Melrose Two-Story Addition with Primary Suite

The kitchen in this Melrose home sat at the back of the house, with a cooktop island, an interior brick chimney and a built-in china cabinet between it and the dining room. The back door opened into a narrow tiled hall, and a deck sat off the first floor.

The chimney was the tricky part. Before it could come out, the water heater and the boiler both had to be switched to power venting so nothing still relied on the old flue. Once it was gone, along with the china cabinet, we installed engineered LVL beams and opened a wide cased opening between the kitchen and dining room. The deck came off, the old kitchen roof was removed, and a two-story rear addition went up on a new frost-wall foundation finished in stone veneer.

Downstairs, the addition made room for a larger, fully gutted kitchen with a navy island, white cabinets to the ceiling and toe-kick heat, plus a mudroom with a built-in bench and a new stair to the basement, and we renovated the first-floor bathroom. Upstairs, a new primary suite has a walk-in closet and a bath with a double vanity and a glass walk-in shower, heated on a new zone. We also put in eleven new windows, a small covered porch and a new roof on the whole house.