Raise high the roof beam, carpenter

The thorniest design issue was not where to put the detached garage but, instead, where to put the roof and floor of the addition. (Wisecracks of "over your head" and "under your feet", respectively, will not be appreciated.) Turns out that the floor of the existing garage is quite a bit lower, 21" to be exact, than the floor of the house. We have a couple of wooden steps leading from the garage to the kitchen hall. These steps gave Wagner a major headache. We could, of course, just leave the floor of the addition sunken the way it was and keep the steps. But that wasn't an optimal solution given our long-term goal of designing the renovation to last our lifetimes and wanting everything to be wheelchair accessible.

So then Wagner contemplated putting in a ramp. The only problem with THAT solution is that the drop was so large that a VERRRRYYY long ramp would be required, and that would eat significantly into our addition space. Not to mention that the prospect of a long ramp didn't push my buttons from an aesthetic viewpoint.

Option 3 was to keep the steps and install a motorized lift. My son, Isaac, was advocating heartily for this option, as he loves elevators. Nobody else was thrilled by the lift option, though, due to the expense and space involved and, again, the aesthetics of having an ugly (to me) hunk of machinery sitting around that we weren't sure we would ever need.

Option 4 was to keep the steps and just leave a space to install the lift later, if needed. This was better than Option 3 in my view, but Wagner didn't like it. He pointed out we probably wouldn't install it until AFTER a few nasty falls had occurred and it would be Too Late. He's probably right on that, given our history of home (non)maintenance.

Option 5 was to raise the level of the addition floor (existing garage plus new part) the necessary 21" to be even with the rest of the house. The only snag with THAT plan, though, is that the roof of the existing garage was firmly held in place by a large steel support beam running across the garage. So if we kept the current ceiling of the garage (which is actually our current master bedroom floor), AND raised the floor, we'd be stuck with somewhat lower ceilings in the renovation than we had hoped for. Maybe too low. And did we really want to go through all that time, effort, and money to have an addition where the ceilings were not as high as we wanted?

So for several weeks Wagner pondered the options and worked with the architect to come up with possibilities. He finally came up with a proposal that solves the step problem as well as preserving, as best as possible, high ceilings. Here's what we're doing: We're going ahead and raising the floor of the existing garage the 21" to be level with the rest of the house. The addition portion will also have a floor raised that high so that everything is all on the same level. That just makes the most sense from a livability and safety perspective and has to be a high priority in the renovation.

This means that the ceiling in the garage portion of the renovation will only be 8 feet high. However, that portion is going to be devoted to the master closet, master bathroom, and laundry room, and we decided that 8 foot ceilings are plenty high for those rooms and those purposes.

The only snag is that the big steel support beam running across the garage had to stay in place. Well, it could theoretically be removed, but that would make the job exponentially more expensive and complicated, so for all practical purposes it had to stay. Most of the time that beam was going to be hidden by interior walls, but there would have to a particular section of the master bath where the beam would be concealed by a soffitt and would have only a 7-foot ceiling. Neither Jon nor I are especially tall, so we could live with that. And then Wagner had the good idea of placing the whirlpool tub under the part of the ceiling with the soffitt. Since we are unlikely to spend a lot of time standing up in the bathtub, I think it will work out well.

So this left the question of the ceiling of the addition portion of the project, which is where the bedroom proper would be located. With the roofline being extended as originally planned, we could only have a 9-foot ceiling, and we were hoping for something higher to seem more spacious and to enable bigger windows. Wagner solved THAT problem by deciding to create a gable situation where the roof would angle up perpendicular to the rest of the house. (Hope that's not too confusing. I am learning a lot of architectural terms through this renovation process but clearly have a long, long way to go.)

The only remaining complication is that doing the gable this way would interfere with the upstairs dormer in our current bedroom. Wagner initially proposed just removing the dormer and window and plastering it up. That's clearly the easiest way to deal with the issue and would present the smoothest look from outside, but he met with heavy resistance on our side, as we enjoy the natural light and being able to open up those windows upstairs. And even if we were relocating to the new bedroom, we figured our daughter (who has dibs on moving into our old bedroom) would also want to keep the window. So this made things complicated for Wagner, but he ultimately figured out a way of doing a cut-out of the gable, in combination with making the edges of the new master bedroom ceilings a little lower than he originally planned, that should be workable. It may not have the cleanest architectural look on the exterior (and I think that bothers Wagner), but we don't care, and it's the Neighbor From Hell behind us who will have to look at it the most. Ha ha.

What this amounts to is that we will now have a multi-levelled bedroom ceiling that is 12-feet high in the middle with the edges being 8-feet high, which I think will look nice. AND all of our floors will be at the same level as the rest of the house, which I think is very important.

Adopting this design layout by necessity solved one further dilemma we were facing, which was whether to have a bank of windows or a sliding glass door to the outside in the new master bedroom. The advantage of a sliding glass door is that we could make a little patio area outside and walk out the bedroom in the mornings to drink coffee on the patio. And, of course, it would give us an easy exit in case of a fire or some other disaster. The disadvantage is that I'm guessing our cat would quickly learn that the door was there and would be scratching at the door constantly in middle of the night to be let in and out. (We let her go outside at will.) I'm a light sleeper and that would definitely wake me up. So during the initial planning stages I waffled back and forth as to what the best option would be. Fortunately the final design made it a moot question, as it didn't make much sense to have a sliding glass door with the ground so far below. And I don't think it is much of a loss not to have the door, as the back door to the house is really not that far away and we can just carry our coffee to the gazebo instead.