South elevation

Here is how the side of our house should look following our upgrade (click image to enlarge):

1. Overhang over the front door.

2. A set of windows now obscured by a permanently lowered shade will be removed to make way for storage, art or both. The current view is under the neighbor’s deck. Not a pretty sight, I assure you.

3. Dormer.

4. Window for the great room (click image for an inside view, see #10).

5. Although the roof appears flat, this is just a modern façade. The real roof has a pitch appropriate for New Jersey weather.

6. The four-season porch.

7. An overhang will provide sun protection, reducing our dependence on air conditioning.

8. The main deck.

9. The hot tub room.

10. Flex space that can be used for a library or simply to party (click image for an inside view, see #4).

11. The homegrown masonry steps are great for chipmunks, but a bit random for human footfalls. The rise and run will become uniform.

West elevation

Our house has little curb appeal. What did we expect? We live below the curb (click image)!

We’re actually cool with keeping our home somewhat anonymous, hence the new design doesn’t go crazy in terms of a fanciful front façade. Here are highlights (click image above to enlarge):

1. This “blank” space indicates where we descend to the front door. During the home inspection, a self-satisfied Captain Stupid exclaimed: “I used more concrete than the Hoover Dam!” The inspector rolled his eyes. As for us, his paving of paradise means we get to spend extra money to increase our permeable surfaces, but that is another discussion for a future blog.

2. We’re moving the front door to the left to provide a better view of the lake upon entry (click image for an inside view).

3. Shelter over the front door.

4. Dormer over the bathroom will also help with curb appeal.

5. Existing window for guest bedroom remains.

6. New window in bathroom (which the firm seems pretty insistant on, although I'm not sure it makes sense).

7. Replacement window for the kitchen. To close the current window, my husband needs to go outside and apply brute force. Captain Stupid asks: “Level and plumb? What does that have to do with installing windows?”

North elevation

Unless you are the oil delivery guy or our maintenance-phobic neighbors, this is the least important view of the house (click on image to enlarge). We just use this side to access the only remaining working outdoor faucet, as the cold winter burst the ones on the deck and in the back. (Captain Stupid* says: “Insulating exterior waterpipes is over-rated.”)

Here is a quick rundown of what this image represents:

1. The terraced garden, which we’ve now filled with bamboo and a few other plants. We’d tried making this a vegetable garden; it ended up being a salad bar for deer. Not the best use of our money or time. (It only took us seven years to learn this lesson.)

2. An overhang will protect us while we enter the front door.

3. This new dormer provides some curb appeal and sunlight for the upstairs bathroom (click image, also #3).

4. Existing guest bedroom; used as my husband’s dressing room.

5. New downstairs bathroom (click image, also #5), which retains an existing window.

6. New guest bedroom.

7. Slope of the hill from lower level to upper level.

8. Main deck.

9. Master deck, with much-needed visual protection from the neighbors. (They probably feel the same way about us.)

10. Chimney. The house remains at its original height.

* Captain Stupid is our nick-name for the previous owner of this house, a do-it-yourself wronger.

Upper level layout

As I sit baking in the solar heat on a cool spring morning, I console myself: we’ll soon jettison Captain Stupid’s 20 skylights as part of transforming this leaky lake house into a modern dream home. In fact, since moving in on June 30, 2000, we’ve been undoing a lot of what the previous owner, a do-it-yourself-wronger, wrought upon this poor domicile.

Now that we have approved the floor plans (click on image to enlarge), there should be less glare in our future. Here’s a quick tour:

1. The front door is moved to the right so instead of a view down the stairs, you get a sweep of the great room and out to the lake.

2. As part of our “don’t fix what isn’t broken” philosophy, we plan to leave the kitchen largely “as is.”

3. Bathroom gets a window and an appropriately-sized soaking tub.

4. Guest bedroom remains unchanged.

5. I get a bigger walk-in closet. (I may even share it with my husband.)

6. Master bedroom becomes a tad larger as we bump the house out towards the lake.

7. We’re adding a door to the deck from the bedroom.

8. Main section of the deck sits upon the lower level, rather than on rotting posts.

9. Two steps up into the four-season porch.

10. Great room should now have plenty of room for dinner guests and an L-shaped couch.

Even though we had to scale back our plans in order to afford the project, we believe this new design will meet our needs. What do you think?

Lower level layout

Taking laundry down the steep steps this morning, I smiled thinking about the plans we’d recently approved (click image to enlarge). In the future, I would be schlepping under improved conditions (1).

What will change? The first step is 10 inches down, the rest are seven inches. Now I take 12 steps, turn left, turn left and then turn right into the mechanical room (2, which remains unchanged). The new landing (3) over the flex space / library party / room (4) should make this particular chore less treacherous.

This approach to the lower level was a cost-saving move—no longer will the stairs wrap around the fireplace (click image); instead they’ll stay in the same place but become wider (more than 31 inches; the laundry basket is 25 inches wide) and safer (every step will have the same rise and run).

In a room that the real estate agent called a third bedroom but is barely good enough for storage, we’ll finally get our second a bathroom (5). A friend had done this drawing for us ages ago, but we couldn’t find a plumber willing to take on the job because of the mysteries contained within the walls.

In new space we’ll have an actual third bedroom (6). To the left is a mud area (7) to complete the transition in from the back yard, which begins with steps ideal for hanging out (8).

Cost-cutting put the ax to our swimming pool. But we’ll still get a luxury water feature: a custom hot tub (9) in a room that can open completely to the back yard (10), with the continuation of the hanging-out steps leading to a patio (11).

Instead of cold, dreary space staged to look like a room but used only as a hallway to the back yard, we’ll have usable space to play. Want to party with us?

This is not modern art

This (right) is a support post for our deck.

We were on the deck in the Saturday morning sun, me in my trademark Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightie, waving our arms around trying to make sense of the latest exterior elevation drawings.

Then an über poppy tune came on my husband’s well-stocked iPod®, Annie’s song “Me plus one,” so I began shaking my groove thang. He panicked, worried my wild gyrations would cause the rotting deck to finally collapse. He advised me to make a mad dash to through the screen door if I felt the platform pull away. So I took it down a few dozen notches to “white man’s overbite.”

Crisis averted—at least for now—we went back to contemplating the drawings. What do we tell the firm? How about, “If you were trying to create the ugliest dormer in the history of architecture: congratulations! You’ve succeeded!” I laughed, wondering whether his e-mail would indeed say this. The pop-out proposed for the front of the house was indeed a monstrosity.

The new drawings also featured flat roofs, which we interpreted as snow and leaf collections systems sure to eventually provide us with new indoor water damage. What good is a flat roof if you cannot walk around on it with a beer in your hand?

The floor plans, however, were now perfect. Exactly what we needed and wanted. So that, at least, was progress.