The biggest project of all

Well once again, it has been a long time since I have written!  I would love to take an opportunity to give an update on all that has happened since I last wrote!

We have "finished" the basement bedroom and bathroom, which Gabe and I share with our toddler.  It is now permitted and legitimately a habitable space, so details on that space have been ceased for now.  Things unfinished, such as closet doors in bedroom/bathroom and finishing trim work in the bathroom, are not super important, so it gets left behind!  It will be finished someday, but for the time being, we are having an exercise in prioritizing.

Before I get too detailed into the different smaller projects we've been involved in lately, let me share our big news!  We have decided to move forward with the major renovation/addition project we first envisioned for this house! Way back when, I described a bit of what we were initially thinking.  When we first bought the house, we decided to install an HVAC system that would accommodate our future goals.  My, my, I am glad we did that at the time, even though along the way, it was not clear this was a good choice.  We had initially held off based on some hearsay in the neighborhood that made us think it wasn't going to be worth it to invest so much into this house and property.  Since then, we have grown to love the land we have (3 acres), have made the house fit our current needs better, so we can continue to provide our kids with the wide open spaces we feel are just so important in the life of a young child.  We realize this is a precious commodity in northern Virginia and do not want to take it for granted, but maximize it's potential for us.

So, all that being said, it is NOT what I wanted earlier this spring!  I had said, "NO WAY!" in light of the great struggle that it was with the previous house projects, that had taken a big toll on our family life.  We evaluated, prayed and weighed our options.  The decision was made to moving forward, believing it was the best for our family in the longer term.  I purposed to have a good attitude, doing my best to see the potential this could be for personal growth in me and our children, allowing myself to dream about this real possibility.  Earlier on, I was fearful that it would be too much of an upheaval for the little children that we have!  I now have peace in my mind and heart that our children are resilient and will probably have tons of cool memories from this unique (albeit tumultuous!) season.  We have decided to get a construction loan, hire a general contractor, and try to get the bulk of the project done in 4-6 months, which is faster than any project has taken us to date.  So far, working towards this has proved to be time consuming and difficult to wade thru the paper pushing, formalities and legalities, but I have to think it will all be worth it!  I don't think the kids will know what hit 'em.  I am excited to show our almost 4 year old son the interesting construction machines that will visit our home, and believe that our 14 month old daughter is old enough that it's not going to affect her sleep schedule too life shatteringly!  (in contrast to the house project troubles we had when she was an infant/newborn--but I just don't want to think about that!!)

From a design process standpoint, up until now, we have already done a lot.  I have been working on conceptual drawings of our new space for months (years?) and was able to submit them to our architect (my dad) to translate them into construction documents fit for submission to the permitting office.  He has also met with a structural engineer a couple of times to ensure that the various designs on our "wish list" will be met with structural integrity, allowing us the ability to weigh our options against cost considerations.  A few of the design decisions along the way that we've had to mull over were size of trusses and beams for large spaces, support posts in basement garage or not, making sure the window placements work not only on paper but that things don't look funny when you see them in elevation or perspective (thru architectural rendered drawings), details at material transitions, and many more details that I don't even remember!

Currently, we are waiting to hear back from the structural engineer about whether we will need extra support to bear the weight of brick cladding for the building under the water table.  My dad is pulling the drawings together for permitting that will hopefully be resolved next week.  We have also selected a general contractor to do our work!  We are excited to be working with Dave.  He is a local guy that does most of his work himself; we figure this is what keeps his overhead low.  Once we have a signed contract with him, we can submit that, along with detailed specs to the bank to move forward with our construction loan.  We will then have a home appraisal, which will give them a more accurate number on which to determine our loan amount. We are hopeful since we have improved the house so much since moving in (adding a deck, better landscaping, a bedroom, a bathroom and a new front door) that we will have a better chance at upping our loan amount and have better buying power to finish more details of the house than we had thought.  Dave will not be doing EVERYTHING to complete our addition, but will be doing the bulk of it.  In the end, we will have about 2500 sf of finished space (with an additional almost 800 sf garage), up from 960 finished sf when we first bought the place!

Ok, enough talk, let's see some visuals!  Here are some drawings to get an idea of what we are going to do:

Here are my initial conceptual drawings (actually they are the drawings notating windows for a quote):

Level 1 - Drawing credit: Bethany Cropsey

Basement - Drawing credit: Bethany Cropsey

Here's one construction document our architect pulled together showing floor plans of the main level and basement:

Drawing credit: Clint Good

See the level of crazy detail on this??!?

Additionally, here are different elevations to give an idea of each angle of the house:

Drawing credit: Clint Good

Do you see the awesome feature windows going into the great room?  So much natural light and not much glare, since it will be north facing--double bonus.

Drawing credit: Clint Good

Upgrading to a sliding door exit out onto the back deck-score!  This will not only cut back on the annoyance of having the basement door and back deck door interfere with each other, but it will let in a ton of natural southern light into the kitchen and adjoining spaces.

Drawing credit: Clint Good

Side facing garage doors--they won't be seen from the road/driveway, yay!

Drawing credit: Clint Good

Check out the amazing feature transom windows in the master bedroom!  We will have western light (sunset!) in this room while maintaining privacy.

Next, is a color rendering I did to experiment with possibilities of having brick under the water table on both end additions:

Drawing credit: Bethany Cropsey; side note: window on right side addition is missing in drawing 

The existing brick we are trying to match on the foundation of garage side if we do not have enough left over from the holes that are going to get cut out of the side of the building to create the addition.  The siding we have chosen for our project is a Hardieplank product:

This color is the same color as the grout with the brick, so I figured it would blend in well with the existing structure.

I am planning on having windows that resemble the ones that are in the existing space, but instead of white trim on the exterior, they will have black, as well as the fascia.  This seems more modern to me.

In terms of changes we plan to do on the interior: we would like to replace all the hardwood floors since the floors squeak like crazy!  We will install solid core doors and replace existing windows eventually.  We are going to expand the kitchen (adding about 77 sf), changing the layout: adding an eat-in bar/peninsula, changing to quartz countertops, all white cabinets, new lighting, new fixtures and matching appliances, eventually :)  The sink will face into the living spaces so I can watch the kids while I'm in the kitchen.  I will finally have a pantry!  Maybe I can find a fun pantry door too.  A dining room and great room will be adjacent to the existing living room, adding to the main living space.  Someday we will convert the existing fireplace to a two sided gas fireplace, replacing the wood-burning one.

The master bedroom will be moved up to the main floor, on the private wing of the house, next to the bedrooms upstairs that are existing.  We will move the washer/dryer to the main floor as well, which will be so nice to have near all the bedrooms!  We will have exposed exterior brick in the great room and master bedroom, because, why not?


Back to the details of what we have been working earlier this year.

We utilized the spring and summer for various outdoor projects such as having a new roof put on, adding a door/lattice underneath the deck, staining the deck, planting and relocating some trees.

Here are a few pictures of said summer projects!  First, a front of house roof "before" pic:

And "after":

And back of house "before" roof pic:

And "after" pic:

Pic of under deck door built:

Staining the deck:

Doing some garden bed expansion/re-building:

Relocating a small evergreen that was too close to a catalpa tree:

back in 2015

We had it planted it in mid-August (might not have been the smartest move in the world, but luckily we so happened to have an exceptionally cool and rainy August, so that made it ok!).  We moved it close to the end of the driveway, next to an existing stump that was already annoying to mow around :)  It seems to be thriving in it's new location!

We also had 6 small Leland cypress planted down near the road to cut down on dust from the gravel/dirt road that seem to be doing pretty well (minus some chewing of the deer on a few of them!):

Inside, it was decided that we needed to make some progress on finishing another room in the basement before our major house additions happen so we would have other places to go (especially in the winter time when the kids can't play outside!).  We will call it the bonus room, which acts as a living room of sorts for the bedroom down there.  Potentially even a guest room!

Eventually, the mud room will become a kitchenette, and this will probably be one of the last projects to tackle.

In looking at the floor plan for downstairs, the bonus room is the additional open space past the stairs that also adjoins with the bathroom:

We decided to push the storage that was housed in that room into the space on the right as much as possible (as shown in the drawing) which as become our storage/utility room.  Gabe took the large table, 8' X 4' and shown here:

broke it down, and created more shelving in the utility room as well as freeing up more space in the bonus room, giving us room to actually hang drywall and change the functionality of that room.  We also bought some more narrow shelves from a yard sale down the road to place on an adjoining wall.

Here are pics I took of before and after the shelves were created and installed:

Second set, showing the water tank location in the corner:

Next, Gabe was able to focus his efforts on framing in the bonus room.  This took almost all summer.  First, he insulated the exterior walls with polystyrene sheets.  Then he framed the walls, insulated exterior walls with additional insulation, and then drywalled.  There is a side story to the drywall procurement--

My mom graciously agreed to watch our children one evening for us to go on a date.  I was excited to go out to dinner and then Gabe nonchalantly tacked on, "and we can go pick up the drywall".  This is so his style.  Things are no big deal in his world.  He can take things on, impossible, superhuman things, like hang 4' X 12' sheets of drywall by himself, psssh!  So, we had a lovely date, stopped by Lowe's on our way, got out, moseyed up to the drywall area, passing a large box of doors we perused.  We are in the market for new doors, so nothing out of the ordinary here, especially concerning a good deal.  These particular doors were marked down 75% off marked price, so they were looking like a good deal!  I am pretty picky when it comes to style, so I didn't think at first glance there would be anything for us in there.  But, there was one door, something that had been mis-ordered and placed in this box as an unwanted special order, that I actually liked.  And it was $75!

Said door:

Gabe was convinced we should get it--it could either be our new front door or new back door.  I was fine with this because I had options :) and it let in a ton of light.  It grew on me even more, and we decided to use it for our front door!  A steel entry door, originally $600!!  We made out like bandits.  But, back to the drywall.  Gabe figured out a way to get 8 sheets of ridiculously heavy LARGE drywall sheets into our SUV and home, but how were we going to get them into the basement?  My mom, again graciously, agreed to help us get the drywall into our house at about 10:30pm on a Friday night.  Bless her!  This was a project we took on Labor day weekend, so he was able to hop right to it and install drywall that very next day.

I have to say, I just haven't been able to get pictures of the process like I used to.  I hope to be getting back to this, but it sure is hard when I have two little ones to watch while Gabe is doing the work!

a FEW pics of the process-

Looking into the framed space from the Mud Rm doorway:

Gabe, contemplating how to tie in the framing of this wall:

Wall comes down:

New one goes up:

As well as the rest of the room:

Next he worked on getting electrical situated, installing 5 pot lights in the room, controlled by two different switches.  We will not close in the ceiling quite yet since the contractor will need to access wires up there during the addition project.

I am glad to have another space to default to when things get a little crazy in renovating in the winter months....

Just last weekend we were able to have my dad's help installing the front door.  Gabe said it was nice to have another set of hands to help stabilize the door while it was being installed, leveled and plumbed.  Thanks Dad!

Now for the "before pic" of the front door!

New door, from the outside and from the inside:

Here is a detail pic of the handle from here we bought and installed:

I'm loving the modern spin our house is taking!

I have been toying with the idea of painting the door SW Hazel or BM Covington Blue.  I think the light turquoise blue will be set off nicely by the brick, providing some contrast to the earthy colors of the brick and taupe cement board.


Another thing I realized and had a bit of mourning over were my garden beds on the east of the house that will have to be taken apart to make way for the addition.  I spent a lot of time cultivating the gardens, building brick retaining walls, garden edging of bricks and cutting my teeth on gardening.  It was my first!  So, I will be sad to have to rip it apart and relocate all of its many parts.  Probably the thing I will be most sad by is the peony that I transplanted 3 years ago out from under where we built our deck.  The first year, it didn't flower where I had transplanted it:

Where it was originally:

The second year, I got two blossoms:

The third year, it bloomed profusely and I was so proud!  :D

Alas, I have divided it and moved it.  We will see how it does in it's new locations!

And the lilac bush, I was also worried about moving!  But, it seems to have done fine.  Here is a pic of when I first planted it!

And now, in it's new spot:

Let's take a short detour down memory lane for a minute.  So nostalgic. Tearing up the garden beds might be one of the hardest things about thinking about starting the additions/reno!  Not that it was that beautiful to look at with the cinder block and all, but the time I put into it, the nice soil, it being a raised bed and easy to weed, and how well things were doing!  Ah me.

Pic on the left is a western view up the hill with no deck, taken in 2015; on the right is the lilac flowering a little, looking east.

For comparison sake, the one on the right was taken this morning, showing the devastation of having to pull up my garden bed work!!  :P

 

Before I tackled the garden beds in late March 2015:

Using leftover bricks from our first house flip project to create some tiered gardens in April 2015.

Ok, detour complete.  :D

A couple other things relocated:

These herbs were moved into these pots on my deck--rosemary, thyme, chives, oregano along with the hot peppers that were in the pot with new rosemary.  Hopefully they make it!  They look pretty good so far.

More rosemary to transplant:

So much rosemary! on the left.  There are some peonies transplanted to the right of large bin.

We hired a guy to come help out with the transplanting in September.  He moved a lot of the plants into this wooden raised bed Gabe created.  I stacked our old bricks around the wooden frame to bulk it up a bit.  There are peonies transplanted here along with lupine, columbine, dahlias, hyacinth bulbs, phlox, euphorbia, sedum and a couple others.  It will look better in the spring, I hope!!

One last gratuitous pic of a beautiful flowering catalpa tree, with a little cutie taken in June:

I will probably be doing more frequent updates with all the goings on in the next couple of months!  We are hoping the bulk of the work will be completed before summer 2018.  

If you would like to pray for our project here are some things on our hearts:

-Pray for ease in obtaining the building permit
-Pray the appraisal on our house is higher than we think so we can get a bigger construction loan
-Pray the weather cooperates with things like pouring concrete

-Pray for smooth communication with our contractor

-Pray we would be decisive with all the little things that come up in a house project of this size that could potentially hold things up (interrupt the "critical path")

-Pray we can maintain peaceful relationships in our home through all of this and that God would be glorified and praised!

'Til next time!