1898 House - The Floor Plan

Now that you've seen the exterior, here is the interior floor plan.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the basic layout of the house isn't changing much.  But because of all the structural issues we've found, we're going to be gutting a lot more of the house than we had originally planned.  And you know what happens when you open up walls - you find hidden surprises.  So until we know what those are, here is the renovation plan.

What's changed?  Well a lot.... and not so much.  The layout is very similar to the original plan.  But we are taking out walls in the kitchen (shocking I know!) to make it seem much larger.  We will also be opening up the kitchen ceilings, to get a big cathedral ceiling throughout the space. (want to see the original floor plan?  Click here)

We have agonized over the size of the mudroom and the location of the laundry.  And after lots of discussion about the mudroom, we've finally agreed to just figure it out when we start framing that space.  

For the laundry, we really wanted it up on the 2nd floor, but every option we tried had a compromise involved and we finally gave up.  If it has to be on the first floor, we had a couple of options (you guessed it - hubby and I can't agree 😂)  So we let our plumber made the decision, based on where we can access water supply and drains.  It will go in the current first floor bathroom.  Not our preferred location, but we can live with it.  And that's what always happens when you renovate an old house.  You can't always have exactly what you want due to all kinds of structural, code and financial limitations.  So you learn to adapt!

The bathroom used to have two doors - one into the office and one into the kitchen.  We will eliminate the door to the kitchen, which gives us more space for kitchen cabinets and makes bathroom layout a bit simpler.

The other big changes include fixing all of the structural issues, padding out the walls to give us more space for insulation and  updating finishes. 

The second floor gets bigger changes.  With the addition of the new shed dormer, we gain about 8 feet of space across the back of the house.  It's not an enormous amount of room, but it gives us some additional space to let us 1) create a bunk room for the grandkids and 2) create a primary suite with bathroom and 3) add an extra bedroom.  Having a second bathroom upstairs was a huge 'must have' for us, so we're glad we could make that happen.

Now that the leaves are off the trees, we're really starting to appreciate the water views.  The front right bedroom will have a glimpse of the Portland Head Light - which is a pretty sweet view no matter what the season. (if the kids all come to visit at once, it will be interesting to see who gets the best guest room! 😂)

The Primary Suite has views of Casco Bay, Cushing  and Peaks Island.  We're looking forward to seeing that view as the sun comes up in the morning!

Of course we're dying to get started!  All the permits applications are in and we're hoping to move forward soon.  

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First Peeks of the Renovation Plan

When we were looking for a new home, we had a set of criteria.  And while this home met many of them, there were some things that have evolved as we’ve gotten to know the house a bit better.  So here is our latest list.

•       ~2500 square feet
• Maintain 'old house' style and charm
• Open-ish floor plan for entertaining 
•  Bunkroom for the grandkids
• Future bedroom on the first floor to age in place
• Mudroom for all the coats/boots/hats/etc
• 2nd floor laundry

So let’s go through a few of the key goals, starting with the size of the home.  We don’t want another giant house.  Something around 2,500 square feet will be perfect and since this house is 2,480, it seems like just the right fit. 

A key to this design - a lot of things stay the same.  There isn't any change to the footprint of the house.  And we aren't making many changes to the layout of the house.  All of the rooms stay in their current configuration.  Where we are making changes, it's to correct structural issues that we've found and add a bit of space upstairs for a bunk room and bathroom.

Here's a first look at the exterior.  We're working hard to maintain the 'old house' look on the front facade, but will try and align the windows a bit more.  (Before everyone comments - yes, it would be nice to have another window next to the front porch for symmetry, but that would put it right in the stairwell.  That is a big no-no for building code - and I don't want a fake window that was built behind a wall), To help balance the front elevation, I'm thinking it's a great place to put a trellis with some sort of a climbing vine. I found a nice trellis behind the garage, it was too rotted to reuse, but I saved the brackets from it to create copies for a new one.

On the garage side, we've kept my favorite exterior view with the little vestibule that steps up to the taller kitchen roof.  Seriously, I love this view of the house!  

But if you step back from the door and look at the new design, you also get a first peek of the new shed dormer on the back.  

We will tear off the structurally compromised hip dormer that's currently on the back of the house and replace it with a shed dormer - which is a better match to the front facade.  The hip dormer just looked odd and didn't match anything else on the house.

  Best of all, the new dormer will extend to the back of the foundation so all of the building load will be transferred to the foundation - instead of the middle of the dining room!  A win-win from a structural engineering perspective!

Bunkroom at last home

The new shed dormer will give us some additional living area across the back of the 2nd floor.  This will give us bedroom space for when the family comes to visit.  The bunkroom for the grandkids was a huge plus in our previous home (and we only had 3 grandchildren then – with the twins we have 5)  That's a lot of bunks!  And it works well for grownups in a pinch!

It also give us space for two bathrooms on the 2nd floor - a must have for us!

The right side of the house will have lots of windows like we have today, but they will all match, instead of a mixture of styles that we have today.  We will also add a sliding glass door to give us access to the deck that we're planning to build there.

We're pretty pleased with this approach.  It maintains the original character of the house, while providing a bit more bedroom/bath space on the 2nd floor.  And best of all, it fixes a lot of the challenging structural issues that we found when we started opening up a few areas of the house.  

Stay tuned, We're still making a couple of tweaks to the floorplan, but I'll share that soon! 

 

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