Shore House Renovation

Over the last few weeks, we completed a large renovation at a shore house in Oxford, MD. Previously, the addition was a screened-in porch that was mostly unused. After the renovation, it's got a sitting room, a bedroom, a storage area and a new shower for the hall powder room. The homeowners definitely added a ton of practical living space.

My crew moves pretty quick, and they'd already torn out all of the sliding screen doors before I got there on the first day of the job. However, here you can get some idea of what the space looked like before the renovation.






The plans called for a lofted ceiling in two of the rooms. Here, we sealed off the attic space to allow the high ceilings in the bedroom and sitting room.



We leveled the floor and added new floor joists to support the weight of the new rooms. We were fortunate because the porch was extremely well built, so we didn't have to do much structural work.



Here you can see the insulation that went in between the joists before the new subfloor was installed. We used the interlocking subfloor because it is far stronger than just using plywood.



This is what the interior of the addition looked like after the drywall was installed.



Here's the final product. You can see the original house on the left, and the addition on the right. The siding, trim and colors were matched exactly to provide continuity. We were extremely careful to make sure the new windows and doors lined up with the old.



Here's another view of the new entry door.



While we were working at the house, we finished several other small projects. The wood on the dock had become warped and was starting to rot, so we rebuilt the entire dock.



This is the new work room. We were able to incorporate environmentally-friendly cork flooring and solid birch countertops.



Here you can also see the awesome new Simpson wood door.



Here's the new bedroom. It feels much bigger because of how high the ceiling height towers over the bed.



We also added a new shower. The homeowner chose some amazing pebble mosiac tile for the floor, and white subway tile for the walls. It's a perfect combination for a house on the water.





The sitting room looks great. We had to match the new hardwood floors with the existing hardwood floors in the main house. It was difficult because the old floors had faded with age. However, we were able to match the color and install the exact same width flooring. Looks good as new!





Up to this point, our company has mostly focused on renovating our own projects. However, I'm now a licensed, bonded and insured general contractor, and I'm excited about growing Gorman Property Group, LLC into a full service building firm. Look out for more projects such as this addition in the near future.