This first-floor remodel centers on a roughly 500-square-foot great room addition off the back of the house. The scope has grown along the way to include a full roof replacement and new exterior work. The kitchen is relocating to a new part of the home and doubling in size, and the addition adds a mudroom entry off the driveway positioned at the home’s higher split-level elevation, which finally ties together a layout that previously felt disjointed. The addition also extends the full basement, which will be finished in a later phase.
By placing the new addition at the home’s higher floor level, we resolved an awkward, choppy split-level layout that had never quite made sense. The kitchen will include an on-tap seltzer system among its high-end finishes, and a large fireplace anchors the new great room under vaulted ceilings.
Still in progress, but two moments already show our planning process at work. During excavation, we hit a higher water table than expected. We handled this on-site surprise by adjusting the slab level and bringing in additional gravel, without losing the project’s momentum. Separately, while installing the large structural beam separating the original house from the addition, our team worked with the framer and homeowner to raise the beam above the plan’s original doorway-height placement resulting in a flush ceiling instead of a dropped header. The best part is that our careful preconstruction process planned for this adjustment and it added no additional cost to the original planned budget.
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