I just received this wonderful email from a very special room addition client:
Dear Jim and Justin,
I have had a fun time getting ready for our first family dinner with all 12 of us in one room….with room to spare!! I’m sending a couple of photos to show you! All the kids/grands will be here on Sunday for our traditional Swedish meatball dinner.
Thank you again for the great work you did for us! We love it!
Hey kids, if you start the roof with starter shingles that are not aligned properly… let’s just say the butt ends of the starter shingles align with the rain slots between the tabs…you create a pathway for water to enter the building. That causes leaks and stains on ceilings OK? Mmmmmkay? Write that down.
It’s amazing the things you learn and the people you meet on Facebook. I have been working on the homes in Colonial Place, Norfolk for many years. I’ve done slate & shingle roofing, carpentry, home additions, bath remodels, siding , etc…I knew it was a historical neighborhood but I didn’t realize that one of the cool people that I was connected to on Facebook was the Colonial Place Historian! Rose Thornton has written a book about the homes there and has done 100’s of lectures on them!
I just finished meeting with a long time client who was interested in having more windows replaced. He lives in the Colonial Place http://cprv.net neighborhood of Norfolk Virginia. His home was built in 1923.
Over the last 13 years he has had me install new siding, new windows , a bathroom remodel and roofing work. We always enjoy catching up on each other’s personal lives when we meet each time for a new project. In this industry we do not often get the opportunity to see our clients after the job is finished. This is why we value repeat customers so much and we never take them for granted.
Colonial Place in Norfolk is a historic neighborhood. We’ve done a lot of work there everything from working on the slate roofs to building new room additions. For the definitive guide to these homes visit Rose Thornton’s Blog – The Kit Homes of Colonial Place
There’s something extra rewarding and special about working on older homes, I can only imagine what it would be like for the guild carpenters and craftsmen in Europe working on homes that are older than the United States is!
Recently, I attended a talk from a home expert that asks the same question across the country and in Europe: “How long should a home last?” He said that the answers were directly related to the area where the people were living. He reported in Europe people answer the question with “100 to 200 years. ” In the United States the answers were much different and it had to do with how old the housing stock is in that area of the country. On the East Coast people answered 100 years old. As he asked the question moving westward, the people expected time. In fact in California he received answers of 25 years! I would certainly hope that a home was built to at least outlast the mortgage!
It may be an interesting insight into how different areas of the country have different expectations as to the quality of the construction there.
We have a lot of fun on our Jim Hicks Home Improvement Facebook Page and share a lot of pictures with our fans in Williamsburg, Newport News, Hampton Yorktown, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach.
Recently we were asked to post some of the most inspirational pictures we had seen. So, I compiled this gallery. It is assumed that all images are public domain; I make no claim to own any of them and will happily remove any that are proven to infringe copyright.
Room additions are a fantastic way to expand the usable area of your home while adding value to what your home is worth. Many people ask us for different types of additions: family room additions, kitchen additions, bathroom additions and master bedroom additions.
But one often neglected topic in many home improvement discussions is the design and interior decorating of the addition after it is completed. Below is a room addition interior that we recently completed in York County, Virginia. You’ll see that the owner used the same colors and and finishes as the rest of the main house, even to the point of seamlessly matching the hardwood floors between the original dining room and the addition.
The colors chosen for the interior of the addition matched those in the rest of the home.Notice how well the hardwood floor blends with the original floor on this near side of the cased opening
Another style of addition may use a completely different interior design. We recently shared this picture with our fans on our Jim Hicks Home Improvement Facebook Page:
Vaulted Ceilings and Can Lights give this addition a “larger” feel
As you can see, the vaulted ceilings and can lights give this room a completely different feel that the previous addition. It also has hardwood floors and large windows, but our fans felt that it lacked color. Here are some of their comments:
Feedback from our Facebook Fans re: the room addition interior
Still another unique interior is the project we did for a basement remodel in Stonehouse, near Williamsburg. You can see all the pictures here: Interior Remodel
Ultimately, your enjoyment of your room addition will have more to do with the design and decor of the interior than that of the exterior. This is why we like to say “The hard work is done before the first nail is driven:” design should drive the construction and not the other way around! Spend some time on the Jim Hicks Home Improvement Blog, Website and our Jim Hicks Home Improvement Facebook Pageto get ideas and inspiration. Another great website to visit for inspiration is Houzz, you can check our profile on Houzz here: http://www.houzz.com/pro/jimhicks .
Room additions, Home additions, Kitchen Additions or Bathroom Additions can be the best thing you can do to make your home a better place to live, raise the value of your property and adapt it to your changing lifestyle without leaving the neighborhood that your kids have grown up in or changing the school they’ve come to love! What does the construction of a room addition look like? Well, for starters, here’s a neat video that our friends in Atlanta put together that we thought you might enjoy:
We asked our Fans: “Window Seat in the Staircase Landing. Thumbs up or thumbs down?”
We have a good time with our Fans on our Jim Hicks Home Improvement Facebook Page. Most of them are homeowners here in Hampton Roads, Virginia. You can read below the picture some of the comments we received in response to our question about this picture that we found intriguing.
