Historic Renovation - Built in 1900
We completed a historic renovation of this 1900's-era home that honors its past, but keeps an eye on the future. We bought this home at an auction with plans to fix it up and sell it as a spec home. We designed it ourselves and we put so much love and attention into it that it was tough to part with. Fortunately, a lovely woman with a heart of gold and a desire to improve upon an already great project decided to buy it, which resulted in a great addition with features like underground parking, an elevator, and a rooftop deck.
The original project was an ambitious one - we even caught the attention of the Roanoke Times ("Turn of the Century," Nov. 10, 2002) The project involved gutting the home and rebuilding it to better than modern standards with plenty of green construction practices. It is the first home in Roanoke City to use sprayfoam insulation, as we had to meet with the City's Building Official and Inspectors to discuss its use before being allowed to proceed. The result was a home so energy efficient that we nicknamed it the igloo cooler. During the construction process, we managed to remove nearly all of the original loadbearing walls so that we could provide a modern, open floor plan. We removed so many walls along the way that we realized we needed to add some floating walls just to have places to hang artwork. But one of the best things we did to preserve the original beauty of this home was to painstakingly remove every single vertical grain piece of Heart Pine flooring, remove the nails and reinstall it after all of the structural improvements had been made.
To this day, this is still our favorite project. The pictures just can't do the real thing justice - this house is simply beautiful!
