The original house was built in 1958. Like many houses in the North Table Mesa neighborhood, it was a standard 1-story ranch with a basement. For the most part it had good bones: 8” concrete foundation walls, and wood framed walls with brick veneer. The house did have significant structural issues at the south garage wall, however, and fixing it had to be part of the project. As always, our goal is to minimize a property’s shortcomings and accentuate its virtues.

The homeowners’ goals were:

• Make a bright, open, functional home.
• Provide a primary suite.
• Update everything.

Much of the home was original equipment and it needed a lot of love. Our big picture solution was to build a modest addition onto the back of the house for the primary bedroom plus expand the garage and build on top of it to expand the living area.

Rather than repair the crumbling section of concrete wall, we concluded it would be better to completely demolish the south concrete garage wall completely. This allowed us to widen the garage and extend it forward to give the homeowners much needed extra garage space.

Building on top of the expanded garage meant a new roof structure. We decided to keep the current simple gable shape of the home but rebuilt more than half of the main level roof framing to allow for a fully vaulted space. We added large clerestory windows along the new south gable wall to bring in lots of natural light. To open up the main level we removed all the walls around the central stairwell and built open railings to maximize site lines.

In the spirit of using square footage smartly, the rear primary suite addition was just big enough for the new bedroom. We repurposed one of the existing bedrooms into a bathroom and a closet to create a complete primary suite.

Another interesting component to this house is how we approached heating, cooling, and domestic hot water. We eliminated the need for natural gas by installing a geothermal system. This system uses liquid pumped through a series of pipes drilled many hundreds of feet into the ground. The constant temperature of this liquid can then be used to both heat the home in the winter and cool it in the summer. You can read our blog about how to take your home off of natural gas.

A fun and functional detail we built was a reading nook window seat area. Giving intentionality to small areas provides lots of character and helps dictate how to use space efficiently.

Another satisfying component to the project was to build a new front porch and front approach. Due to the steep slope of the lot, you have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the front door. The previous exterior doors were steep, narrow, and rickety. We employed tricks to lessen the feel of having to climb all of those steps. The first trick was to drop the height of the front porch floor. While this does create steps to get into the house, it lessens how many steps you must navigate to get to the covered respite of the porch. We also provided a landing halfway up the stairs and made them very wide with a stout metal handrail that will stand the test of time. Utilitarian? Yes. Beautiful? Indeed.

In conclusion, this project represents everything I love about our work; it had it all. It was a complete remodel overhaul but used as much of the existing house as possible. We vastly increased the home’s functionality. We installed super smart systems, replaced things that had to be replaced, and made it stylish and cool all the while. I have to mention the family was truly lovely and super fun to work with, which topped off an ideal project scenario.