a basement runs from $15,000–$35,000 for a straightforward finish to $35,000–$65,000 with a bathroom. Fuller Park’s variable is age: a 140-year-old frame house and a 1960s brick home are different projects even at the same square footage, and the older the building, the more electrical, plumbing, and structural scope tends to hide behind the walls — which is why every estimate carries a written contingency instead of a surprise.

Old Frame Houses, Built Before the Codes

Fuller Park’s oldest houses predate its place in the city. After the Great Fire of 1871, developers built here — then part of the Town of Lake, outside Chicago’s limits — in part to avoid the city’s costly new building codes, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Frame houses from the 1870s still stand, along with a row of 1880s Queen Anne–style homes on South Princeton, and the area didn’t join Chicago until 1889. That history is still inside the walls: frame construction from before modern codes, well over a century of settling, and generations of improvised repairs. Renovating one correctly starts with opening it up and finding out what’s actually there — then bringing it up to code as part of the work, not as a mid-project change order.

A 1967 Ranch, Rebuilt From the Studs

Our Fuller Park gut rehab started as a structurally sound 1967 brick ranch: one bath for three bedrooms, window AC units doing the work of a real system, and a basement with far more potential than finish. We took both levels down and rebuilt them — tray ceilings and new lighting on the main floor, a white shaker kitchen with quartz counters and a seated peninsula, a second full bath where there had been only one, and a finished lower level with a family room and wet bar that nearly doubled the home’s usable space. No new housing was built in Fuller Park between 1969 and 2004, which makes this ranch one of the last homes finished before that long pause — and a good example of how much a modest footprint can hold.

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