A homeowner’s manual for one ZIP code.

What this is

River Forest is two and a half square miles of mostly pre-war houses. The work they need is specific, the rules here are specific, and the prices are specific. This site writes that down in one place: a buying guide for each of twelve projects, and a list of the companies licensed to do them.

It is written and maintained by a River Forest homeowner, not by a contractor, a realtor, or anyone in the trades. It exists because estimates arrive that a homeowner cannot tell apart, and because asking in a neighborhood group produces five confident answers that contradict each other.

The 60305 is independent. It is not affiliated with the Village of River Forest, and it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any contractor named on it. Nothing here is a Village publication, and nothing here should be read as the Village’s position on anything.

How the directory is built

The backbone is the Village of River Forest licensed contractor report, the official record of who is licensed and bonded to work here. The data on this site was extracted from that report on September 13, 2026. That report is the only part of a listing that comes from the Village.

Alongside it are companies River Forest homeowners recommend to each other, mostly in the neighborhood Facebook groups. These are listed without a Village license date, because their licensing has not been verified. If a row shows no expiry date and is not marked as plumbing, that is what it means, and you should treat it as unverified until you check. Plumbers are the other rows without a date: the Village does not license plumbing, Illinois does.

Of the 463 companies across the twelve lists, 355 carry a Village license date from that report, 90 are plumbers on that report with no date, and 18 are neighbor recommendations without one.

Lists are alphabetical. Nothing reorders them. A listing is not a recommendation from this site and not a recommendation from the Village, and the presence of a company here says nothing about the quality of its work.

License dates are a snapshot of one day. Licenses lapse and get renewed constantly, so a date that has already passed is flagged rather than shown as if current, and the site never tells you a license is valid today. Confirm anything that matters with the Village Building Department at 708-714-3552 or building@vrf.us.

How the company profiles are written

230 of the listed companies have a profile. Each one is summarized from that company’s own website and public listings as of September 2026. Where a profile says a company was founded in a given year, holds a certification, or serves a particular area, that is the company’s own published claim, restated so you can compare it against the others.

None of it is verified by this site. No job site has been inspected, no license or insurance certificate has been checked, no reference has been called. A profile is not an endorsement, a rating or a vetting, and the absence of a profile means only that there was nothing public to summarize.

Advertising and paid placements

Paid placements may appear on this site, and where one does it will be labeled as a paid placement on the page it appears on.

What money cannot buy: a listing in a directory, a higher position in any list, the removal of a competitor, or any change to the Village license data shown in a row. The lists are alphabetical and stay that way. The buying guides and the Village data are not for sale, and no advertiser sees or influences them before publication.

Advertisers never receive newsletter subscriber information. If you want to know what advertising costs, write to the address below.

Corrections and removal

If you run a business listed here and something is wrong, tell me and I will change it. That includes a phone number that rings the wrong company, a name spelled the way the Village report spells it rather than the way you do, a license date that has since been renewed, a service area that has changed, or a profile sentence that misrepresents what you do.

If you would rather not be listed at all, say so and the listing comes down. No explanation required, and there is nothing to buy to make it happen.

The same address handles corrections from homeowners: a price range that does not match what you were actually quoted, a permit rule described badly, or anything else that reads as wrong. steve@26characters.com reaches a person, and you will be told what changed.

About the ghost

The newsletter is narrated by Old Man Thatcher, who does not exist. He is a fictional character invented to make a monthly email about parkway trees and water heaters worth opening, and he is named after Thatcher Avenue and the woods. He is not a real person, living or dead, and nothing in the newsletter claims that anybody’s house is haunted.

The device is only fair if the substance underneath it is real, so the rule is that the ghost narrates and a person reports. Every price, Village rule and contractor detail he mentions was checked the same way everything else here was. A sample issue shows how it reads.