Albemarle Reno

This extension was added to the back of our house in a 1959 renovation that moved the kitchen to the back stair hall, allowing the original kitchen area to be renovated into doctor’s exam rooms. The changes eliminated the back set of stairs to the second floor and basement in favor of room for cabinetry and appliances. The addition of the extension allowed for a more expansive kitchen area…

…and relocated interior access to the basement.

Evidence points to the extension being planned and executed rather hastily, with practical considerations trumping aesthetic sensibility and craftsmanship — note the pile-of-matchsticks strategy in shoring up the beams

and the funky layout and steep stairs to the backyard and basement

Intrepid Architect saw no use in keeping this extension as part of our plans to put the kitchen back in its original location and return stairs to the back stair hall. Removing square footage had not occurred to me as a renovation tactic, but having no affection for the extension, and lots of confusion about how to use it, Mr. Albe and I jumped at the chance to be rid of it.

Pure demo satisfaction would have to wait for Landmark’s approval and the subsequent DOB permit. But when we got our interior demo permit in December, Groovy Contractor’s crew scraped it down to the bones:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Additional shoring up was required when we discovered that original beams had been sawn through to accommodate kitchen plumbing pipes, but hadn’t been replaced or re-secured in any way.

The DOB permit was issued on June 3rd — here’s how things looked on June 4th

Isaac and company seemed as eager as we were to see that extension gone gone gone. The manual labor involved was intense on some very hot days — not the razed-by-a-bulldozer-in-20-minutes scenario I pictured in my head. Lots of sledgehammers and crowbars — but the work progressed quickly and pretty soon the extension had disappeared entirely.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Then the massive 3-day effort of installing the beam to make way for our bay window began — finished results below

Here’s that pretty beam from the inside

All this progress was great cause for celebration in and of itself — but another benefit of taking down the extension was that we got a really nice look at the cedar clapboards and shingles underneath that *$@!-ing aluminum siding

Though credit must be paid to the siding for keeping the clapboards and shingles in good shape overall.

The one keeper from the extension is that sweet green sconce hanging on the right:

which we plan to hang in our mudroom. I had it re-wired and tidied up by the folks at the Lamp Doctor (much more detailed post on them soon).

A couple weeks ago I happened to see a pair of similar ones at Olde Good Things when I was browsing

then I got a load of the price tag.

I know, I know, Olde Good Things is waaay overpriced, playing into the country-starved psyches of transplants like me — and yes to have a pair of fixtures helps to justify the price tag, but it still made me gasp — like I found a silk purse tacked on to that sows ear.