Just thought I'd give you a feel for the variety of projects that we're working on these days. All of the photos were taken within the past week or two of projects in which we are the General Contractor.
We're about halfway through a renovation and addition to a cute 1930s house in Marshfield, MA. Here's a view of the exterior showing the cedar shingle roof nearing completion. The gambrel-roofed section at the right is new. This is a collaboration with Frank Shirley Architects.
Installation of another wood roof is the last step in a carriage house renovation in Brookline, MA. We gutted and completely renovated this late 19th century carriage house in a little over 10 weeks. Quite the feat, if I do say so myself. The traditional exterior stands in contrast to the sleeker interior. The architects are Meyer & Meyer.
Work continues on our barn project in Weston, MA. Most of the vertical board siding has been installed and the metal roof work is underway. Bensonwood supplied the timber frame and the exterior shell.
The Norfolk grange was built as a church in the 1860s and was converted into a Grange hall some time later. The Grange was the beneficiary of a Community Preservation Act grant and we are using those funds to make the building accessible and also to restore as much of it as possible. We're building two small additions and a wheelchair ramp. Later in the project we'll restore the windows, repair the plaster, paint the interior and more.
Another of our crews has been working on an 18th century house in Littleton, MA. Once the site of one of the largest dairy farms in the area, this house has endured a major fire and a fair amount by previous owners. Fortunately, the current owners are making a major investment to ensure the building will be in good condition for many years to come. Working with architect Deane Rykerson, we are renovating the entire exterior: new windows, roofing, siding and trim. Major deterioration of the sills and other structural elements were uncovered and subsequently repaired.
And finally, we're just getting underway on renovations to a beautiful historic estate in Westford, MA. Built just after 1900, this 10,000 square foot home will see extensive renovations over the next two years. The first phase includes a kitchen renovation, new heating and cooling, major electrical upgrades and probably new roofing.
Phew! So that's a snapshot of the projects that we're working on these days. Look for individual articles about each of these projects in the weeks and months to come. We're excited about the work we do and the opportunity to work on so many interesting projects. Let us know what you're working on. We're always glad to talk to folks about their upcoming projects.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
We're known primarily as Old House Renovation guys. Maybe that's why we have so much fun when we get an opportunity to do some new construction from the ground up. A year or so ago we teamed up with the timber frame company Bensonwood to build a new house out in Harvard, MA. Right now we're teaming up with them again to build a new barn in Weston, MA.
Bensonwood has an incredible high-tech factory in Walpole, NH. Their architects send CAD files to huge shaping machines. The CAD files are translated into instructions to cutting heads that precisely cut the timbers to the sizes and shapes needed to produce the posts, beams, and other components that comprise the timber frame. They also build floor, wall, and roof sections in the factory. While they're making the frame in their shop, our people are on site doing the excavation and concrete work required to get the foundation ready. In this particular case we had to blast through some tough ledge before the foundation walls could be formed.
As you can see from the photo below, the concrete foundation on this project will be concealed by a beautiful stone veneer.
With the foundation ready, the timber frame and prefab panels were shipped to the site. Late last week the floor panels were installed onto the foundation. This week a team of timber framers - comprised partly of BensonWood guys and partly our own carpenters - pegged the timbers together and a crane lifted the sections into place. Wall and roof panels also get installed with the assistance of the crane. When the shell is in place, the crane will leave and we will carry out the rest of the work: exterior trim and siding, mechanical systems, plaster, interior trim, etc.
Here's a shot of the timber frame lying flat on the floor prior to being lifted in place.
The main sections of framing (called "bents") were lifted into place by the end of the first day of framing, as seen below.
By the second day, the barn is really beginning to take shape. I'll do a couple of follow up posts in coming weeks and months so you can see how this barn turns out.
So, hey, maybe we should be known as the new and old house or the new-old house guys or old new house guys or- well you get my drift. Be sure to come back in a few weeks to check out the progress on this project!
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
While we're talking about innovative products I thought I'd mention another pretty cool new idea. A company called Trufig has invented a line of wall switches and outlets that can be flush mounted with any surface, and therefore made to almost disappear.
Here's a typical scenario: if you've ever renovated a kitchen you know that the electrical code requires a LOT of outlets along the backsplash area. A lot of people may never use many of these outlets but are stuck looking at them (unless you mount them on the underside of the upper cabinets as I did in my own kitchen). With Trufig's products, these outlets can be installed perfectly flush with, for example, your stone backsplash. In order to do this, the stone must be laser cut to fit the Trufig outlet. The rectangle of stone that is removed can be given to a decorative painter who paints the Trufig faceplate to replicate the pattern of the stone that was removed, as shown below.
Now suppose that you didn't even want to look at this code-required outlet? Simple. Give a blank plate to the decorative painter and the outlet virtually disappears.
This system can also be used to install plugs and switches in wood, drywall, plaster, or most other surfaces that you can think of. They also have products that can allow other devices to be mounted flush : heating or cooling air registers, iPads, speakers, etc.
Making electrical devices less visible is a great step forward, particularly for many of the historic renovation projects that we carry out. Standard plugs and switches can be visually distractive in many historic settings and I'm sure we'll be looking at incorporating this system in some of our upcoming projects. I'll let you know how it goes.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
Since I started in this business as a renovation and restoration contractor, I have tried to look for new ways of approaching old problems. I love when fresh ideas are brought to the residential construction business.
Here's one such break-through. A couple of engineers who helped Apple develop the iPod has designed - and is now selling - a "smart" thermostat that has the potential to help homes and businesses save an enormous amount of heating and cooling energy.
The product is called the Nest and - as with Apple's products - it was designed with a simple user interface but with incredible behind-the-scenes intelligence. (And, yes, I'm an Apple fan, having used their products for over 20 years now).
Three things make this stand out from any other thermostat on the market.
First, it's good looking. The Nest is the one on the right, a typical setback thermostat is shown to the left. What a difference! The old one has buttons, dials, and sliding switches, plus a fold-down panel that reveals even more buttons. What a mess!
Second, the Nest is simple to set up and use. When first installed, it asks you some simple questions which helps to set it up. Have you ever tried to program one of the old fashioned thermostats? Confusing and unreliable are the terms that come to mind.
But the major difference between the Nest and any other thermostat available is that it's smart. It learns your habits and your preferences. If you turn the heat up in the morning, Nest will remember this and turn it up for you even if you forget to do it one day. It has built-in motion sensors and so it will turn the heat (or AC) down when no one is around. A compatible iPhone app allows you to adjust the Nest even when you're on the road. And the Nest connects wirelessly to the internet and allow you to actually track the energy savings online. The WIFI connection also allows it to monitor local temperatures and adjust its settings accordingly. Awesome.
While expensive compared to other thermostats (about $250), the ease-of-use means that this product will actually save you money, unlike most traditional thermostats. Studies have shown that most programmable thermostats are never actually, you know, programmed because the interfaces are so confusing. Since the Nest is so easy to set up, it will reduce your heating and cooling costs every day.
I'm thrilled to see such well-thought design and engineering brought into the home improvement market. Sadly most of the true innovation in heating and cooling systems, appliances, and plumbing fixtures these days seems to be happening in Europe. I am hopeful that this product will provide an incentive to other American engineers and product developers to show that we can still produce exciting products here as well.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
Several times a year I am asked to look at old houses for potential buyers. I'll walk through the house and give them my opinion on the condition of the house, the feasibility of renovations and additions, ballpark costs, etc.
I'll never forget when I made such a visit to a late 18th century Cape that a young couple was considering. The home still had many of its original features, including the wide pine floors, door, interior trim, etc. One beautiful feature was a large raised panel situated over the parlor fireplace. It was crafted from a single board that was probably 26-28 inches wide. The carpenter had hand-planed the surface and had used molding planes to make the raised panel edge detail. It was a great example of period carpentry.
"Can you sand that down to get it smooth?" asked the potential buyer.
"Excuse me?" I said, startled.
"Yeah, it's kind of wavy. Shouldn't it be flat and smooth?"
So I explained how the piece was a product of the available tools of its time period and that to sand it smooth would be to desecrate a valuable architectural element.
"Yeah, but its not flat!"
The point is, the beauty and character that we love about old houses is largely a result of the "imperfections", if you will, of the visible surfaces. There is an honesty to this work. The 18th carpenter had hand tools at his disposal and shaped every piece of wood in the house by hand. Surfaces that would be hidden (sheathing boards, the underside of floor boards, etc) were left rough. Prominent surfaces (door panels, window and door casings, etc) were hand planed to a finish that was, indeed, slightly wavy (the "waves" caused by the blade of the plane). But each plane mark is a witness to the hand that built the house and, to me, this work stands up with equal elegance to the finest machine produced finish carpentry of our time.
Similarly, sometimes people want to achieve perfectly flat walls and ceilings in their old houses despite the fact that 18th and 19th century plaster work was typically not perfectly flat. Old plaster was built up in several layers over wooden lathe and the ripples of the lathe and the slight skip of the trowel give these old surfaces a pleasing texture. When possible, we urge our clients to have us repair, rather than replace, historic plaster work.
If you live in an old house, take a moment to look around. What examples can you identify that exhibit "imperfections" that you have come to love?
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
From time to time I see projects tabled or postponed due to budgetary reasons. It's unfortunate at any point in the process but it's particularly heartbreaking when the clients have spent many months and many thousands of dollars on design fees, only to learn that the beautiful project depicted in the architect's drawings will cost much more than they are able or willing to invest.
Sometimes the project doesn't get off the ground because the architect has simply drawn too large a project for the client's budget. It's easy for all parties involved - homeowners, architects and, yes, even contractors- to allow their enthusiasm for the project to get carried away. When this happens the scope increases and, of course, so does the cost.
Other projects go off the rails because the clients were unaware of the all of the costs involved in a construction project. People sometimes get fixated on just the construction costs and underestimate the other expenses.
So what are the hidden costs of construction? Many people use the terms "soft" and "hard" costs to define the two main categories of costs. Soft costs are all of the costs not associated with actual tangible construction. Hard costs are the direct construction costs.
Here's a list of the typical costs in residential construction. Your project may not include all of these, of course, but it there may be one or two things listed here that you haven't considered.
Soft Costs:
DESIGN FEES:
Architect
Landscape architect
Interior designer
Kitchen designer
ENGINEERING
Structural engineer
HVAC engineer
Land surveyor
Civil Engineer
Wetlands consultant
RELOCATION COSTS
Temporary rental housing (do you need to move out during construction?)
Moving and storage costs
MISC.
Legal fees (e.g. contract review)
Accounting (e.g. if any renewable energy tax credits are involved)
Financing (if construction or home equity loans are involved)
Hard Costs:
In addition to the well-understood costs associated with demolition, framing, roofing, etc, please consider the following.
SITE WORK:
Hay bales and silt fence
Site clearing
Tree removal or other tree work
Landscape construction (driveways, walks, patios)
Landscaping (plantings, lawns, irrigation systems, lighting)
Septic systems
Drainage systems
Utility hookups (water, sewer, gas, electric)
Fencing
CONSTRUCTION ADD-ONS:
AV systems (home theaters, built-in music systems, etc)
Home automation
Swimming pools
Outdoor kitchens
POST-CONSTRUCTION COST:
Furniture
Carpets, rugs
Window treatments
We'll talk more about some of these items in more detail in an upcoming blog post. In the meantime, if you are planning a renovation, addition, or new house, please take a few minutes to create a spreadsheet showing all of the potential costs. You'll thank me later.
Let me know if there are things that I've missed that should be on this list!
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
Most people have probably heard by now about the new rules put into place by the EPA concerning lead paint and renovations. The goal of the rules is to increase awareness of the danger of lead paint and decrease the risk of harm to occupants of old homes where lead paint is present. The rules apply to projects that involve renovation or painting of houses built prior to 1978 (when lead paint was banned).
As a historic restoration contracting company here in Massachusetts, almost all of the buildings that we work on contain lead paint so we need to pay close attention to the requirements.
The rules, known as the RRP (Repair, Renovate, and Paint) guidelines have four main components. The first is notification. Contractors must notify their clients to the dangers of lead paint. This is done by giving them a copy of the EPA's Renovate Right booklet.
The second component is certification: any company working on buildings that contain lead paint must be certified. The EPA logo on our home page shows that we have completed this step. In addition, workers must receive training and be individually certified to carry out renovations involving lead paint. Our carpenters have received this training (as have I).
The third component consists of the actual procedures for carrying out the work. If the work involves disturbing more than 6 square feet of lead paint on the interior or 20 square feet on the exterior, the project must follow the guidelines. This includes properly setting up the work area with plastic and sealing off the work area from the rest of the house. The rules indicate correct procedures for using protective clothing, removal and disposal of lead paint-containing items, and for cleaning the site after the work is complete. They also ban certain techniques, such as grinding or burning lead paint.
These procedures are changing how renovation work is carried out. It's now very important to think ahead and take care of any demolition or invasive work while the containment area is set up. Painters must use different techniques, such as wet sanding. And all of us need to know when protective clothing and respirators must be donned.
The final component of the RRP rules is record keeping. From now on, when we carry out a renovation project we must keep records that verify the procedures we carried out for notification, testing, setting up, and cleaning.
A further wrinkle is that some states, including Massachusetts, have taken over the enforcement from the EPA. Contractors in Massachusetts must follow the new regulations written by the state, not the EPA rules.
There is a lot of anger and confusion in the contracting industry over these rules. First, it is an industry that is slow to change and these rules represent a big change, and some contractors are angry because they hate having to change the way they have always done things. I, for one, am in favor of increased protection from lead paint, so our company intends to fully comply with the rules. However, some of the anger out there, quite frankly, is justified because the rules are overly complicated and, in some cases, appear to contradict OSHA regulations. Since both the EPA and OSHA have the power to enforce their rules through fines, what is a contractor to do when it is impossible to be in compliance with both?
I think that eventually the added steps put in place to protect both occupants and workers will become second nature. In fact, I predict that the contractors that are in full compliance with the rules will start turning in contractors that are in obvious violation. Just recently a video surfaced on Youtube of a couple of painters in Maine grinding lead paint off a house and creating a cloud of lead dust. This type of work cannot be tolerated anymore. It's dangerous to the occupants and to the workers.
There is a significant cost to comply with these rules between training classes, certification fees, the materials and protective clothing required, and the extra time involved in setting up. Homeowners owe it to themselves to ensure that their contractors are certified, trained, and following the procedures. Yes, you can get a lower price by hiring a company that ignores the rules, but if they contaminate your home or yard with lead paint dust and endanger you and your family, are those savings worth it? Ask to see the contractor's certification and the training certificates for each individual worker. By law now, these must be on site at all times.
Let us know if you have any questions on the impact of these new rules on potential projects at your home. We're always happy to talk!
Resources:
EPA's RRP information
Massachusetts Lead Paint Program
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
This past Thursday I attended a lecture by architect Matthew Bronski about the year in Italy he spent studying the architecture of that country. He wanted to see why some ancient buildings have survived to this day while others failed miserably.
One of his conclusions was that there is a "Darwinian" evolution in architecture. That is, through a long process of trial and error, builders and designers learned what worked and what didn't. They learned, for example, that large roof overhangs protected the wall below by keeping a lot of the water away. Cathedral builders started with modest, tried and true arches as used in Roman aqueducts and gradually learned that these arches could go higher and lighter than they ever would have thought. Sometimes the builders were too ambitious and their cathedrals collapsed while under construction, but even through these failures they learned important lessons.
As this knowledge was passed on from one generation of designers and builders to the next, the architectural language may have evolved but the underlying lessons such as how to shed water from a window opening were still relevant. Follow these guidelines and your building would last. Veer away from them and it's anyone's guess as to the outcome.
This theme came up again at the "Green" symposium that I mentioned in the previous post. Charles Sullivan of the Cambridge Historical Commission made the exact same observation in the context of our own domestic historic architecture: the wise designer and builder studied and learned from those of previous generations. Even as styles change, the basic principles of protecting buildings from the elements remain fairly constant (although, of course, the materials change with time. I have seen 18th century windows flashed with strips of birch bark. Today we usually use metal flashing for this purpose).
These observations reminded me of a story I once heard about Walter Gropius, one of the fathers of modern architecture. Gropius was not interested in learning from previous generations. The story is that when he came to Harvard's Graduate School of Design he had his staff throw out all the models that Harvard had of the world's great buildings. He was creating something knew, he seems to have reasoned, and therefore the past had little to teach him.
So it is of no surprise that while Gropius was pushing the boundaries of architectural design, his buildings failed miserably at one of the principle measures of architecture: handling the elements. Instead of studying the details of the architecture that came before him, he invented new details. For hundreds of years, New England homes had steeply pitched roofs covered with overlapping shingles. This system handled the snow and rain admirably. Gropius used flat roofs. And they leaked. Almost immediately.
Indeed the entire realm of "modern architecture" is replete with examples of building envelope failure. A notorious example is I.M.Pei's addition to the National Gallery. Pei developed a new system for hanging the stone panels that make up the facade, instead of relying on proven techniques. His system did not allow enough room for expansion of the panels and they started crumbling. As a result, the entire facade had to be removed and replaced at a cost of about $85 million. Talk about non-sustainable design!
In my eye, this is the same hubris that was the fatal flaw of the designers of the Titanic. In the residential field, we have seen many new systems and methods fail miserably because their promoters, too, failed to learn the important lessons taught by the architecture of preceding generations.
As a preservation contractor, I am constantly observing the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century buildings that I work on- and the new houses that are being built today. It's a sad fact that the carpenter who installed those strips of birch bark over the windows of that 18th century house had a more intuitive grasp of this importance of this type of detail than many of the new home builders today. Instead of a system of overlapping materials many of todays carpenters rely on things such as sticky tape to keep water out. Yes, that will keep water out for a while, but what happens when that tape fails?
That's why so many historic houses have lasted so much longer than the houses being built today. To me, if a building is not designed and built to last for a century or more, it is not sustainable no matter how much bamboo or CFL lightbulbs are used. So in my eye, the historic houses we work on and preserve for future generations are the very essence of sustainability.
My carpenters know that longevity of our work is of prime importance to me. We do not tolerate work that will not last, not just for the warranty period, but for many, many years beyond. To do this often requires advising our clients to invest in better materials, spanish cedar for exterior trim, for example, instead of inexpensive primed pine that will rot out in 5-10 years. But it also requires instilling an attitude in the field that speed is less important than getting the details right.
How about you? What do you think about the "sustainable" architecture of today?
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
Yesterday Landmark Services co-sponsored a symposium called "The Greenest Building is Already Built". It was meant to explore the relationship- good or bad- between sustainability and historic preservation. Five panelists provided wonderful presentations exploring the issues from divergent points of view.
Not surprisingly, there was almost universal agreement that preservation of historic buildings is "green" in that it: a) reduces the amount of debris tossed into landfills and b) it captures the embodied energy that it took to make, transport, and install the materials of which these buildings are made. Many pointed out, too, that present day designers could benefit by studying some of the features found in historic buildings, such as large overhangs to keep out the summer sun.
There was significant disagreement, however, between the preservationists in the room and those who advocate for "deep energy retrofits". A deep energy retrofit typically includes replacing the existing windows, and removing siding and exterior trim in order to install a layer or two of rigid foam insulation over the sheathing. Advocates pointed to the large energy savings (often 50%) and the potential for other benefits such as increased comfort and better indoor air quality. But preservationists decried the wholesale removal of original building fabric and did not like the impact that such a retrofit has on the exterior appearance.
My own view is somewhere in the middle. As a historic preservation contractor, I am obviously favor preserving original building material. However, I am also painfully aware that most existing housing stock is woefully under-insulated and this cannot be ignored as the availability and cost of fossil fuels becomes more unpredictable.
Would I advocate replacing original windows? No I usually would not. The arguments against window replacement are pretty clear. Restoring your original windows and adding a good quality storm window makes more sense financially, aesthetically, and environmentally.
Would I advocate for the removal of siding or roofing and installing rigid foam over the sheathing? Under certain conditions I probably would. If the siding and roofing were going to replaced anyway this approach might make sense if the new exterior siding and trim were detailed in such a way as to maintain the building's original appearance. The difficulty is that by adding 3-6" of foam on top of your roof, and 2-4" to your walls, you need to make the trim boards that much wider. It's tough to do this without creating an eyesore.
But for me it all depends on the significance of the building. I can see taking this approach on a straightforward 1930s Colonial, for example, but it almost certainly would be a mistake for most 18th and 19th century homes because a) these homes are fewer in number and therefore more significant and b) it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the subtle architectural details that give these homes their beauty.
Our approach, here at Landmark Services, depends, of course, on the overall scope of the project and , more importantly, the goals of the clients. If a house is getting gutted anyway, it makes sense to insulate it as well as you can. We use either spray foam or dense packed cellulose because both methods stop most of the air movement through a wall or roof cavity. However on many of our projects we are opening up the walls in selected areas only, such as the kitchen or the bathrooms. In these houses we often just insulate those areas and the attic and leave the rest of the walls untouched unless one of the clients' goals is to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. Frankly, when it comes to old house renovations that is usually not the goal. Our clients want to reduce the energy efficiency and comfort, yes, but they want to maintain the look and character of their house as well.
For a more detailed look at my thoughts on insulating old houses download the paper that I wrote on the topic here.
By the way, the other co-sponsor of yesterday's symposium was a company called Terrene. They are a terrific resource for sustainable building materials such as cabinetry, counters, and flooring.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
We have worked with the owners of a ca. 1895 Shingle Style house just south of Boston for over five years. We started by renovating the exterior, stripping the house of its shingles and installing new ones, rebuilding the porches, and restoring the carriage house. Two years ago we completely renovated the third floor (I'll post an article about that at a later date).
Last year they asked us to renovate the kitchen. The husband, Dave, is a very tech savvy guy and also the main cook in the family. He wanted to be very involved in designing the kitchen so we decided that he and I would design it together using Google Sketchup. So over a period of 5-6 weeks we sent files back and forth, developing the details of the kitchen.
Goals
Their old kitchen was dark and dated. The cabinets, installed some time in the 1980s were of mediocre quality and were poorly designed. Also, their kitchen tended to be the depository for homework, backpacks, bills, cell phones, briefcases and toys. It was cluttered and non at all functional. A successful renovation would need to provide better organization, a lighter and more timeless feeling, and would include places for the kids to do homework and for a mini-office. Here's what we started with.
Design
The interior designer, Tricia McDonagh, provided us with a great starting point by drawing a floor plan delineating the locations of the cabinet runs, the eating area, a desk, and the mudroom cabinets. Tricia also did a fantastic job selecting the finishes: lighting fixtures, tile, paint colors, fabrics, etc.
We imported those floorplans into Sketchup and started modeling the cabinets.
Our first efforts were rather crude models used just to verify the overall space planning. Here's one such effort:
We gradually modelled every cabinet, desk, and cubby throughout the space to the point where we knew exactly where everything would be stored. Before any cabinets were made, we had determined homes for cutlery, dishes, pots and pans, dry food, produce, placemats and everything else that needed to be put away.
Eventually the Sketchup models became more refined. It's easy to import models of your exact appliances, as seen here.
We also indicated cabinet door details and other construction details and dimensions so that our cabinet shop would have a clear understanding of what to build. Here are some views of the island.
Construction
One of the infrastructure problems with the old kitchen was that it was very cold. More than half the kitchen was over a crawl space instead of a full basement, so we insulated the crawl space carefully with closed cell spray foam and installed radiant heating in the floor.
This shot shows the arched openings that we created to match ones found elsewhere in the house.
The great thing about having the clients so intimately involved in the design process was that they were so familiar with the kitchen model that they felt right at home in the real kitchen. They knew right where to put everything! The other benefit is that there were no surprises. 3D modeling is a great tool to help clients visulaize the space prior to construction.
Here's the finished space. What do you think? The first shot is looking over the island towards the built-in banquette (we also custom built the trestle table). A newly renovated and much more functional mudroom is through the arched opening at the right.
(Note: The interior design was done by Patricia McDonagh Interior Design; photographs below © 2010 Kevin A. Latady, photographer)
This view shows the cooking center and island. Dual sinks (one in the island) allow others to help with the prep and cleanup. The clean lines of the painted cabinets, dark counters, and stainless appliances are just what the clients wanted to achieve.
A wall of full height cabinets provides plenty of storage for dry foods, small appliances, spices and oils.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.