The Life, Times and Travels of CJ, MJ, Joanna and Maki: July 2011

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Where Does the Elevator Go?

So where does one put an elevator in a home? Turns out you can put an elevator wherever you want to. Our contractor says that most people put an elevator where they have stacking closets (think coat coat closet on 1st floor, linen closet on the 2nd floor, etc.). You can put an elevator in a corner of a house and have the contractor punch holes through the ceiling all the way up!

In our case, we decided to put the elevator in the stairwell of our new house. This location made the most sense since it was mostly square, it was unused space and it was space that went from the ground floor to the 4th floor.

Maki was sad to lose the beautiful staircase and stairwell. I was sad as well but also glad that I didn't have to worry about kids and babies falling into a stairwell. A neighbor also told us that the stairwell had a tendency to carry sound throughout the house.

So our new elevator will be where our beautiful stairwell once was.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Building the Hoistway

When you're building an elevator, the most important part is the hoistway or the elevator shaft. In our case, we needed a hoistway that goes up all the way to 4th floor. Building this hoistway has been a major undertaking.

First, we had to choose an elevator company. After interviewing several companies, we chose Residential Elevators out of Florida. We considered Ashley Elevators because they had a clear elevator without a hoistway but it made me too nervous.

Next, we picked our general contractor. We got a recommendation from Residential and went with Hofmeister Services, who ended up subbing the work to Caputo Construction. Bob Caputo and Mike from Caputo did the bulk of the work, which involved:

Reinforcing the foundation
Ripping the carpet off the stairs
Cutting into the stairwell to make more room for the hoistway
Removing part of the floor on the 4th floor because there was an overhang in the stairwell that would have prevented a straight hoistway
Framing out the hoistway
Closing the hoistway with drywall
Painting the hoistway
Creating the custom trim in the baseboards and crown molding
Repositioning the powder room
Building out the machine room

Building the hoistway took months, literally and it was dirty, dusty work. We started the work as soon as we were able after closing on the house. The work was delayed by confusion over permitting because we needed to move a sprinkler on the 4th floor so it's now the end of July and the hoistway is finally done.

Here is a view of the hoistway from the 1st floor. Note the doors in the hoistway.

Elevator door in the guest room on the 4th floor.

The elevator will open directly into the guest room.

View of the elevator door in the guest room.

View of the elevator door from the 3rd floor bedroom level.

View of the elevator door in the dining room on the 2nd floor living level.

You can see how the hoistway closed up the stairwell.

View of the hoistway from the 4th floor.

That's Bob at the bottom of the hoistway.

Note the 3 doors in the hoistway.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The New House

Sometime last year, I visited my friend Judith, who turns out to have an elevator in her townhome. Oh, what a glorious thing! The elevator was tucked neatly beneath a stairwell and it made visits by her mom, moving furniture and grocery shopping, so much easier. So I went on the hunt for a home in Alexandria with an elevator. I wasn't really serious about it since we loved our old house, we loved our super easy commute and CJ is thriving at his school.

On a whim, I called our Realtor, Gary Chute of Weichert Realtors, who had helped us buy our house and sell my condo nearly ten years ago. He took me around town to see a bunch of single family homes and townhomes, a few of which had elevators. There was one crazy house in Ford's Landing that felt like an Escher painting; there were so many small, cramped staircases going in every which direction, it was awful!

There is a fairly new development behind our house and I asked Gary to call the builder to find out if it was possible to put an elevator in any of the models. I had previously walked into the sales office to ask just that same question and was told no. But I figured it didn't hurt to have an expert give a ring. As it turns out there was one (exactly one) model that COULD accommodate an elevator and there was one still available. Trouble was, that one last home was already sold, but with a home sale contingency.

So Gary and I waited, followed up with the builder, looked at the house several times, showed the house to Maki, waited, followed up, etc. And yep, the day the contingent sale fell through, Maki and I made an offer and we made a deal! We had to close fast (in less than 30 days) to get the price and upgrades we wanted because it was the end of the quarter and our house was going to be THE last house to close in the entire development! We decided not to put in a home sale contingency because we felt comfortable we could sell our house and we had already been pre-approved by our mortgage banker.

So on March 31, we closed on our new house. It's gorgeous. It's about 8 short blocks north of our old house, it's got a similar floor plan, it's about 500 sq. ft. bigger, and it's got taller ceilings. The appeal of the house are the guest room on the 4th floor that has a closet and bathroom, the sitting area on the 4th floor (separate from the guest room), two closets in the master bedroom, the laundry/utility room, and larger island in the kitchen. New house, hooray!