Luxury Remodeling in Downey

Downey grew out of Rancho Santa Gertrudes, the land between the Rio Hondo and the San Gabriel River that former governor John Gately Downey began dividing into small farms in 1865. Citrus farming carried the area for almost ninety years before the Second World War brought aviation, and the plant that closed here in 1999 had been the birthplace of the systems for the Apollo program. When Downey incorporated in December 1956, the city's own history records, it already held some of the finest new homes in southeastern Los Angeles County. The ground beneath those homes is predominantly flat, so the questions that shape a backyard here are rarely about slope: they are about where pool equipment may legally sit, how a pool house carries the architecture of the main house, and how much floor area the zoning leaves to add.

Predominantly flat single-family lots zoned R-1, in sub-zones whose minimum lot sizes run from 5,000 to 10,000 square feet with minimum widths of 50 to 70 feet. The floor area ratio tops out at 0.45, or 0.50 with the city's renewable energy bonus, and lot coverage at 45 percent, so the size of an addition is weighed against those limits from the start. A pool house or other accessory building may rise no higher than 12 feet and, garages and patio covers aside, is limited to 700 square feet in one open room without a kitchen or bedroom, designed to match the style, form, color and materials of the house.

One team designs, permits and builds every project, and our own crews self-perform the work, so the people who plan your Downey project are the people on site building it.