It’s a Whole New House!

Outside renovations have been happening this winter (I started this post with good intentions, it is now fall) . Remember way back in March of 2021 when we first dug out space for a shed? Here is a flashback photo to jog your memory.

Since this time, we had the footers poured and then when the retaining wall went in, Debord home and lawn did the base of the shed to match the stone on the rest of the house. The giant concrete patio was poured over the summer.

This is where our design phase went through a ton of different ideas. We talked about putting a second floor on the shed to have some guest space. Then we played with the idea of the deck connecting between to make the guest space easily accessible from the main house. Then we started to wonder why we wouldn’t make the space our primary bedroom to have the primary bedroom on the main floor like we really desired. After a lot of considering and adjusting, hubby created these drawings.

We felt pretty good about this, and ordered materials. I could tell that hubby just wasn’t sold on it yet. He ultimately decided to make a few changes that really made the design work for us.

He pulled the original house roof out over the deck to give the front an impressive timber frame look as well as some covered deck space. He also squared off the angle into the house to give a lot more interior space. This allowed us to create a more user friendly kitchen space, and add a dedicated pantry, as well as a large primary bedroom with en suite.

Materials arrived and the lawn began to look like a lumber yard.

Hubby chose huge 8×12 beans to support the deck.

Once the framers arrived everything started to move really quickly.

The floor of the second story addition tied into the house.

These huge deck beams had to be craned into place.

We chose to go with Trex decking in the spiced rum color. In the photo above you can see the giant beams that will support the timber framed new front roof. You can also see the completely framed addition to the right.

We had Weather Tamer that did our metal roof two years ago come back and match the new roof perfectly.

We recently added cable railing to the deck and now we have fabulous new entertaining spaces. The house looks so different from when we originally purchased it. We hope to finish closing up the new expansion soon and then we can focus on the inside.

Hubby made a template to drill through so all the holes for the cable would be perfectly spaced.

He used a broken copper clothes hangar to guide the wire through without snagging.

We had so many wonderful friends that helped us complete the cable and have a safe deck for our big Fourth of July party. One of those friends was Darren with Camp Faith. Check out camp Faith if you are ever visiting the area he has created a beautiful getaway!

This is the under deck area. We have added another table since this photo was taken to accommodate all our guests.

We hope to have the addition closed in by Christmas this year, but if you have been following our journey, you know how time lines are difficult to follow out here and it may be longer. I’ll end with some photos of the fall colors we have been enjoying this week.