Whole Home Remodel: Inside & Out
An utterly unique whole house remodel - inside and out - in Huntington, Vermont.
Tearing this old farmhouse down and starting over again wasn't an option, so we had to get creative. The solution? Build a new house around the old one!
Half of the old structure was 2" thick board without insulation. Some of the walls only had magazine pages under the shingles for insulation! The entire house sat on rocks, so the owners arranged to have the building jacked up and built a new foundation underneath. Then we got to work.
We gutted the inside and took out a lot of material. We tore out the old porch. We removed the exterior siding material where needed and then basically framed a whole new house around the old one. We installed a completely new roof beam over the existing one and put in new rafters, raising the elevation of the roof and allowing for a dormer in the back for more head height in the bedrooms.
The existing structure was wrapped in new framing, and we filled the space in between with cellulose for insulation. As a result the windows and doors have deep sills & jambs. We added new traditional board siding, new trim, and a new standing seam roof. A new porch completed the exterior. We put a lot of time and effort into the trim details, especially the corners, to make the new exterior look as much as possible like the old exterior would have when it was first built.
We renovated the interior too - taking out old walls and putting up new drywall. We preserved old beams and wood as much as possible to maintain as much of the old house character as possible. We installed new multi-species hardwood floors (cherry, oak and maple mixed together), milled from wood harvested from the owner's property. We built a second floor over the existing floor on the second story for insulation and soundproofing, and preserved the exposed beams for the first floor ceilings.
There were a lot of logistical challenges on this project - getting a level line for the roof beams was a challenge! But we love a challenge, and this project delivered.
