Driver is a crossroads village inside the City of Suffolk, at the junction of Route 337 and Route 125, and its historic district has been on the National Register since 1995. Most of the contributing buildings went up in the late 1880s after the railroad arrived, with the oldest, the Parker House, dating to somewhere between 1820 and 1840. Kitchens in these frame houses were originally service rooms at the back, which is why they are small, oddly shaped, and rarely where a modern household wants them.
That housing stock drives the work. Frame construction on brick piers means a crawlspace, seasonal movement, and floors that are rarely level after a century of Tidewater humidity. We scribe cabinet bases to the actual floor rather than trusting a shop drawing, and we check for knob-and-tube before specifying anything that draws real current. Plaster walls behave differently from drywall when you start hanging uppers, so we locate real framing rather than relying on a stud finder.
A few minutes north, the Bennett's Creek and Harbour View side of 23435 is an entirely different build: slab-on-grade subdivisions from the 1990s and 2000s with square walls and standard openings. We quote those very differently because they are. From our Colley Ave base we reach either in about half an hour, routing around the Kings Highway Bridge, which has been closed to traffic since 2005.
Around Driver
We regularly work near:
- 📍Driver Historic District
- 📍Driver Variety Store
- 📍Route 125 and Route 337 junction
- 📍Bennett's Creek Park
- 📍Nansemond River
- 📍Kings Highway
Kitchen Remodel Norfolk in Driver — Local Notes
- •Driver sits in the City of Suffolk, so permits and inspections go through Suffolk's building department rather than Norfolk's.
- •Frame houses in the district sit on brick piers over crawlspaces, and floors typically need scribing and shimming rather than a level reference line.
- •The Kings Highway Bridge over the Nansemond has been closed since 2005, so deliveries route via Route 17 and add time that has to be built into the schedule.
- •The National Register listing covers exterior character; interior kitchen work is generally unaffected, but window and door changes are worth checking first.
- •Harbour View and Bennett's Creek homes a few minutes north are 1990s-onward slab builds and quote very differently from the village houses.