Monday, February 5, 2018

Lake House Second Floor

The New Family House on the Lake is all boxed out. You can see the floor area of the new screened porch and how the new pantry area has been rebuilt. Neither of these new spaces are hugely different size-wise compared to what was there, but they are better situated, oriented toward the lake breezes and views, and proportioned so as to add greatly to the function of the house as a seasonal family gathering place.


New Side Porch & Pantry connects Kitchen to Screen Porch
Framed out for new larger screened porch

In addition the second floor area, which was short and had no windows toward the lake, now does! Again, it's not a large change, and no increase in floor area, but will make a big difference in how space feels and functions. Instead of the ceiling sloping down to a short wall (behind bunk beds in BEFORE photo below) now the flat ceiling continues those extra couple feet and operable windows were inserted in that new vertical wall section. The windows couldn't be large, because of the roofs below, but still this small add should really increase the comfort of sleeping in those bunk rooms, now that evening breezes off the lake can be brought inside to help cool the space. Not to mention - of course one wants to see the beautiful lake while one is at the lake house!

Second floor windows on the lake side!

Second Floor sleeping space BEFORE
sloped ceiling and only windows toward street and sides, not lake
Just a little more light and air and space upstairs

Upstairs: Flat ceiling extends to back wall and windows look toward lake
The new screened porch will be larger and not so narrow as the old one. Since the old screened porch's roof was integral with the main roof of the house, renovating the screened porch gave us the opportunity to add those windows upstairs. The new screened porch will have the direction of the roof changed so that it can have high ceilings and a tall, screened gable facing the lake. Cable railing will be used to meet the code for guard rail, while not obscuring the awesome view or open feeling.



Screened Porch - BEFORE
Low-ceiling & narrow and not connected to kitchen

BEFORE- small side porch (with no guard rail!)
Small pantry off back of kitchen
and no second floor windows toward lake


2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Hi Charles - yeah, the existing side porch (and screened porch too) had no guard rail. The new designs for this project took care of some of these safety issues as well as a fair amount of deferred maintenance.

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