This little 3500 square-foot ranch house was cute and quaint right before we took it down to the studs and completely removed the roof. I could not understand why someone would destroy a perfectly good house, but they wanted a bigger home and after further research realized that it would be cheaper to literally bulldoze this house and start from scratch then it would be to buy another lot as beautiful as the one they currently own.

I’m grateful that this client entrusted me to completely re-design their current two-story ranch house and build a whole 3rd floor on top of that. Nothing beyond the CMU wall of the original structure still stands, but keeping an open floor plan that still clearly separates the boundaries of each room is my forte. With a lake view like this one the fewer walls the better. Yet you don’t just want to feel like you live in a wide open warehouse. The art is to use different types of ceilings, archways, window, configurations, etc. to indicate where one room stops and another begins. This home is now close to 8500 ft.² and feels like it’s twice that big due to the tall ceilings and open floor plan. After this remodel the home is now valued at $1.4 mil.