Building the Entrance Hall The new entrance hall will serve to connect the original 1958 Techbuilt home with the addition is a fun, funky, and fascinating design. (The existing front entrance to the original house will go away). The inverted roof is held up by steel posts and a steel beam, On top of the beam […]
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Installing Windows in the Snow This week the team is installing energy-efficient windows and doors from Pella into the new addition. Considering the cold and snowy weather and how drafty the original 1950s windows are in our existing home, we’re thrilled to have these windows go in. In phase two of our project some time
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Ready for Winter Weather The team at Patriot Custom Homes has made excellent progress over the past three weeks. They worked really hard to get the addition ready for the inevitable Boston area snow. Just a day before 3 inches of snow fell, all new roof areas had Ice and Water shield applied and all
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Exterior Color Palate Our builder asked us what color we wanted for the exterior trim on the windows. It seemed like a simple request and he needed an answer within about a week. Just the window trim color, right? Wrong. That single decision effects everything on the exterior, so rather than just selecting the windows,
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Three Car Garage with No Posts As we were watching the framing of the new part of the house, we were thrilled to discover that the enormous three-car garage was being built without the requirement to have support posts. We found this to be remarkable since there is an entire second story to be built
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Porta-Potties and our Renovation Budget When our renovation and addition plans were nearly completed by our architect Joe Welch, we started a series of meetings with our builder, Dylan James to discuss the construction budget. We had an overall number that we were willing to spend but the first rough-guess budget came in substantially higher.
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With Foundation Work, Progress Happens Quickly After more than a year of planning, we were certainly eager to get going with our renovation and addition project. But we weren’t quite prepared for the swift progress that the first few weeks of construction brought. With the unusually warm late autumn and early winter weather this year,
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Rock Collecting As the excavation work for our addition was beginning (and how dramatic it was) I noticed a bunch of large rocks being dug up. I figured that these would be terrific materials to build a stone wall, so I asked the crew to please save the stones. At some point near the end
Demolishing the Shed One of the major challenges with TechBuilt homes is they have no basement and no attic. Combined with the small closets customary in the 1950s, there is way too little storage for a modern family! Many TechBuilt homeowners build sheds for storage. When we researched our shed we learned that it was
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Tree Work We regret having to take some trees where the addition to our home will be located. When we consulted with John Marquis of Marquis Tree Service we made it clear that we wanted to save any tree that was not absolutely required to be taken. Once the project is complete, we will plant