Renovations Week #2

During week two, the demolition on the outside was completed. To prepare for the siding, the new windows went in on the entire house. In this picture (left) you can see the house wrap and four new windows; the new kitchen and front bedroom windows are not in yet. The green house wrap is ready and the old porch is long gone...

The picture on the right shows the beginning of our new porch. It will have exposed posts with Douglas Fir planking inside. It lets a lot more light in, and its height allows people arriving at the house to actually see the front door. Now you can see how we tied back in to the rock wall.



Here are two more views of the front; at left before the new kitchen windows went in and at right, just afterwards. So much more light gets in - amazing. We don't have the interior picture to go with this, but Rocky had removed part of the powder room and our small kitchen pantry closet to make room for these. We'll have kitchen until Monday of week three, then it's sledge hammer time...



Moving to the back of the house you can see the exposed chimney. No more siding there either - it will be covered with a stone veneer that matches the front wall. That and the new windows are about the only change in the back; we replaced the sliding door in 1995 when we moved in. It, like the new windows, is Anderson and is aluminum clad outside in terratone. It's not quite as good as new but still looks and works great.



On the inside, here's the view in our master bedroom towards what will be the new corner of windows - two facing west (on the right, already in position) and four facing south (currently a big hole that will be used to bring in drywall). The west facing and bottom two south facing windows are fixed and the two top south windows will be another gliding set of windows. The small bathroom window at left is a casement.



Here's where the new master bathroom will be. It's about the same size that we had before, but it will have a glass-enclosed, tiled shower only without a bathtub. We can't wait - it's going to be great!



There are many other changes out there; in every room we have some exposed drywall cuts where the new windows went in. It is hard to keep the dust down but we're trying and Rocky is working hard to keep everything covered. A lot of effort also went in to the placement of a massive, composite beam in the kitchen ceiling; while they were pounding it in to place the desk in my office two rooms away (where I was trying to work) was bucking and jolting like a wild horse! It is exciting to see all the changes we've been planning for so long start to take shape.

- Chuck

Renovations - Week One

First, we demolish everything that doesn't belong in the final version...

That includes all the siding (see previous post regarding bee- and woodpecker-infested siding) and in this picture, the free-standing wall by the side door and the low-slung porch over the front door. They're gone in this picture. You can also see the beginning of the framing for the raising of the roof in the master bedroom.



The next picture shows what has happend towards the end of the first week; there are a few old holes plugged such as the side door - now a window, and the front garage window. One of the new bedroom windows is being finalized here (above the new window in the old side door) and the big hole to the right of that will be a set of foor floor-ceiling windows. Notice also the slope of the roof; it now pitches to the rear rather than the front to facilitate draining without any kind of scupper or rain gutter on this new face. In so doing the house gained about two feet of elevation.

The green wrap is a substitute for the Tyvek stuff commonly used on houses. This product is supposed to be more compatible with the Hardiplank siding that will go over top.



Here's more of the house wrap in place. This side of the house had so many woodpecker holes that I got tired of patching them and had just started nailing boards over them. It was starting to look like a homemade treehouse! The window at lower left will be large, similar to the one at lower right. Both of these windows have a lot of rot in the sills and they, like all the windows in the house, will soon be Anderson aluminum-clad gliding windows.



Here is more of the house wrap going onto the back. The chimney is masonry clad by the same cedar siding as the rest of the house. It too is a woodpecker's dream home. It will be covered in a veneer stone that matches the wall in the front of the house.



Finally, the small shed has been removed from the garage end. See the big concrete pad? We still haven't decided what will happen there. Next we will install a man-door here with a little roof overhang. This replaces a garage man-door that we're taking out of the back wall to make room for the new laundry room.

Our Home Renovation

Our house was custom-built in 1975 by a WCU college professor Ruth and her husband Harry. It was their dream home and in 1995 it became our home. We fell in love with the beautiful, 2.5 acre lot on which it sits; we have several mature oaks, beech and poplar trees, some of which tower to heights of 80 feet or more. The house was bigger than what we had in the borough of West Chester and it was only four miles from the WCU south campus where Chuck works.

The original design is contemporary, with various rooflines and a range of interior room sizes from a large open living room to smaller bedrooms and some odd angular spaces. We loved the openness of the central living area but always felt the following needs:
1 - Too small of a kitchen
2 - Not enough natural lighting, particularly on our southern side
3 - A confusing front versus side door entrance
4 - A pantry/laundry room combination that was in the wrong place (guests would always walk through it, especially when they came to our Back??? door instead of our Front??? door.

Finally, after 35 years, our roof had begun to leak and the cedar siding was falling prey to carpenter bees and the woodpeckers who chase them...

It was time to do some major renovations - so here is the existing house:



At left, above, Chuck examines the architect's plans for the renovations. The total job includes lots of wall moving, changing two bathrooms, enlarging the master bedroom, moving the powder and laundry rooms and other style upgrades (new interior and exterior doors, all new windows, new trim and flooring in renovated areas). The plans went through several iterations, including downsizing the original ideas to ultimately stay within the existing home foundation.

At right, above, Chuck is standing in our hidden front doorway, behind the low, sloping front porch. This porch will go away to make room for a smaller, higher, more visible entrance. We love the stone wall - it will stay.




The view at top shows the front view of the house - our "before" picture. The front door is behind the tree in front of the porch. The side door that leads into our pantry/laundry room is to the left, behind a free-standing wall. Still, it looks more inviting than the front door does.

The view above, shows the west side of the house, with front porch on the far right, side door in the center right and garage door on the left. The small extension behind the duck (to our dog Maya's right) is a small shed. The shed will go away and a man-door will appear there. The side door will go away and will become a west-facing window into our new kitchen. The laundry room will go into the corner of the garage in front of the van, which is now a bumped-out corner.



To the left, above, is a view from our master bedroom into the master bath. The window at far left (at belly-button height below a low ceiling) is the only one in this bedroom. Way too small!

The view at right is our galley kitchen. When Maya chooses to lay in front of the sink, as she is here, she takes up almost the whole space! There will be some big changes in this room...!!!