Remodeling Contractor in Arapahoe County, CO

Suburban residential housing stock in Arapahoe County, Colorado — illustrative reference image, not a project photo.

Arapahoe County spans two very different building environments: dense inner-ring suburbs like Englewood and Glendale, where the median house predates 1960, and the eastern plains beyond Aurora, where lots are measured in acres and half the properties are on septic. The permit process and the project both change depending on which side you are on.

Who Issues the Permit — and How Long It Takes

In unincorporated Arapahoe County, permits come from the Building Division at 6924 S Lima St, 720-874-6600, open 8:00 to 4:30 weekdays. Kitchen remodels require a permit, with a Gas Appliance Affidavit for new gas appliances and a certificate of sewer availability for any new bedroom on a septic system. Bathroom remodels and basement finishes require permits. A full re-roof requires one, as does any roof repair over 100 square feet. Additions require complete foundation and framing plans stamped by a Colorado registered architect or engineer. Attached decks and decks elevated more than 30 inches require permits, reviewed against 2021 IRC criteria. Fences require permits, and front-property-line fencing may be capped at four feet.
Plan review timelines here are longer than in neighbouring counties and worth building into the schedule: an average of 6 to 8 weeks for a first-round review on projects valued under $100,000, and 10 to 12 weeks over that threshold, measured from a complete submittal. Incomplete submittals restart the clock, which is the main reason we prepare the whole package before filing.
Ten municipalities run their own departments, including Aurora (15151 E Alameda Pkwy, 303.739.7420), Centennial (13133 E Arapahoe Rd), Englewood (1000 Englewood Pkwy, 303-762-2357), Littleton (eTRAKiT), Greenwood Village (303-486-5782), Cherry Hills Village, Glendale, Sheridan, Columbine Valley and Foxfield, the last two administered through SAFEbuilt.

Three Housing Markets, Three Kinds of Project

Englewood is the oldest: 33,659 residents, a median construction year of 1955, and 44% of its housing built between the 1940s and the 1960s. These are small postwar houses on good lots, and the work is almost always the same — open the plan, replace the systems, add usable square footage where the code allows.
Centennial, incorporated in 2001 with 108,418 residents, is the 1970s–1990s suburb. Piney Creek, Willow Creek and Foxridge went up in the 1980s and 1990s, which puts their kitchens, baths, water heaters and furnaces all at end of life at roughly the same time. That is a whole-house renovation timed by the calendar, not by taste.
Greenwood Village (15,691 residents, median value now over $1,000,000) and Cherry Hills Village (6,442 residents, median value around $2.5 million) are the high end. Cherry Hills minimum lot sizes run from 2.5 acres in the R-1 zone down to 16,000 square feet in R-5, so these are large houses on large parcels where additions and full-house renovations are the norm rather than the exception.

Septic on the Eastern Plains

Beyond the built-up metro — Byers, the Foxfield area, the rural east — septic systems are the rule. Arapahoe County Public Health permits installation, repair and use; the work must be done by a licensed OWTS contractor, and a county inspector has to see the system before it is covered. The county publishes a septic system lookup tool online.
For remodeling, the consequence is direct: adding a bedroom or a bathroom is a question about the design capacity of the existing system before it is a question about layout. That is also why the county asks for a certificate of sewer availability with a kitchen permit that adds a bedroom. We get the septic record before we draw anything.

Asbestos, Lead and What the State Requires Before Demolition

Colorado’s Regulation 8 applies to buildings of any age and is the single most-missed step in a remodel here. For a single-family home, an inspection by a Colorado-certified asbestos building inspector is required once the work will disturb 32 square feet of material, 50 linear feet on pipe, or the equivalent of a 55-gallon drum — thresholds that a kitchen gut or a popcorn-ceiling removal clears without trying. Friable material must be removed by a Colorado-certified General Abatement Contractor before demolition, only an accredited laboratory can confirm a result, and demolition requires notification to CDPHE ten working days before the work starts, whether or not asbestos was found.
Lead runs alongside it. The federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule requires certified lead-safe work practices on any pre-1978 home once more than a small area of painted surface is disturbed. We build both into the schedule at the start, because discovering them after demolition means a stopped job.

Water and Flood

Water in the southeast county comes largely from the Denver Basin through the Arapahoe County Water and Wastewater Authority, which draws on the Cherry Creek Alluvial Aquifer and the Denver and Arapahoe Formations for roughly 3,500 connections. Along Cherry Creek itself, the Mile High Flood District has mapped existing and future floodplain in a study sponsored by the county and the City of Aurora — and the 2023 flooding that damaged the state park roadway is a reminder that the mapping is not theoretical. If a property is near the creek, the floodplain determination comes before the design.

Services We Provide in Arapahoe County

Every service below is available throughout Arapahoe County, permitted through the authority with jurisdiction over your address.

Cities and Communities We Serve in Arapahoe County

Local permitting, soil, wildfire and code details differ by community. Pick yours for the specifics that apply to your address.

We also work in Dove Valley, the unincorporated pocket between Centennial and Greenwood Village along Arapahoe Road. It has a metropolitan district but no city building department, so permits, plan review and inspections run through Arapahoe County.

Common Questions

How long does plan review take in unincorporated Arapahoe County?

The Building Division publishes six to eight weeks for projects valued under $100,000 and ten to twelve weeks above that. That is review time, not construction time, and it is the single biggest scheduling factor on a large remodel here. Ten of the county’s municipalities issue their own permits on their own timelines, so the first question is always which authority your address falls under. The county Building Division is at 6924 S Lima Street, 720-874-6600.

Do I need a permit to replace part of my roof?

In unincorporated Arapahoe County, repairs covering more than 100 square feet require a permit. Below that threshold they generally do not. Given how often hail damage in this corridor produces partial repairs, it is worth confirming the area before assuming a repair is exempt.

Does my addition need stamped drawings?

Yes. Additions in unincorporated Arapahoe County require foundation and framing plans stamped by a Colorado registered architect or engineer. That cost belongs in the budget from the start, and it is one reason an addition cannot be priced accurately from a phone call.

What about fences?

Fences require a permit in unincorporated Arapahoe County, and fencing along the front property line may be limited to four feet. Height, placement and material are all worth confirming before ordering, because a fence built to the wrong height comes down at the owner’s expense.