Synopsis: A builder details a project in which clients asked him to enlarge their modest Cape Cod style house. One key to his plan is a 40-ft. long shed dormer at the back of the expanded house. The project has all the usual complications that come along with rebuilding an old house.
Adding new space to an old house is seldom as simple as it first looks. Getting the end result to look good is demanding and time-consuming, and the problems that invariably crop up add considerably to the headaches. Working out the basic design and particular construction details on paper isn’t so hard, but once the actual work begins, leveling and plumbing the new construction to fit the old structure is a big challenge, especially if years of settling have caused walls to lean and beams to sag. Apart from all these difficulties, keeping the house and site relatively clean and orderly during construction so that life can go on for the clients who are putting up with this invasion adds appreciably to the burden and the time spent.
I faced such a challenge on a recent job. My clients asked me to take their plain 864-sq. ft. Cape Cod cracker box and make it over into a not-so-plain 3,300-sq. ft. house. Though I had considerable freedom with the design, the clients made several specific requests. Chiefly, they wanted about 1,300 sq. ft. of the addition to be on the second floor. There they would set up a large master bedroom, something they had missed since moving to the East Coast from California. Since the house would be occupied during construction, I had to keep the old Cape tight to the weather during the entire process of adding on.
I decided to keep the front roof intact and to build the addition at the back and south side of the old house. The floor plan I worked up enlarged the old kitchen and added a dining area, a living room, a bedroom, a bath and a foyer — all on the first floor. I added a three-car attached garage on the north end of the house. Upstairs went the big bedroom (about 500 sq. ft.) along with a bath and access to these via a new stairway. The other part of the upstairs (the space directly above the old house) remains unfinished even now, but will eventually become another bath and bedroom.
The owners wanted to keep these two areas entirely separate, thinking that the unfinished area might become an in-law apartment in the future. To this end, each space on the second story has its own way up and down. Excluding the garage addition, remodeling the old house extended the south gable-end wall 30 ft. and added an 11-ft. wide by 18-ft. long section in the opposite direction, along the existing back wall behind the kitchen.
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