The Back Story

How it all began

It all started with the kitchen. When my husband, Josh, and I purchased our little 1925 Spanish Colonial bungalow just outside Washington, DC in 2003, we loved just about everything about it -- except the kitchen. It was small, with very little storage or counter space, and three different types of countertops. Half the room was taken up by the stairs to the basement. Every time we saw one of our new neighbors, a prominent realtor, she would ask us if we had remodeled the kitchen.

OK, the rest of the house was a little odd as well, but we learned to live with it. Despite being only 1300 square feet -- plus a semi-finished basement -- the house had three bedrooms, two full baths, and separate family and living rooms. However, the rooms were all very small, one of the bathrooms was in the basement, and one of the bedrooms opened onto the living room. The house lacked linen and coat closets, and two of the bedrooms shared a closet – you could walk right through the closet's "Narnia door" from one bedroom to the other. But the house was plenty big enough for the two of us and we grew to love – or at least ignore – its quirks.

Except for the kitchen. We really wanted to remodel the kitchen, but it seemed like the best way to do that would be to reclaim all the space taken up by the basement stairs – which would mean moving them somewhere else in the house. Our house's ultra-efficient floor plan did not lend itself to an obvious solution to that problem, and after hearing horror stories about major home renovation projects from friends and family, we were a bit daunted by the thought of finding an architect and contractor that we would be happy working with. So, we did what all the previous owners of the house had done: nothing.

It took a fallen tree to finally get the ball rolling for us. After a particularly rainy week in early 2008, a 75-foot oak tree lost its footing and toppled onto the back of a close friend's house, completely demolishing their brand-new deck and screened porch. Rather than hiring the original builders to rebuild it, they chose another builder who had been recommended by a neighbor. Even before the project was finished, my friend called me to rave about how great this guy was, and suggested I have him take a look at our kitchen. Now, this particular friend has had dozens of small renovation projects on her own house, so I figured she would know a good thing when she saw it.

'John' came over a couple weeks later (March 12). He was friendly and chatty, but professional. He took a look at our basement stairs and pointed out that moving them would likely involve reconfiguring the plumbing/radiator pipes that crisscross the basement ceiling, which would be pretty expensive if we were just planning a kitchen renovation. He suggested we either update the kitchen within its current configuration, or move the stairs as part of a larger-scale home renovation.

Josh had been making noises about adding a second story to our house for some time, so when I told him about John's assessment, we decided maybe it was time to take the plunge and embark on a full-scale home renovation. Yikes!


Greening it up

While we certainly wouldn't consider ourselves extremists, Josh and I have always been environmentally conscious. Our one car – a hybrid Toyota Prius – spends most weekdays in the driveway while he bikes to work and I telecommute or take the Metro. We recycle, compost our kitchen scraps, use CFL bulbs, and keep our programmable thermostat set at 68 in the wintertime, even though I work from home, and, being from California, have a rather low tolerance for cold. So, when we decided to renovate our house, it made sense for us to go green. We might end up spending a little more up front, but we knew it would be worth it in terms of energy savings, improved indoor air quality, and maybe a teeny bit of smugness that the finished product would be far superior to the energy-hogging, super-sized McMansions that were going up at an alarming rate in our neighborhood.

Since we didn't have the know-how to manage a green renovation ourselves, we decided the best course of action would be to find a green architect. Fortunately, Arlington County has a program that encourages homeowners and businesses to go green, and we decided to attend their Green Home Renovation seminar on March 24 to learn more and get some ideas. At the seminar, a local architect and a homeowner gave a presentation about a renovation project they had done a couple years ago.

We were impressed with Marta, the architect, and she seemed to meet our initial criteria – works independently, has local experience and a background in sustainable architecture – so we set up a meeting with her a couple weeks later. We liked the fact that the first words out of her mouth were dismay at the size of the McMansion going up two doors down, and I was especially pleased to learn that she had spent some time in the Southwest, so she was familiar with the unusual architectural style of our house. We chatted with her for a couple hours, and after she left, we decided we had dragged our feet long enough and let her know she was hired. Now there was nowhere to go but forward…