Reimagined Construction
Design-build renovation
Houston Heights
Original footprint kept, everything inside it rebuilt, and a rear addition that had been carried on almost nothing put right.
Property
Single-family bungalow
Age
Built 1924
On site
Eleven months
Size
2,400 sq ft after works
A Craftsman bungalow inside the Heights historic district, largely original at the front and comprehensively altered at the back. The 1970s rear addition had been built on a slab poured directly against the original pier-and-beam structure, with no separation and no thought about how the two would move relative to each other. They had been moving apart for fifty years.
Inside, the original heart pine floors survived under three layers of covering. The electrical service was 60 amp with a mix of knob-and-tube and later runs spliced into it outside of boxes. Every window on the south elevation had failed at the sill.
Keep the street elevation exactly as it is — the district requires it and the owners wanted it.
Open the back half of the house without making it read as a different building from the front.
Get the systems into this century without disturbing the original fabric more than necessary.
Historic district review governs anything visible from the street, which ruled out changing the roofline at the front and constrained the window replacements to matching profiles.
The owners wanted an open rear, but the original structure carried its roof on the very walls that would have to come out. Removing them meant introducing a beam deep enough to span the width — and deep enough to be a problem for ceiling height in a house that never had much.
Separating the failed rear addition from the original structure without dropping either. We shored the original rear wall, removed the addition slab in sections, and underpinned before anything new went in.
The heart pine could not be lifted and relaid — it had been face-nailed at some point and would not have survived removal. Everything above it had to be worked around it, which meant protection stayed down for the full eleven months rather than the usual few weeks.
Flush beam set, before the ceiling was closed
A flush steel beam let the rear open fully while keeping the ceiling plane continuous, so the join between old and new is not announced by a drop.
The original front three rooms were restored rather than rebuilt: plaster repaired where it could be, windows rebuilt to the original profiles, floors sanded once and sealed.
New service, new mechanical, and a rebuilt pier-and-beam foundation under the whole footprint — done from below rather than by lifting the house.
Houston Heights
Restored heart pine flooring
Rebuilt sash windows to original profiles
Flush structural steel
Lime plaster repair at original walls
Structural engineer
Historic district consultant
They found the problem with the back of the house in the second week, told us what it would cost to fix properly, and that number did not move for eleven months.