The Addition Window Plan

The new apartment addition shell size and shape is set.  Before the walls could go up, we needed to decide on the windows.  We have a collection of windows that we found in various bargain situations; mostly Habitat ReStores.  They were originally intended for our first plan of a small cabin to live in while we built the dream house.  Of course, that plan has been long replaced by new plans.  But the windows remain.  While they are all similar, they are just different enough in style, color, or size that we really can't use them all together.

I've thought about the window placement since the beginning, but have had trouble pulling a plan together.  The West wall (kitchen wall) will have the window from the existing apartment wall recycled into the space over the sink.  So that one was easy.  But the other walls weren't.  The nicest views are to the East and South.  The East wall (more accurately, SE) looks over the nice fern and hosta garden toward the drive down to the house site (Moss Hollow Lane).  The diagonal wall faces the woods and foot trail down to the house site.  The South wall (really SW) looks toward the grassed clearing area, then woods.  All, more or less, look over Moss Hollow through the trees.  In the winter, when the leaves are gone, you can see the ridge lines across Moss Hollow and Indian Creek valley.  I knew we needed lots of glass facing these directions, but exactly how to do it and keep it affordable and looking OK, took some hard thinking.

Just looking at the blank space didn't quite work.  I needed to visualize the wall planes.  So I drew scale drawings of them and placed windows on them. Included were the kitchen cabinets, island and the big stained glass panel that we plan to hang in the gable end of the room.  I made scale cut-outs of the windows we had in inventory and tried them.  The only one that I felt worked, was a big 3 window unit that will work in the South wall. The others in our inventory were all singles and we really needed sets to take advantage of our views.

 

 

The other two walls called for groups of windows: as much glass as possible.  The drawings gave me a good idea of the general sizes of windows we needed for the space. 

 

 

 I checked Craig's list, and there was a nice group of 3 that would fit the East wall perfect.  The price was $115 each.  They were new vinyl and with interior grills.  Seemed a little high for Craig's list, so I checked Menards for comparison.  As it turned out, Menards had a similar window (no grill, which better matched my other windows) on clearance for $89.  I went for the ones at Menards.  That way I knew I could match the brand and style for the remaining windows in the SE (diagonal) wall (even if I had to pay full price).

OK, so now I have a plan.  I can start putting up walls as soon as I have the time and the weather doesn't scare me off.





 





Adding Onto Our Little Apartment

Back in August or September Jan said to me, "I've been thinking.  I know we won't be building our house any time soon.  If we added a room out the back, we could have a real kitchen, get our furniture out of storage (saving $100 a month) and actually have room to have visitors.  How much trouble and expense would that be?" 

I wanted to keep the foot print within the East end wall and the laundry room window on the building side and inside the stone retaining wall on the outside.  That could make it 16 by 19.  I figured a way to build it fast with sips (structural insulated panels) for the walls and roof.  The whole thing with appliances and all could be done for $10,000, I thought.  We told Jason to get us on his schedule to pour the slab.  I set stakes and pulled strings to see exactly what it would look like.  Jan and I got around to actually standing in the space and looking to see how our furniture would fit shortly before Jason was ready to start.  It would not. We quickly realized that the space was just too small to do what we wanted.  So, the project was off.  We would save the money and be happy in our little space.

I was really disappointed that it wasn't going to happen.  The only way the space could be expanded was to the East, past the side of the shop building.  That would put the outside door around the corner facing North;  actually a better thing. And the South East corner would be cut off to fit inside the stone wall.   The foot print would be 16 by 26.  The old plan, using sips, pushed the limit of structural support for the roof, so I did a quick analysis of the costs to build the new plan with conventional framing.  I found out the material cost would be substantial less, although the labor would be much more.  The thing is, I work cheap (for Jan).  I think I can still build the new, bigger plan for the same money.  It will just take longer to build and finish.  It's back on!

 

The floor plan will essentially stay the same except extended to the east.  The kitchen cabinets will line the west wall with an island.

In the 2 weeks around Thanksgiving, Jason and his guys excavated the site, laid a block foundation wall and poured a slab.  I was gone for most of the fun, having been working in Minnesota, then Thanksgiving with my siblings in Bristol, IL, and then to the USEA convention in Texas (all in those 2 weeks).  I did have a couple of days at home in there where I connected the sewer pipe for the new kitchen to the existing main sewer line.  I also got a start on foundation drainage and insulation.  For that, I am installing 2 inch closed cell foam (with borax in the foam to repel pests) on the outside of the block foundation.  This will be covered with cement board to protect it.

 



With the foundation insulated and backfilled, the next step will be to frame the walls and roof.  We know that the kitchen cabinets will run along the West wall and that the center window from the existing wall (that will be removed and the space become the doorway into the new addition) will be installed in the new West wall over the sink.  The window configuration of the other walls is still to be determined.  We have several windows (that we collected and moved from Virginia) that we may use, but we will need a few more.  So, the very next step will be to decide how we want the windows to work in the new space and acquire the ones that we still need.