Our adventure in home renovation is drawing to an end. The post below is the first of several that will bring closure to the WolfeStreetProject.

This post addresses the end result of renovation on the first floor – subsequent posts will address the second floor and basement (such as it is). We reblogged the “Pinnacle of Destruction” post to provide some context to the scope of the project; the “Destruction” post pretty much applied to all floors, and shows the house at the apex of demolition. Other, relevant, first-floor demolition posts:

• Kitchen demo
• Dining room demo
• Living room demo

Before demolition actually began, we had developed a plan with our architect for transforming the first floor space. The floor plans for the before (bottom) and after (top) designs for the first floor are presented below.

Additional details on our design goals for the space were posted earlier:

• First floor design
• Kitchen design

Although we had plenty of unforeseen issues and a few design changes along the way, the trauma and stress of the WolfeStreetProject definitely paid dividends – our design goals and functional living space aspirations, remarkably, were all met. Presented below, with minimal commentary, are before and after pictures of the first floor to provide a view of the final product (albeit without art on the walls, which will become another project . . .).

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

(And even more after, after a few years of living in this space):

Before:

After:

One of the things you’ll notice is the tremendous increase in ambient light in the house after the renovation. This is the combined effect of the open floor plan and, at the front of the house, the removal of the linen closet on the second floor to blow open the stair well and allow more light to flow from the new, full-length skylight.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

We only had a few pictures of the kitchen before (other than party pictures, which are included in one of the earlier posts reference above), so there’s not a great alignment with the before and after pics in this area (plus, the space for part of the kitchen didn’t even exist before the renovation . . .).

The kitchen after the renovation:

Before:

After:

The new vestibule and much-appreciated coat closet:

New landing at the bottom of the original staircase (the only element of the original house retained during renovation):

A view of the split, five-panel powder room door from the top of the basement stairs is below.

Resting on the radiator are a couple of signed plinth blocks. Dave, our Master Carpenter and site foreman throughout the project, and Freddie, Dave’s primary carpenter during the project, signed the blocks for us one day when they were addressing some punch list items:

Dave and Freddie did great work, and the WolfeStreetProject would not have been a success without their skill and craftsmanship. The finish carpentry work and overall fit and finish of the entire place is flawless because of these guys.

Aside from the changes in the overall appearance of the space, there are a multitude of infrastructure improvements that were able to be implemented by taking the whole space down to the bones. These include under-floor hydronic heat on the first floor, updated plumbing, electrical, and mechanical, and integrated AV to eliminate all exposed elements from view, other than the TV. (As you’ll note in a few of the dining peninsula pics above, a black metal grill that we had fabricated worked perfectly in the space under the massive slab o’ quartz to hide the subwoofer.)