If you’ve been thinking all year about changes that you want to make to your home, these wandering thoughts can all come to boil at the holidays. This is the time of year when we often do more than the usual hosting, cooking, cleaning, and celebrating. It’s also the time of year, especially here in […]
This is part of a longer story about doing a master suite addition project on my own home. I’ll add more posts as the project takes shape but you can start here to learn more about the remodel. A little story about cesspools One of the surprises when I got to permitting my project was the […]
If you haven’t read Part 1 in “Evolution of a Remodel” you may want to do so. In this Part 2, I want to show how we changed our design to get to a price we needed that fit our overall goals for this house and for our lives. PRICING I solicited bids from […]
In this two-parter, I’m going to talk about my own home project, how it evolved, and all the things that came into play to inform the process including finances, budget, life goals, pessimism, blind faith, and occasionally luck. TRADE UP OR REMODEL? Like many (most… maybe all?) of you, I’ve been dreaming of remodeling/fixing/adding on […]
Mother-in-law cottage, guest house, rentable space – I talk frequently with local homeowners about whether creating an ADU is feasible for them. ADU is the acronym for Accessory Dwelling Unit. This can take the form of a small house on your property, a converted attic, or a finished basement which can serve as a stand-alone housing unit. Typically, […]
How do you decide between a remodel, an addition, or just buying a bigger house? A local magazine, All Things Real Estate asked me that question, and I guess they liked my answer enough to publish it! Stumped about how to move forward with a remodel or renovation? Not sure how to get on the same […]
I initially contacted Amanda to take a look at our unfinished attic space. We were struggling to make the layout in our 1910 farmhouse-style home work with our growing family. As we stood in the raw space, examining the rafter layout and roof structure, she outlined some of the issues and limitations of converting the […]
My husband and I and our two daughters just moved into a classic Portland cottage that had been renovated to add a full second floor. I loved all the space on the new second level but I had a feeling that the original first floor layout could be improved. I had an idea about removing a […]
I have a compact Portland bungalow with a converted attic, and I want more space. My idea was a dormer. Amanda walked me through how that kind of addition would work, what the specific code issues are, and what the pros and cons were in adding on to my home in this way. We also […]
As our family was growing, we needed to find more space. We loved our 1920’s home, our neighbors and neighborhood, the school, everything! We did not want to move. So we looked to our basement. We wanted space for these things: second bathroom, home office, laundry and family room. Amanda did a consultation and recommended a […]