The 1960's House: Great Room

The last number of weeks has seen a stall in forward movement as different engineers change their minds and try to come to final decisions on how overbuilt the house needs to be. The result is a removal (and subsequent reinstallation) of some of the French drain system and adjoining sump pumps (two very large drums sunk below the basement level to protect against water build-up).

Once that issue was solved, the framer was able to begin his portion of work on the house. This is an exciting development to see, as there is more visual progress, making it easier to imagine the finished product. To begin with, they have framed in the sub-floor in the kitchen/dining room/laundry area that was removed at the beginning to make room for digging out the basement. Large I-beams supported by cribbing are still supporting this portion of the house, but soon they will be removed.

Sub-floor in the kitchen is in the process of being built.

A view of the front door - without the bridge and
railings it looks a little odd.

One issue that arose, for me, upon seeing the flat expanse of this new area, was the fact that it is all on the same level, where before there was an elevation difference between the floor of the dining room and concrete pad outside it. How will we be able to maintain a visual change of depth and interest? I spent hours and hours stewing about it, trying to decide if we should change up the railing layout or the size of the front porch, but ultimately decided that it was going to be too hard to visualize without having a 3D model to look at (something that is still in the works) and so I let it be. This is something that we may not really know until the project is nearly done.

Here it is easy to see how strong that horizontal line is at the edge of the
new basement. Ultimately many more things will be changing (including
landscaping, windows, flooring, railing) which makes it difficult to predict.

This is a view of the same area from the opposite direction. On the left is
the kitchen, straight ahead is the dining room, underfoot is the patio by
the trash can/laundry room area.

A peak at the basement below - it is no longer an open hole!

The hydronic heating has been installed in the basement floors, and framing
has begun in preparation for the floors to be poured.

Also happening in the past few weeks is a thorough exploration and re-engineering of the balcony off of the great room. That corner of the house was sagging and required repair. What was found was a little frightening - that entire corner was basically being held up by a toothpick. Needless to say, that is being changed. More steel beams are being added to the framework of the deck's flooring system, much larger footings are being installed beneath the patio underneath, and much larger steel posts will be taking the place of the smaller ones that were there before. All of this means our house will be safer and more sound, though it comes at a cost - to the budget as well as the schedule. Once the engineers decided on what exactly was needed, and the design elements were worked into the plan, the actual work was straightforward.

The faulty corner of the house beginning to be fixed.

A peak down into the holes cut into the patio to house the larger footings.

There is also a bit of work beginning to happen in other areas of the house, now that we are basically "out of the ground" and into the framing phase. The room that was previously the "maid's quarters" has a new floor at the lower level, which makes it now accessible from the hallway by the other bedrooms. It's nice to see this begin to take shape!