DIY Home Additions - Part 3

The entrance to the "Forever Home" was probably one of my biggest hates of the house when we purchased it. Imagine walking into the house with no where to place your shoes or coat and walk straight into the kitchen. As well the stairs to the basement were immediately to the left of the door.

There was no grand feature because at that time the focus was on the front of the house which had a 1/2 wrap porch and sliding doors that allowed you a beautiful view of the front yard.

This had to change. We knew right away that an addition would have to be done to create a more welcoming entrance and more space for important storage areas such as a bench with coat hangers, proper closet, powder room, a place to move the stairs, and storage for fire wood.

Here is how the entrance looked when we purchased the "Forever Home"

The main entrance is that door on the side of the house. 

This is the view once you enter the door, to the very right of the picture you can see the door handle of the door to outside. The other door is the powder room and right across the powder room are the stairs. 

As explained above imagine walking in kitchen, dining room, powder room, stairs all in reach of each other.

Basically a home owners nightmare. 

When we were designing the main entrance addition we went through many different layouts.

First we had no plans to move the stairs and the room was only going to be around 200 sq ft. The door would have been removed but not enlarged.

Second layout we decided to enlarge the space so that it did not look off set to the master bedroom addition, so we created a larger 420 sq. ft area but because the master bedroom was going to be 560 sq ft. we decided on a 6 ft over hang to equalize the roof line. Still no plan to move the stairs.

Third, once we realized how much room we had the decision to move the stairs was easy. We spoke with the engineer in how we could break a portion of the wall in the basement and support the upper wall with an extra beam. When pouring the cement for the entrance addition we also added a stair shaft.

The fourth and final layout was that we decided to double the open door space between the the addition and the new house. Again, we consulted with engineer and he advised which extra support would be needed to tear down an extra portion of the wall and create more of an opening.

With the fourth layout we have now moved the stairs completely out of view when you enter. The powder room will no longer be beside the kitchen. Tons of storage space. We also decided to remove the upper glass on the peak of the entrance and leave that all open to the  new entrance.

Over the weekend we finished supporting the over hang by putting up the remaining rafters on the peak (just Branko and I did this) I might have cried a little holding the ladder that Branko was standing on. The remaining plywood was also put up to finally close the entire space.

Here is a view of how it currently stands:

I cannot wait for this room to be fully closed in. The stairs will not be moved for at least another month but having the plywood up really gives us a nice feel for the size of this room!

Have you built anything this weekend? Any tips for us on that over hang? We are still deciding if we want pillars and what sort of porch we will build here.

Hope everybody had a great weekend!