Glass Rear Facade
I’m fantasizing about smashing down the back facade on the garden level of our house, and replacing it with a wall of glass, something like the wall in this photo, which I think is stunning. (It’s a house in Ft Greene, design by In Situ, featured in the NY Times a few years ago.) I’d…
I’m fantasizing about smashing down the back facade on the garden level of our house, and replacing it with a wall of glass, something like the wall in this photo, which I think is stunning. (It’s a house in Ft Greene, design by In Situ, featured in the NY Times a few years ago.) I’d also like to take down some of the walls to open up the space a bit, and replace our kitchen, which dates from the Nixon administration.
I’ve no clue what something like that might cost–any ball park ideas? I’ve thought about calling up the architects on the Ft Greene house to discuss it, but don’t want to trouble them if the project is too expensive for us to undertake.
Before you do anything talk to a professional engineer like Andrew at 347-787-3338
Good Luck
Just be aware also of the impact on heating/cooling of having a huge wall made of glass. We have this in California and it’s boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter.
Thanks so much for those specific figures, mtarch. Very helpful. Good luck with your project–sounds great. (Scary about the facade held up with dust, though…)
Just finishing this on a reno on Washington Park in Ft. Greene. (2) 8’x8′ panels, one sliding and one fixed were +/- 20K. The problem with this particular house was that that when we went to needle the shoring through the existing wall, it became evident that the back wall was being held together by dust so it needed to be completely rebuilt, all 4 floors which was expensive and invasive. If this was not required I would guess that the demo, brick patch, new steel lintels would be another 20-30K. Then any interior work that you wanted to do would be additional and you should use at least 200/sqft for that work. More if you are talking about kitchens and bathrooms.
good luck.
Aren’t lots of bugs going to fly in?
Thanks for all your thoughts. I am going to investigate this further…
Minard – Architects aren’t weighing on on costs because it’s such an open ended question. The cost can be tripled just from window selection.
One of our clients came to us asking for this very thing, but once we got further in the design process, he didn’t just want one floor but a two storys of glass – and it essentially became a 4 story curtain wall. To do so we ended up shoring three existing brick walls and building an entire new interior steel structure from within, for the entire house.
What allrenovation is showing is much simpler since it looks like he he’s just using off-the-shelf sliders side-by-side – which can be done very affordably. We used 8 pairs of Lowen sliders to create our least expensive project (16 Doors), built for $225 a sq ft.
Drew Stuart
Incorporated Architecture & Design
http://www.incorporatedny.com/
Jim Hill (an architect seen on this board from time to time) and Ron Baker (a contractor) did one in PLG recently that is drop dead gorgeous. They did it as part of a major reno that is also drop dead gorgeous. I would seek them out on this topic.
i have a lower level floor that half the back wall is a sliding door/window combination that leads directly to the yard, and it doesn’t leak. i really don’t think of it as different from a regular window.