Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Project Description

New to blogging but as my wife and I are trying to undertake a home renovation project that attempts to be as green as possible without breaking the bank, it seemed appropriate to begin posting our efforts and hope that feedback along the way may be helpful. If not, at least our project may help others.

Here are the project details:
We currently live in a small bungalow type home in Auburndale, MA, totaling about 1250 square feet. There are 6 rooms with a LR, DR and Kitchen on the first floor and 3 brs on the 2nd. A somewhat finished basement existed until our water heater broke and we had to demolish much of the basement which had not been constructed with water repellent materials.

While the first floor was certainly liveable, we wanted more bedroom space on the 2nd floor, where one br was only 8x10, too small for second child, at least when they get older. After fits and starts with a first architect, we hired our second architect, Olaf Vollertsen, who so far has been great.

Our plan is to close in the front porch to create a smallish office/away room off the Living room and an entryway/mudroom along with a small powder room. On the first floor we'll also expand the kitchen by building a 6 x 17 addition and opening up the kitchen-dining room area. Above the porch our son's dormer will be demolished and a new larger dormer will be constructed to create 2 new kids' bedrooms about 10x12 each. Also upstairs we plan to expand our closet and re-do the one pinkish bathroom into a family bath with a double sink in one room and a toilet shower and bath in the other.

More on a key part of the project - deep energy efficiency - in my next post.

3 comments:

Francine said...

I applaud you "walking your talk"! It sounds like an ambitious project. Good luck!!

Anonymous said...

Have you looked at the German Passivhaus standard? What you are trying to do is very close to that standard, Google Passivhaus and see if you can meet the standard. It would get you a lot of exposure.

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