Woodbridge Renovation

Objective – increase size of home for growing family

Harlowe – The decision was made to take their 1500 square foot home and extend the back out another 20’ and put on a 26x26 garage. Another contractor had this job originally, but luckily he didn’t get far into it before running away. We were able to save the foundations and start fresh with the framing.

Other considerations: The planning was not done very well to start with and the plans had to be scrapped and started over. At this point the homeowner decided to make it larger while we were at it and included a 3rd floor that spanned the existing house, the addition and the garage. This now required another set of stairs and a complete removal and upgrade of all their heating/cooling, electrical, and plumbing systems. To do this, the existing 1500 square foot house had to be completely remodeled as well. 

End result – The client received 3500 square feet of new living space which included 5 new bedrooms, 2 new baths w/Jacuzzi tubs, 1 15x11 master bath w/corner Jacuzzi tub and shower stall. New hardwood floors throughout. A 676 sqft music room, a new utility and laundry area and 300 sqft added to the family/rec room and a 26x26 double car garage

9x 23 2-Story house extension.

Objectives -     Client wanted to maximize the house size up to zoning limits without having it look like an addition when finished.

Harlowe – We had to build the exterior shell first, complete with windows and doors and install the siding and put on a whole new roof to make sure we were water tight before we were able to demo the existing exterior side wall.  

Once the exterior was done, the interior had the same requirements of having the finished product to look like it was originally built that way. To accomplish this, on the exterior walls we had to make them custom widths and remove most of the drywall in the interior rooms so they could be drywalled  again to not show any seams.

 Other Considerations – Adding this much space means upgrading your existing systems. When a house is built, the builder designs the heating/cooling, electrical and plumbing to accommodate the square footage built and usually no more.

For this home, we changed out the electric panel box to add room for more circuits. It was also known that the original was a 40 year old model that has a high failure rate. Then we added a air conditioning unit in the attic, and ran the trunk line down thru the addition and back thru the center of the existing to be able to condition both floors.

The end result – The client will receive a new home with an extra 414 square feet added and another 695 square feet remodeled, a completely new roof, new siding and shutters, upgraded systems, another 207 square feet of patio in the back and a flagstone front porch.

14 x 24 elevated addition

Objective – Use existing deck for sunroom add on

Harlowe – Another contractor had this originally. His bid was at half of the other contractors bidding on this job. Unfortunately, the perceived good luck of the homeowners turned to bad when after a year of work, not much had been done and the contractor was nowhere to be found.

We picked this up as a referral from a friend who we had done another addition for. The frame was up with the windows and the shingles were on. We took over from there.

Other considerations – It looks like it should have been an easy job but there were several factors to be dealt with. The first, was the original contractor wasn’t aware of the local codes and framed the roof completely wrong. We were going to tear it off and start again but the cost was prohibitive for the homeowner, so we worked with the county and made some lower cost adjustments to get it to pass inspection. There was going to be a semi-circle window in the gable but it had to be sacrificed for structural integrity and county requirements.

The second problem we had to contend with was when we went to put siding on the addition, we found the gable wall was 2” out of level. The wood framing was sitting unprotected for so long it had warped 2” out. The only option was to cut out a good portion of the gable wall and re-frame it.  

The other problem was that it was built on a deck foundation. This in itself is not a problem structurally, but an addition foundation HAS to be level and square. Deck builders on the other hand don’t anticipate others building on their work and they don’t need to be that detailed, so they aren’t. To get the deck where it should have been would of required tearing down the whole addition and starting again, which of course the homeowner wasn’t interested in, so we had to make due with what we had. This makes for very difficult work for the tradesmen that have to work on shoddy construction. The worst being the flooring.

The only other consideration was the heating and cooling. The addition was just at the size where we may have been able to use the existing system, but we still had the job of getting ductwork to the addition from the main house and every solution involved tearing out drywall in finished rooms. It was decided that a through the wall stand alone unit would be the easiest and most cost effective way to go.

Total Cost to finish addition, including: finish framing, re-framing, re-drawing blueprints, re-inspecting, siding, electric, heating/cooling, drywall, insulation, paint, millwork and flooring.

11 x 15 screened in porch and 7 x 15 deck with stairs

Objective – an exterior area for eating and entertaining in the spring and summer months

Harlowe – the biggest challenge on this job was the height. The new home they had just purchased had 9 foot ceilings on all the floors, including the basement. There was a lot of extra work with those posts and beams to give it the proper support it would need to be self supporting and to pass code (the county considers this an addition and not a deck). The other problem posed by the height was the screening. Screening has to be installed from the outside. Porches like this can usually be done from ladders, but this one we had to run scaffolding up the sides.

Other considerations – We ran one ceiling fan inside the porch with the wire fisched into the exterior wall so the switch was inside the house.

End result – This is primarily a screened porch with a small deck for grilling and stairs to the back yard.

Harlowe Construction

4600 Evansdale Rd.
Woodbridge, Va. 22193
703.680.0436