Home remodeling in Seat Pleasant, MD: entry hall with wood flooring, an open stair and a living room beyond

Seat Pleasant, Prince George's County

Home Remodeling in Seat Pleasant, MD

Basement Finishing • Kitchen Remodeling • Bathroom Remodeling • Deck Construction • Interior Remodeling

Seat Pleasant is an incorporated city of three quarters of a square mile in Prince George's County, Maryland, and it borders Washington, D.C. at the eastern corner of the original District diamond. What decides a renovation here is not the distance to town, it is the shape of the lots. In the historic core a lot runs about 25 feet wide, so a home remodeling project here works with the square footage the house already has rather than adding to its footprint. DMV Home Improvement LLC is a Washington, D.C. remodeling company, and we work in Seat Pleasant and throughout Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas. We plan around the room your house has and the room the grade can give you.

Request a Consultation (202) 904-3326
1-Year WarrantyOn all workmanship
5-Star ReviewsTrusted by D.C. homeowners
8+
Years in Business
25 ft
Typical Lot Width in the 1906 Plats
76.6%
Of Homes Built Before 1980
1 Year
Workmanship Warranty
Staircase and landing in a neutral painted interior with wood flooring

The Lots

The Homes We Remodel in Seat Pleasant

Oakmont and Seat Pleasant Heights, the two 1906 subdivisions that form the city's historic core, were platted on lots typically 25 feet wide and 150 feet deep, close to the dimensions used across the line in Washington, D.C. Setbacks run even along the street even though lot sizes vary, which leaves narrow gaps between houses. A lot four times deeper than it is wide closes off the direction most people reach for first, which puts the attention back on the square footage already inside the house.

That grid came from the railroads. The original plat was recorded in 1873 under the name Chesapeake Junction, and two rail beds are now streets: 67th Place follows the old Chesapeake Beach Railway right-of-way, and the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis line was dismantled in 1935 and paved. The numbered streets carry Washington's northeast sequence across the line through 67th Place, 68th Street, 70th and 71st, and two Blue and Silver Line stations serve a city of 0.74 square miles. Houses in the core sit alongside former rail grade, a real consideration for fill and foundation work behind the house.

Prince George's County's historic survey describes the topography here as hilly, and many houses sit on a grade that drops toward the rear, putting the back of the basement at or near ground level. The median house in the city was built in 1962, 76.6 percent of the stock predates 1980, and nothing has been built here since 2020.

Finished lower level with wood-look flooring, recessed lighting, a laundry area and a full bathroom

Basement Finishing

Basement Finishing in Seat Pleasant

Between 1950 and 1969 the city added 1,035 homes, most of them brick ramblers and split-levels on a full unfinished basement. On Seat Pleasant's grades, a share of those basements have walk-out or grade-level access at the back, which is the difference between storage and living space. The signature house here is a three-bedroom, six-room house, and 967 units, about 46.7 percent, are three-bedroom. A fourth bedroom, a suite for a parent or an office with a door fits on that lower level without moving an exterior wall.

Before the Framing Goes Up

Finishing the lower level covers framing, drywall, flooring, lighting and defined rooms rather than one open cavern, but the planning comes first. Original panels, ungrounded two-prong circuits and, in the later 1960s builds, aluminum branch wiring are common in stock of this age, so the electrical scope gets settled before a stud is cut. Nearly half the occupied housing in the city runs on electric heat rather than gas, which is worth knowing before a lower level gets closed in.

Three Places to Look

Three Places to Find Unused Space

A house that cannot get wider still has room in it. On this stock the unused square footage tends to sit in three places, and which one matters most depends on the house.

Finished lower level with a stair core, wood-look flooring and a kitchenette along the back wall

The Lower Level

This is the shortest path in the post-war stock, because the floor, walls and roof already exist. On a lot that slopes toward the rear, the walk-out end can give a full-height door and real windows without cutting into a foundation wall. Headroom, the slab and the mechanicals get checked first, and what they say decides whether the space becomes a room or stays storage.

The Walls Between Rooms

The post-war plans here divide a modest footprint into small separate rooms, so a good deal of the space is lost to circulation and partition. Reworking the layout inside the existing walls is often what turns a cramped floor into a usable one, without a single exterior wall moving. About 15.8 percent of residents here are 65 or older, so where a stair lands and how a hallway turns are not small questions.

The Back Yard, at Grade

A 150-foot lot leaves real depth behind the house, and on ground that falls away that depth is easier to use at grade than most people expect. A deck built into the slope turns the back of the lot into somewhere you actually go, and the space beneath a raised section stays usable off a lower-level door.

The Rest of the List

Our Other Remodeling Services

The lower level is where the available space is, but it is rarely the only thing on a homeowner's list.

Kitchen corner with white shaker cabinets, a butcher block countertop and a dark faucet

Kitchen Remodeling

The ramblers and split-levels built between 1950 and 1969 share one plan: the kitchen walled off from a small living room, and a hall serving three bedrooms and a single bath. That wall carries the floor above, so the header that replaces it has to land on something solid at both ends. Once the room is open it takes cabinets, countertops including granite, backsplash, flooring and lighting.

Small bathroom with a wall-mounted white vanity, backlit mirror and large format tile

Bathroom Remodeling

With 967 three-bedroom homes here, three bedrooms sharing one hall bath is the norm rather than the exception. The split-levels sharpen it: a half-flight of stairs standing between someone and the only bathroom in the house is a daily problem rather than a design preference. That is why a second bathroom downstairs is often the first thing drawn on a lower level that is already being opened up.

Rear deck with gray composite decking, patio furniture and a railing along the back of a single story house

Deck Construction

On a lot that falls away behind the house, a rear deck is not a flat platform. It steps down the grade in stages, with landings breaking up one long run of stairs. Framed around the walk-out level underneath, the space below stays usable as covered patio off a lower-level door.

Living room opening through a wide doorway to rooms in a line beyond, with light borrowed from the far end

Interior Remodeling

The city's oldest houses include the detached rowhouse, a form Prince George's County's survey calls unusual in the county: wood frame, full-width porch, flat or shed roof, narrow and deep with the rooms in a line. With almost no side windows the middle of that plan is dark, and light has to be borrowed from an opened interior wall or from the back of the house. Population peaked at 7,217 in 1970 and is near 4,522 today, so family-sized houses are being refitted for smaller households, along with the flooring, drywall and trim that comes with it.

Working With Our Crew

Why Seat Pleasant Homeowners Choose Us

Seat Pleasant holds roughly 2,000 housing units, about a thousand of them owner-occupied, with another fifth of the stock in five-to-nine-unit garden apartment buildings. That makes the single-family market here small and knowable, the kind of place where a job gets discussed on the block. Our crew is four people, and every project carries a one-year workmanship warranty. On a 25-foot lot the staging area is the front walk and the strip between two houses, so we put the site back in order at the end of the day rather than leave it for your neighbors to look at.

Thirty-two reviews, averaging 5.0.

★★★★★

“DMV home improvement is a family owned business & they've become my family. Across multiple jobs Jorge has been my go to. He's always prompt, professional & does great work. Pricing is always fair. To simply put it, I trust their work.”

Charles Morris Jr

★★★★★

“DMV was fantastic from start to finish. They upgraded our existing deck, built a screened in portion, installed new pavers/sidewalk, and did a couple other smaller jobs. High quality work, professionalism, and great communication.”

Garret Harries

★★★★★

“I recently hired DMV Home Improvement to renovate my garage, and I couldn't be more thrilled with the results. The transformation is absolutely stunning.”

Sharon Yarborough

Read the rest of our reviews.

Our Process

Our Remodeling Process

01

The Walkthrough

A project here begins with a call or the form on our contact page, then a visit. That walkthrough carries more weight in this city than it does in most, because the direction of the whole project depends on how the grade falls at the back, the headroom downstairs and what the stair core will allow.

02

The Estimate and the Contract

The written estimate that follows it is free. The estimate and the contract describe the same job in the same words, so the scope you agree to is the scope that gets built, and nothing begins until you have read it. Permit coordination is something we can take on as part of the job.

03

Build and Closeout

Then the crew builds, and you hear where things stand as the work moves. Closeout on a walk-out level means checking the door swing, the stair run and the drainage at the new threshold before anyone signs anything.

Geometry Questions

Home Remodeling FAQs

A walk-out or daylight lower level gives you natural light and a real door outside, which is what separates finishable living space from storage. The county survey describes Seat Pleasant's topography as hilly, so on a lot that falls toward the rear the condition turns up often, though it varies street to street. What it means for your house comes down to headroom, the slab and where the mechanicals sit.

Yes. 20743 is Seat Pleasant's only ZIP code, and the USPS default city name attached to it is Capitol Heights, with Seat Pleasant and Fairmount Heights carried as acceptable alternates. So paperwork generated from your ZIP can print a different town's name than the one on your city tax bill. It is a mailing convention rather than a description of where your house is, and the address on the paperwork is the address we walk.

Prince George's County's survey calls the detached rowhouse unusual in the county and common in Seat Pleasant: two stories of wood frame, a full-width porch, rooms in a line front to back, and almost no side windows, so the middle of the plan has no daylight of its own. The moves available are opening an interior wall between the middle rooms or bringing light in from the back. On a house of that age the load path gets confirmed before any wall is opened.

Less than people expect, but it does shape the ceiling you are working under. The county survey describes those older detached rowhouses as wood frame with either a flat or a shed roof, and a low-slope roof gives you a flat ceiling plane and no attic volume to borrow from. So the gain on those houses comes from the layout and the lower level rather than from anything overhead, which is worth knowing before a plan gets drawn.

Raised deck with black metal railings and a stair run descending into a sloped wooded yard
1-Year WarrantyOn all workmanship

Start With the Grade

Get Your Free Seat Pleasant Estimate

Addison Road runs north and south through the middle of the city, with City Hall at 6301 and Old St. Margaret's Catholic Church, built in 1908 and the community's one designated Historic Site, also on Addison Road at 6020. Whether your house sits off Addison Road, up in Oakmont or Seat Pleasant Heights, or on one of the numbered streets that carry Washington's grid across the line, the same question applies: where the space you are already paying for is sitting unused. Call (202) 904-3326 or send the details through our contact form and we will get back to you within 24 hours to set up a walkthrough. We work in Seat Pleasant and throughout Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas.

Schedule a Consultation (202) 904-3326

Get In Touch

Schedule Your Seat Pleasant Consultation

Tell us how the grade falls at the back of your house and what you are hoping to gain. We work in Seat Pleasant and throughout Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas.

Location
Washington, DC
Business Hours
Mon to Fri: 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Sat: 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM
Sun: Closed

Request a Consultation

Fill out the form below and we'll get back to you within 24 hours.