Next Project- Capitol Hill Renovation

We're excited to announce that we've located our next renovation project. As our 6th st project finishes up, we'll transition to this next house. It will be a TOTAL overhaul of a house in historic Capitol Hill, less than a block from the famous Eastern Market. It's also a block from the metro. We have the house under contract and are currently working with the historic review board to come up with an approved set of drawings for the renovated house. We're planning on building a 3 BR, 2.5 BA house with tons of great green features. Actual construction will be several months from now because we need to go through the permitting process, and also the sale is an estate and will take some time to settle. Here are the before pics:

Here's the current front.



Our house is part of a pair with the building next door. At some point, a decorative cornice was added to the property next door, which really adds some character. Our front will be nearly identical to the neighboring property, including the cornice and crown molding above the windows. One difference will be that our building will have wood windows and siding as per historic guidelines.





The lot is huge- almost 115 feet deep.




Check back soon for more updates.

6th St Update

It's been a few weeks since my last post, and I apologize for the delay. Although lots has been going on at the project, things didn't look particularly different from my last post so I was waiting a bit. Now, however, the condos are really taking shape. We've been working to finish all the little things that have to get done before we can close in the walls and hang the drywall.
I'm shooting to get the insulation and drywall up by the end of next week.

One of the main things that we've been working on for the last week is soundproofing the building, both to the exterior and between units. This has become more and more important for buyers in the last few years, and we're doing as much as possible to make the units as quiet as possible. In the picture below you can see boxes that we built above each recessed light to block sound transmission between the floors. We used a product called Green Glue, which gets sandwiched between two sheets of Durock cement board, and then the seams are caulked with acoustical caulk.



Here's what the boxes look like once they are installed. Also notice the new fire sprinklers.



Here's the completed framing on the top floor two-story unit. This is from the loft area looking down onto the floor below. The skylights are covered, but they will let in a ton of natural light once installed.



Here's a view from the same unit looking up to the loft.



We rebuilt the entire rear wall with new blocks. They have a brick design on the exterior, and once painted, this will look just like the neighboring brick buildings and will blend in nicely with the historic exteriors.




Here's the same rear view. You can just make out the loft popping up on the top of the building.


This is the view from the loft balcony. You can see the new condo buildings off to the right. This is also where the new Safeway grocery store, gym, bank and hardware store are located.



This is a pretty typical view of the interior units. All the rough-ins are done, we just need to get a few inspections, lay down the hardwood floors, and we'll be ready to close everything up.



This winter was extremely cold here in DC and water pipes were freezing left and right. Even in projects where we had installed pipe wrap and pulled the lines a foot off the exterior wall we had freezing issues. We've learned from these experiences and in this building all plumbing touching exterior walls was done in copper. This should avoid any headaches in the future.