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March House Project Notes Final Plans Since the last update we finished the preliminary plans for the house. The kitchen cabinet design fell into place pretty fast but the upstairs took a long time. This is what the front of the house will look like when it is finished. One problem is that the upstairs loft is not full height. So any remodel to add a bathroom, sitting area and bedroom upstairs has to take into acount that you can't walk back the entire way without bumping your head on the beams. We moved the bathroom to every conceivable location, tried various things for the closet space and in the end flipped the entire upstairs. The final plan has the bathroom along the center line of the house on the highest edge of the loft with a bedroom at one end and, sitting are at the other and closets by the bathroom on the short side. Our Contractor We interviewed and called references for a number of contractors to build the house. From this set of people we selected Mr. Bill McKee to do the work. Every one of his references would use him again. He also had been called back to work on additional projects for several people. And the final clincher, he was one contractor who everyone said worked hard and stayed on schedule. We have been particularly pleased that he has added his ideas on the project and are excited to be working with such a great contractor. New Budget Unfortunately our initial budget was overly optomistic. Once we got a good contractor and really started looking we discovered two major areas that will need significant work that we had not planned for. This combined with the desire to do things right is forcing an update., We will eliminate most of the irrigation and barn work this year and focus entirely on the house. The foundation originally was treated wood piers. This is no longer considered an acceptable foundation for a house. So we will have to replace the foundation with a concrete block and poured concrete one. This will entail digging out around the whole house and replacing the existing piers. This is an expensive but necessary step. The other big area is the roof. We are adding a large garage and it was going to be impossible to match the color of the metal roof. We had planned to replace just the metal roofing. When the house was built the roof insulation was R-19. This was generous at the time but is now considered marginal. One thought was to add prefabricated insulated panels on top of the existing roof and replace the metal roofing. Because of the design of the upstairs loft there is no room to do this and still leave adequate space under the windows. Our final plan is to remove the metal roofing, plywood sheating and insulation. Electrical wires will be run on top of the structure and new foamed-in insulation and new sheating and metal roofing will be added. While relatively expensive the new roof will increase the insulating value of the house considerably. Go To Top