Kelly and Michelle Kennedy had been in their Flagpole Hill area home for six years when they decided it was time for a major renovation. Their first child had arrived and the second would not be far behind. In addition, they were ready for a larger space for entertaining, since both their families live in the area. Kelly worked closely with the architect and came up with some ideas that were eventually incorporated into the second floor addition. And Michelle, in her own words, “came up with the most important change – expanding out onto the patio.”
The patio expansion added to the square footage of the dining and living areas, and the new windows added focus to the picturesque backyard and pool area. The project was somewhat unique because the house had been through a major remodeling right before the young couple moved in.
“When we bought the house, it had been pretty much redone because the owner was allergic to everything,” Michelle says. “The house has all new sheet rock now, because she was very allergic to lead paint. They had to take all the ceilings, sheet rock, everything out of the house – it was basically gutted about 10 years ago. They installed ceramic tile in the entire house. They spent a year remodeling and then they got transferred.”
Michelle liked the ceramic tile but wanted to break up the monotony. They replaced a large portion of the downstairs tile with hardwoods. “When they pulled the tiles out of the den they were careful, so we could recycle it upstairs and in the laundry room,” Kelly says.
Part of the renovation was unplanned. “During the first two weeks of the renovation, the contractors tore off the whole back of the house,” Kelly explains. “Then we had a huge storm and the whole ceiling came straight down into the garage. They had to redo the whole garage. I added the cabinetry and the storage closet. We tried to maximize all the space we had for storage.”
As for the originally planned addition – the second story – it turns out the family is not using it much yet.
“We have plans to someday make the upstairs bedroom another master, so we wanted a bathroom up there,” Michelle says somewhat hopefully. “But until the kids are old enough for us to be that far away from them…right now they still get up in the middle of the night. We put in two closets for if we ever do move upstairs.”
