Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Naperville Addition and Kitchen Project

Work is now underway on our latest project, a major renovation to a home in the Winding Creek Subdivision of Naperville, IL. We're adding on to the home in three places. We will demolish the existing two-car garage, reuse its foundation for a master bedroom and add a master bath and closet. We'll then add a new three-car garage to the other side of the house and a sun-room in the back to replace the existing deck. We started two weeks ago with the existing house, shown at the left. Since then, we've replaces the windows not affected by the addition work with new Pella casement and awnings with 9-lite prairie-style grills between the glass. The new units get trimmed out with 1" rough-sawn cedar on the exterior and new casements will be installed on the inside. All of the existing cedar siding that will remain on the house gets a fresh coat of opaque stain from Sherwin-Williams. Now, let's bust this place open.

We started the demolition by cutting the existing garage away from the house and disconnecting the old electric. We found a couple circuits that actually ran through the garage and back into the house. Those had to be re-routed so that power wasn't lost in places where it wasn't intended to be. Then, the big machine comes out. John Green has been doing demolitions for me since 2003 and the existing garage came down in about 20 minutes and was loaded and hauled away in a semi-trailer in another 20. The same backhoe then gets to work on the excavation for the new foundations. We're going down 4 feet here for frost protection. 10" footings will be followed by 38" foundation walls. Excavation should be completed by the end of the day and the concrete contractor will get start on the foundation work Wednesday or Thursday. Nice hole!

In the meantime, interior demolition is underway, and we'll have more on that later. TTFN!