Moving right along – here are the three elevations of the addition (remember to click on them to enlarge):
I had a post last fall about materials, specifically our final choice for the exterior material of the addition and the garage. I think that using brick on the addition was the right way to go, although we’ve moved away from the idea of using both a matte and glazed brick on the exterior, and are sticking with just one brick finish. We originally thought we’d try to carry the line over from the line at the top of our stone foundation on the original house, but it was too fussy. The new addition will be all brick, with no exposed foundation wall.
If you look at that top elevation (east elevation), you’re looking at a view that you will never see in real life! That’s because our neighbor’s house is less than seven feet from ours, and so you can’t really see this side of our house at all, except a skewed version of it from the sidewalk between the houses, looking up. Our neighbor’s house is also longer than ours, although our new addition will extend further into the yard than the end of his house. So you will be able to see some of this from the cross street. That’s another reason we put that large window at the corner of the dining room. It will be nice to have a view to that street, and to also catch that morning east light.
I think I also mentioned this before, but we designed and re-designed the balcony enclosure many times. Originally we wanted to leave the top balcony as porch-like as possible, and use it as a screen porch. But when water gets in, it must come out, and that floor framing actually becomes a roof, and we quickly ran out of room to make that work. We opted to put in the largest sliding windows we could fit, installing the sills just over guardrail height. We’ll be able to slide the windows open and also open the rear door to the deck (which will have a screen door) and it will feel like a screened in porch without the headaches of having one over occupied space.
If you look below the two big sliding windows on the balcony, you’ll see a long, narrow window. That’s in the pantry, high above the shelves. That will let some natural light into that room without cutting down on its usefulness. Some of that light will also spill into our kitchen, which is now technically windowless, outside of the skylights.
The dashed diagonal lines represent a cable system for growing plants up the wall. Behind that we would use a wood T-11 siding, it has a vertical line to it, and it would have an opaque stain, likely similar in color to the brick, but currently not selected yet. We would need to have a shade tolerant climbing plant for this location, but there are a few options out there. I really would love for this entire wall to become green, with just the windows peeking out.
You can also see all the glass at the new side entrance. That entrance is at grade, and comes in at the stair landing. It will be our primary entrance from now on. Continuing to the left is the large casement window in the dining room, and there are two high windows in the basement den below, just above grade.
The south elevation is the folding glass wall system, and the surround in there is also wood, finish TBD. If you look on the second floor of this elevation, you can see the new door from the balcony onto the roof deck, and the green cable system wraps around there. That dark area of brick with the window in it is in the studio space in our house. We might have to rebuild a portion of that masonry wall when the new steel goes in below, so that’s why it’s shown darker. I’m excited to sit at the desks in there and look out onto our roof garden one day!
The west wall is SUPER exciting (not exciting at all) – all brick, as it sits right on our property line and we couldn’t put a window there even if we wanted to. All walls along our property line have to be rated fire walls, which dictates their size and their materials, so it’s just another one of many little things that add up to a fairly complex little project! That complexity is what makes this virtual tour of the project take so long. Thanks for your patience, and for all the funny messages you’ve been sending. If I had a nickel for every “holy cow!” text I’ve received this week, I could probably afford this project.
