A Mortar-fying Experience

It's been a few weeks since our last post and we have been quiet on the blog because we have been working through our first real issue of the renovation (😱).  

Part of the renovation includes taking out the back wall on the first floor to create a wall of windows and an exit out to the garden from our kitchen. To do that, masons had to put up steel beams to hold the weight of the house and knock out the bricks underneath. The beam went in and the next day,  the plaster (read:wall) on the second and third floors had shifted (read: slumped). When we pulled the plaster off, it became clear the bricks were held together by pretty much nothing.  Over the past 130+ years, the mortar holding the bricks together had basically turned into sand, leaving the bricks completely loose in the wall. 

We immediately called in our structural engineer who assured us that we did not need to entirely replace the wall, we just needed to re-point it with new mortar. Our contractor got that process underway immediately and voila, we have newly mortared walls! We are still looking into whether we need to do the front wall to (please, no), but we are hopeful this is the first and last costly issue of the renovation.  🙏

In other news, we officially have a hole in our kitchen where the windows will eventually be! For now, here is a picture of the hole covered over - isn't it beautiful? It gives the back of our house a wonderful cave-like quality. 

House of Glass

Time for an update on the master suite. As a refresher, we landed on a design that re-figured the top floor to make it more of a suite.  While it keeps a second small bedroom, the third floor will be built around the master bedroom, including expanding the master bed and building out a closet and bathroom. So where there used to be a bathroom and hallway, there will now be a large walk-through closet, with a study or nursery and master bath in the rear of the house. See below: 

The plan calls for walling off the currently open stairwell/hallway so that you come up the stairs and through a doorway into the suite. We are super excited about the design, but in thinking more about it we didn't like the idea of losing the sightline into the stairwell and losing the light that filters from the central skylight.

While preparing our interior elevations, Hill & Hurtt proposed an awesome solution to this dilemma - a glass wall. The bottom half would be an actual wall to keep the third floor visually separate from people coming up the stairs (it will be our closet, we need to have some privacy) but the top half of the wall will be glass.

I really like the idea because, while we are closing the space off, it will stay true to the original design of the house by creating a feeling of openness to the central stairwell without the danger factor (the railings are not to code by about 8 inches and it is a long way down).

What do you guys think? Do you love it or hate it? We are still exploring what the ultimate wall will look like (and if we can afford it - fingers crossed!!!) but I've included some images we have found from Pinterest below. Enjoy!

We Have Architects!

Once we purchased our house the magnitude of the renovation quickly became clear. This is no DIY project -- we needed professional help.

In addition to getting help to think through the design and layout of the home, we want to make sure we are true to the history of the house. While we like modern design, this house calls for a marriage between traditional and contemporary (putting a glass staircase in the center of this house would be a travesty). We aren't planning on entirely stripping out the interior, but we need help thinking through how to make the space feel more modern, while also acknowledging its Victorian-ness.

With that in mind, we talked to a few architects and ultimately hired Hill & Hurtt, a young, local firm that focuses on renovating rowhomes. We met with Eric and Josh for a few hours in February to discuss the project and immediately felt like they understood our vision and priorities. 

Hill & Hurtt provide an array of architectural services that help drive renovations from concept through permitting and then beyond permitting by helping with interior finishing choices and project management. For now we have engaged them to help us through the permitting stage and we could not be more excited to work with them. 

Last week, we kicked off the design process when Eric and Josh came over to measure the house from top to bottom. They spent about 4 hours at the house - Josh with a measuring tape and Eric sketching the house and capturing all the information with a red pen.

While we wanted to leave them to their work, it was hard not to listen to them discuss the house and its quirks. Needless to say, even this initial step has us excited. It was so cool to see our house's floor plan captured on paper and to have some of our questions answered, like, how tall are our ceilings? (11.5 feet!)

In a few weeks, Hill & Hurtt will come back to us with concept drawings for each floor that show options for how we could re-design the home. Check back here for updates ;P - J & K