The cramped and outdated kitchen was hemmed in on one side by a small dining room and walled off on the other by a three-season porch. The porch was a step down from the kitchen and uncomfortable for much of the year due to its lack of insulation and old jalousie windows.
All Projects Lexington, MA
A First Floor and So Much More
Bathrooms
Energy Efficiency
Interiors
Kitchens
Whole House
Perched on a hill above Wilson Farm, this Cape-style home has experienced several chapters in its 70+ year history. It started out as a single-family home before becoming a two-family with separate entrances and a second-floor kitchen. By the time our clients purchased it in the ’90s, the house was once again a single-family, with the second floor returned to bedrooms. After living there for 30 years, our clients were ready to optimize their first-floor living spaces and bring the house up to current performance standards.
Jump to GalleryBefore
After
The key to improving the functionality and livability of these rooms was to open them up and connect them to each other. We raised the ceiling plane and the floor height of the porch, bringing it up to the same level as the rest of the first floor. We also removed the walls on both ends of the kitchen, creating a cohesive, expansive space with uninterrupted sight lines all the way across.
We converted the porch into a sunroom with triple-pane windows, a spray-foam roof, and dense-packed the floor and double-stud walls with carbon-storing cellulose to align with both our clients’ high-performance goals and the Massachusetts Stretch Code.
Before
After
Our clients had always wanted to improve their connection to the backyard and the life in the woods surrounding their home. Before the project, this view was limited, and the only way to get to the backyard was to go out the front and all the way around, or through the basement. We were excited to help them realize their long-awaited vision of an elevated back deck with glass doors opening from the sunroom and dining area, and stairs leading directly down to the driveway and backyard.
Just down the hall from the dining room was an existing full bathroom, complete with the classic ’50s tile and fixture colors. We completely gutted and renovated the bathroom to improve accessibility and more comfortably accommodate guests.
Before
After
These homeowners were perfect Byggmeister clients, as they were just as excited about the design aspects of the project as they were about the performance improvements. First on the list was getting rid of their oil tank and old boiler before it croaked, and cutting back the basement ceiling plaster to access the notoriously leaky rim joist area.
We started insulating with a flash of spray foam on the basement walls up into the rim joist area and throughout the attic, followed by blower door–guided air sealing. This eliminated over half of the building’s air leakage, reducing it from 11.1 ACH50 down to 5.2 ACH50. Then we brought in AeroBarrier to seal up the remaining hard-to-reach leaks, which reduced air leakage by more than half again, down to just below 2 ACH50. Altogether, we sealed up around 80% of all leaks and made this house tighter than many new-construction homes, which only need to achieve 3 ACH50.
Once we had the home nice and tight, we filled the rest of the extended roof rafters with recycled cellulose instead of all high–embodied-carbon spray foam, limiting the upfront carbon impact of our insulation strategy. We then installed all-new heat pumps for heating and cooling, an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) for fresh air, and a heat pump water heater for hot water and some dehumidification.
We are very proud of this project.