A finished attic became a full second floor: three bedrooms and a bath, built on top of an occupied house
- Added
- 429 sf second floor
- Program
- 3 bedrooms, full bath (the home's 3rd)
- Structure
- LVL floor, shear walls, new footing, truss roof
- Permit
- City of Portland · FIR program
- Construction
- May – Nov 2023, family in residence
One small attic room, and a family that had outgrown the main floor.
A well-kept Alameda home with a single finished room tucked under the roof. The owners loved the street and didn't want to move, but they needed real bedrooms upstairs and a third bathroom, without giving up the yard.
They came to us with schematic drawings from their architect. Our job was to turn them into a priced, permitted, buildable project and then run it with the family living downstairs the whole time.
You can't set a second floor on a house that wasn't built to hold one.
The addition is L-shaped rather than the full footprint, which meant the existing ceiling joists under it had to be sistered with LVLs, several exterior walls had to be converted to shear walls (siding off, sheathing replaced, hold-downs added, siding back on), and a new column had to be carried from the center glulam down through the house to a new spread footing poured in the basement.
Above that: a truss-framed hip roof set by hand because power lines ruled out a crane, spray-foam under the sheathing for an unvented attic, and a short-ducted heat pump living in that conditioned attic space. The existing roof overhang was kept and wrapped into the new work as a canopy line. Because the house was occupied, the existing radon system had to be extended through the addition, and the whole house got a new roof, gutters and downspouts once the second floor was closed in.
Matched to the house, not bolted on.
Same Hardie siding and vinyl windows as below. White oak tongue-and-groove floors to match the main level. A bath with a skylight, hex-mosaic floor, subway-tile surround and a Caesarstone counter. Built-in closets so the bedrooms actually work as bedrooms.
3D tour of the finished house.
What it took to get there.
Design, engineering & permit
Architect's schematics developed to permit set; structural calcs; City of Portland FIR permit and inspections
Demolition
Attic room and roof removed; old insulation out; protection of the occupied main floor
Structure & framing
Basement footing and column, LVL floor sistering, shear walls, second-floor framing, hand-set roof trusses
Roof, gutters & envelope
Whole-house roof, gutters and downspouts; house wrap, Hardie siding, matching vinyl windows, skylight
Mechanical, electrical, plumbing
Ducted heat pump in the conditioned attic; new bath plumbing chased to the basement; wiring for the new floor; radon extension
Insulation, drywall & finish
Spray foam roof deck, batt walls, drywall, white oak floors, tile, vanity and stone, closets, doors, trim, paint
Site & drainage
Camera-scoped rain drains and repaired the failed front line found during the project
Follow-on work
New front door and lockset, garage window, garage door and opener, laundry shelving
Sequenced to the day, with the architect walking the site at every phase.
The schedule ran as a week-by-week Gantt from the kickoff meeting to the final walkthrough: windows and plumbing fixtures ordered three weeks ahead, dumpster in the driveway so the neighbors couldn't fill it, the electrician on site the day after demo to pull old wiring before the floor was sistered, trusses verified and ordered while walls were framed, and the inspector coordinated by photo where the code allowed.
Field conditions were logged and priced as they came: an access panel opening that didn't match the spec, a rain drain that failed its camera inspection, a radon exhaust that had to be rerouted above the new roofline. Each became a written item the owners approved before the work proceeded.
“Dennis and Kim were extremely helpful in initial stages of design by providing us with costs for various structural design elements to help us budget effectively. Overall the work is fantastic.”