We started planning for a complete renovation of our house back in 2021. Unfortunately we had
been paying attention to our two houses in Duck, NC, but had pretty much neglected our main
house. We needed to refresh and replace just about everything, so we decided to completely
renovate the house and at the same time expand it. We wanted to add some things we have wanted
for a long time and some things for aging-in-place. The people next door had recently decided
to tear down their house and build a new one and we loved the result. We had met their
builder and liked him so we eventually decided to go with him.
The whole project can be somewhat summarized in several steps or projects. First, we had many things we needed to
repair or update. These included things like the roof, the siding, interior paint, the windows, the
flooring, the bathrooms, the HVAC, the decks, the kitchen and probably much more. Second, I had always
thought it would have been nice if I had put in a basement instead of a crawlspace under the two new
additions that I had built. Third, I had always thought it would be great to have a roof deck and of course
a small room through which to access this deck. We ended up with a large deck and a very large room
embedded within the roof on the third floor. Forth, we had thought we would like to expand the house
somewhat so we ended up pushing out the house about 13' in the back (adding a basement and two stories). Fifth,
we were a little frustrated with some of our spaces, so we used this new space to rearrange a number of the
walls. We ended up with new and larger rooms everywhere, including a dining room, an entry room (foyer), a pantry/mudroom,
a study/living room, a "roof" room, new basement rooms, entirely new bathrooms (six), a screened in deck, a front porch, a second
floor back deck, and a roof deck, among quite a few other things. Sixth, we were thinking about aging in place,
so we have an elevator that stops on all four floors, much easier to navigate "back-and-forth" steps, curbless
showers, wider (but not too wide) doors, minimal thresholds, grab bars, etc.
The planning took about a year and a half (about a year with the builder) and then the
actual work began in January/February, 2023. We are hoping it will be completed sometime in
mid-November to mid-December, hopefully before Christmas. We had to move out of the house
and have been in a temporary house about 6 blocks away and are looking forward to getting back home.
The pictures are in categories but some of the categories may overlap a little in time.
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