This Victorian home renovation began with understanding why the additions never quite belonged. An 1889 Victorian home in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood had everything going for it — ten-foot ceilings, intact millwork, and a layout that still largely made...
Historic home renovation in Denver · Kitchen design There's a moment in every renovation when the room stops being a project and starts being a place. In this kitchen it happened somewhere between the first morning I sat at the island with coffee — made with actual...
The Build: What It Actually Takes to Renovate a 1911 Kitchen There is a version of a kitchen renovation that exists in renderings — clean lines, finishes selected, everything in its place. And then there is the version that exists before that one, where the walls are...
Before anything gets built, there's a period where the room exists only on paper — and the job is to find the layout that stops arguing with itself. For this kitchen, that took five iterations before I got to two concepts worth presenting. A room with three bay...
Every contractor who walked through said the same thing. They were all wrong. The first question every contractor asked when they walked through the home was the same: “How about we just put the kitchen where the old kitchen was?” Every time, my answer was no. The...
If you’ve spent any time researching what to do with an older home, you’ve probably seen these words used interchangeably: preservation, restoration, renovation, rehabilitation. They’re not the same thing. The approach you choose shapes every decision that follows —...
A small Victorian bathroom renovation is rarely about square footage. It's about what you keep. This is the bathroom I’d put in my own home. I’ve said that out loud more than once since this project wrapped, and I mean it. Not because it’s the most dramatic renovation...
This is part 2, of this Historic Church Hill, Richmond, Va project build, check out part 1 here. Now that the fence, and two custom structures are in place, the grading of the site can continue and the hardscaping can start! As the property is on a small slope I...
Here is the Before! This is a typical Church Hill, Richmond,VA, Back Yard. Twenty Eight feet wide by 150 feet long, which includes the footprint of the home!! Right after you walk out the back door, you couldn't walk directly out the back door, you had to walk down...
When a Contractor Says It Can't Be Done: How to Hold Them Accountable on a Historic Home Renovation Historic home renovation in Denver · Design process Over the past twenty years I've worked with hundreds of contractors — on residential and commercial projects,...