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Ok all of you architects out there, how would you do it?

First they want me to make the walk-in closet bigger so I can remove the other one above the foyer and open up the entry.

No problem.

Ummm, could you make it big enough so that I could sneak a desk and mini office in there?

Ummm, ok, I’ll figure something out…

Here’s what we’re dealing with:

Two story brick house. 12 years old. Hipped roof with 9/12 pitch. A one story hipped “wing” on each end of the house set back a couple of feet. The ridge on each “wing” exrends into the lower part of the main roof.

Probably Neo-Federal-Colonial Revival of the 1980’s. Swan’s neck pediment above entry.

Entry is in the middle. Stairs extend into the entry foyer. Up the stairs, at left is the master bedroom.

One wall is the front exterior wall. The parallel wall is a partition with access to the master bathroom, which has the exterior back and side walls.

The two perpendicular walls are the entry/stairway partition and the side exterior wall.

The walk in closet is off of this side exterior wall in the attic space of the one story “wing” at the right side of the house.

Are you with me?

I give them three rough sketches:

• An enlarged closet (remove back wall, extend side walls, re-build back wall — rectangle),
• an even bigger “L” shaped enlargement (“L” ending where the slope of the roof is about 4.5 feet from floor) with a skylight over the desk
• and an extension of the “L” shape into a small gabled dormer office area off to the side of the main closet area.

They like the dormer.

Could you extend the dormer over to the wall (exterior side wall that bathroom shares) so we could access it from the bathroom? This fills in the empy corner of the “L” to make a square. Then we could just close off this door in the bedroom.

Hmmmm…

Looks like a shed dormer to me.

And an awfully big (long) one at that.

This house isn’t any real statement in architecture, but I don’t want to re-muddel it. I can’t keep from thinking that it’ll look stupid.

I’m trying to think of a way to keep the gabled dormer and re-work the interior space to achieve the result instead of the big shed dormer.

Assuming it’s ok to use a shed dormer on a federal/colonial revival house, what pitch would you aim for?

Is there a particular ratio of pitches that are more pleasing to the eye than others?

I notice lot’s of shed dormers on Bungalows and some heve very steep pitches that I think look interesting, but all together I think the shed style looks good on a Bungalow.

Another thing is that I’ll need to beef up the attic ceiling joists in order to make them suitable floor joists, so I thought that maybe I could cantilever out a couple of feet with the dorner and gain the wall space needed to access the area from the bath.

These second floor cantilevers are common in some designs, but the federal and colonial styles seem to be rather flat. Or at least this immitation is.

Is this an acceptable thing to do?

Let me know if you need more information.

I hope I was mildly clear with the details…

Eagerly awaiting your input,

Dan