Welcome back to our Studio Journal and the Stoneleigh Series. It’s the story of renovating our century old family home and the new perspective it gave me as a designer walking in the shoes of a client.
Part 1 detailed how the home became ours (ours to love and ours to fix!). In Part 2, we covered the not-so-fun but oh-so-important story of budgeting for this extensive renovation. But what did that renovation entail? That’s the story today!
We wanted to renovate an old home to preserve the beauty and charm, and for the satisfaction of saving an old house. What started with ideas of knocking down a few walls to build a dream kitchen (see the rendering I had planned below) soon caused some sleepless nights once we saw what was behind those walls.
Old homes have old technology, and as such, the electric service was only 100 amp. (I’m not an electrician, but I do know it is not enough for all the technology we run in houses today!). We needed to upgrade the service to support all the things! Smart lights (we used the Brilliant System), Wifi, computers (endless computers), plugs, and appliances.
And you know what we found? Knob and tube wiring.
Knob and tube (K&T) was an early standardized method of electrical wiring in buildings, in everyday use in North America from about 1880 to the 1940s. The system is considered obsolete and can be a safety hazard, although some of its fear is undeserved. Old homes just require more love and more patience…and more contingencies than newer homes.
Remember that budget conversation we covered in Part 2? “These electric changes are eating up my design budget!” I told my contractor in my owner’s voice.
But back to the K&T. Many old homes had electrical wires anchored by ceramic insulating knobs pass through ceramic tubes placed inside holes drilled into the wooden joists of the house. It’s certainly not the way we do things today. And we inspected for this! Really we did. But all the locations that we inspected had been upgraded. And deep inside the walls, we had lots of K&T still doing its thing. It’s not an imminent danger, especially if well-maintained, but the Stoneleigh was due for an upgrade.
Things were getting brighter — I was sure of it. And more big changes were coming.
Changing a home’s plan requires an architect, especially when you plan to move the structure. We had a plan just to add a couple of dropped headers — beams put under an existing wall to carry the load for a larger opening. But just like with the K&T, when we opened the ceiling, things were different than we thought they’d be.
The layout of Stoneleigh’s structure was different than what we thought…and I was stumped.
It turned out that the Stoneleigh was built with a hanging beam structure — something I had no personal experience with until then. A hanging beam is generally a deep timber beam located at 90º perpendicular angles to ceiling joists and directly above them. The function of a hanging beam is to reduce the span of the ceiling joists. This allows for a more economic joist size and consistent section. Hanging beams must only support ceiling joists and the attached ceiling materials.
The Stoneleigh is a very well-built home. It is solid, and all of the supports seem to exceed the standards used today. But the truth was that we had to stop and redesign.
Why all this work, you ask?
I wanted a huge kitchen (remember the rendering above?) that flowed to the dining room. I wanted to ditch the formal living plans of the past. In our last house, the hubby and I disagreed about a formal dining room. He wanted one, and I did not. And you know what? He won!
That dining room became the room where all lost things went to die! We only cleaned it out twice a year to set the table for holidays. I was determined that the Stoneleigh would be different!
But at what cost?
We stopped construction, hired a structural engineer, ordered all new beams, some of which were 16” deep. Woah. We installed temporary walls on each side of the beams from the basement to the attic. Then we waited for the team to heave, hoist, nail, and bracket the house back together again.
So it cost us thousands of dollars and took about four weeks of the already very tight schedule.
Was it worth it? You tell me. Follow along for more on #TheStoneleigh23 and our progress to modernizing an old historic home.
