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Home Addition Design
Home Exterior After
Home Exterior Before
I worked on designing this addition to my own home with William B Tucker Architects (www.tuckerarchitects.com). The addition doubled our living space. I wanted the addition to be seamless on the front of our home. I had researched many old farmhouse designs and showed pictures of my desired effect to Mr. Tucker. We were able to achieve the "farmhouse" look by adding the peek and bumping out the front.
Kitchen Before
The kitchen was extended 2 feet into the new addition to add to the length and also 2 feet into the existing dining room to add to the width. This allowed more room for cabinetry and also blended the "old" space with the new addition. I chose all new cabinets and hardware. I researched counter top materials and decided on soapstone. To my excitement I found that it is mined right here in Virginia. So I took a drive just outside of Charlottesville and choose my slab. I think they turned out beautifully! Another big change that I made was to give myself 3 windows behind the sink instead of one small one to take advantage of the sunlight that we get in the back of our house. You'll notice the black antique hutch in both pictures. It was very important to me that we keep that piece in the kitchen so we left the wall space open in the new kitchen design.
Kitchen After
The kitchen was extended into the existing dining room. There was no basement on the original house but we added one below the addition so we needed to find a place for the stairs down to it. The architect had planned a traditional basement entrance where you have a walled in space with a door to the basement stairs. I realized that that would leave us with a narrow dark hallway to our new family room. I had him change it to an open stairwell since the basement was going to be finished. You can see where our old house ended at the cased opening looking into our family room. I also had the architect further open the space by removing part of the wall that enclosed our stairs to the 2nd floor. The picture on the right shows the view from our foyer. It would have been much more closed off it the basement stairs had been walled off. I created a new dining area off the kitchen as you can see in the picture above on the left.
I am very good at making spaces livable and workable, not to mention pleasing to the eye. I come up with solutions that others don't even think of.
Dining Room Before
Dining Room Before
New Space
View of foyer and basement stairway from family room addition.
(You can imagine what it would have looked like with floor to ceiling walls enclosing the basement stairs where the open railings are.)
The focal point of our addition is that fantastic fireplace. I knew I wanted the old farmhouse fireplace look. I couldn't afford real stone and didn't want to go with anything that looked fake so I visited several local faux stone shops but nothing was appealing to me. I then researched online and found this type of stone. I worked with a representative from the company who guided me to the two stone choices that we mixed to achieve this look. I then found a contractor in Manassas who installed this brand of faux stone. But when the contractor mixed the grout, it was all wrong. It was a brownish/redish dark color. I asked him to stop immediately and once again searched until I found the correct color grout to give the authentic look to the fireplace. I also had to do a lot of searching to find a prefab fireplace that would allow for this look and have a big enough opening. I am very pleased with how it turned out. You'll notice the reclaimed beam that was used for the mantel. I traveled to Richmond VA to pick that out.
As you can tell I enjoy "the hunt" and will work just as hard for you to get the "look" you love!
New Family Room
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