Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Pre Renovation, rear view




Here is the rear view of the house and property --The large bank of windows that you see along the back of the house are in the family room, which leads out onto the concrete patio. The bank of four windows just to the left looks into the 3rd bedroom and they will just be replaced.


The huge sycamore with the split stump has eroded the patio with its roots and creates work all year round to clean up after its shedding tendencies. Raking its leaves in the fall takes days and though it is a wonderful tree that offers us much needed shade, it will have to be removed not only for safety b/c of the split stump and bugs that are hollowing it out, but also to make room for the new family room and covered porch.A 22' family room addition will be added to the existing structure and a 17' covered porch will extend beyond this new room.


The existing family room will be converted into the new dining space and the chimney that you see in this photo rising from the center of the home will be removed so that most of that wall that separates the kitchen from the living spaces can be opened up to create an open feel with the kitchen overlooking the dining room and family room beyond.


These are before pictures of the front. While clearing out the garage to make room for the construction to begin, I found my planner from 1999 (along with many other things that I save for sentimental reason and no good reasons at all), which likely was saved because it documented the timeline from offer to closing on this property - June 15, 1999.


Since 1999, dreams have been brewing of making this wonderful property into a home we can stay in for a very long time to come. The current footprint is about 1500sf, 3br/2ba with a family room, kitchen, dining room and a two car garage with attached storage shed. The plan is to add a front porch (where you see the set of six windows to the right of the garage) so the new front door will no longer be hidden behind the umbrella tree. Then, the garage space will become a family room/media room, and the shed to the left of the garage, which is hard to see in this pic, will become an office space. The new garage will be built at an angle off to the side of the office. And that is just the beginning. . .