As some of you know, we have embarked on a renovation odyssey, making major changes to the Daleyhood house. About 15 months ago, we decided to renovate/repair/expand our 1930's era home to correct some structural problems, provide a little more space and make it more liveable while preserving the character of the house. After getting snubbed by one highly recommended architect, we were extremely fortunate to team up with Andy Scudder and the staff at Johannas Design. Over he space of several months, Andy designed an addition to the house that replaced the mangled addition and creates better use of the interior space. After weeks of negotiation, we finally broke ground earlier this month. I decided to document the project with a series of photographs as often as things changed and share these with anyone watching. I'm putting them up on the blog for those who don't have Facebook and because I may drop Facebook at any time.
To start with, here is what the back of the house looked like on January 4, 2012. Originally, we think there was a two-story porch over porch as you see with the neighbor's house on the right. Previous owners of our house closed in the upstairs porch, added a radiator and converted to a nursery. We used it as the closet. The downstairs was closed in at some point and a deck with a shed roof was added. Someone closed in the deck, added ceramic tile on top of the vinyl floor (on top of padding) and built the small porch you see here. The whole thing was pulling away from the main structure, and we decided to start from scratch on the addition. The first step was get rid of the old addition:
They've gutted the inside and are starting on the outside.
The next day, most of the addition was gone. You can see the radiator on the second floor. The crews did uncover some interesting things, like horsehair insulation on the radiator piping.
The more they took down, the more we realized we had made the correct decision to remove it all rather than to try and fix this mess. For example, here's a view of the old addition that shows how out of whack it all was:
Just about everything is gone. One more day's work and demo will be finished.
You can see how they built the old addition - right on top of the old porch.
Finally, it was all gone, and cleaned up neatly. After a week of delays due to rain and bureaucracy, they started working on the footers last Wednesday.
Soon we will have a foundation and the new space will rise from the old. Stay tuned for more!
Soon we will have a foundation and the new space will rise from the old. Stay tuned for more!