Getting Started

August 2008

Our house lacked a large family room. We spend all our time in a small seating grouping at the end of the breakfast room. Our house also lacked an appropriate master bathroom and closets.

Since the house sits on one and a half original lots, the obvious place for an addition was to the side of the living room. The master bedroom and bathroom stack immediately above it.

So the concept is, a first floor family room which will connect to the central hall of the house via an open gallery along the back of the living room. The gallery will be designed such that it does not compromise the integrity of the living room and you can walk to the family room without going thru the living room.

A new master bedroom will stack above the family room. It will have a small porch overlooking the back yard.

The former master bedroom will be turned into his and hers baths and a laundry room.

In addition, since I love basements, I wanted some decent basement space. Houses are easier to work on if they have basements and I knew we could use the space. So I decided to put a basement under the addition.

I was never happy with the bounce in the living room floor. The original joists suffered termite damage. And although the termites are long gone, and the joists were sistered with new lumber, the floor just didn't feel sound to me. So we took this opportunity to tear out the living room floor and replace the floor structure and flooring. In doing so, we gained access tot he crawlspace under the living room in order to dig it out and expand the basement.

Due to adjacent footings of a garden retaining wall and the existing house, we adopted a stepped footing and foundation wall design.

The task at hand, was "how to hold up the house, while we dug a basement under it?".