We bought our house in 1996. We loved the neighborhood, but we never loved the house. It's a 3-4 bedroom ranch with 2 full bathrooms on the main floor and one bathroom off the laundry room downstairs by the garage.
Last year, we invested in remodeling the kitchen including adding a beautiful pantry. When the construction crew went to finish the roof on the pantry addition, they found that we had 4 layers of roof on our house! We thought it was 3 layers, which we knew wasn't great but we had no idea that the layers had caused serious structural problems to the entire roof. Faced with a $30,000 estimate for repairs we decided to do a major remodeling job instead. We hired Grew Designs to draw up plans for a 2nd story along with major changes to the 1st floor (kitchen won't change!) and hired Michael Sabino Builders to do the construction.
You can see a "before" picture of the house, as well as the floor plans here.
To help keep my sanity as the work goes along, (we're staying in the house
through this) I've been taking pictures and documenting the entire project
here on my site. I'm doing this for my distant friends and family who are
interested in how we're doing. I'm also doing this for others who may be
considering similar remodeling projects. Before work began, I had no clue about
what went into remodeling a house. I still don't, but I'm learning. :-)
Click here to see how the house has changed over the weeks and months. Here's an entry way transformation page.
6/28/03 - Since the house is about done, I won't be updating this page anymore. I written a narrative that sums up the whole experience that you can read here.
8/12/03 - We got the Certificate of Occupancy! It's done!
Week
1 (10/22-10/26)
Week 2 (10/27 -
11/1)
Week 3
(11/2-11/9)
Week 4
(11/10-11/17)
Week 5
(11/18-11/23)
Week 6-8
(11/24-12/13)
Week 9
(12/14-12/21)
Week 10-11
(12/22-1/4)
Week 12-16
(1/5-2/8)
Week 17-19
(2/9-2/23)
Week 20-21
(2/23-3/9)
Week 22
(3/10-3/16)
Week 23-25
(3/17-4/7)
Week 26
(4/8-4/14) page 2
Week
27-28 (4/14-4/28)
Week 29-31
(4/29-5/15)