Floor area tripled, without ever stopping.
Laurentians · Saint-Hippolyte
- Type
- major transformation of an existing building
- Foundation
- complete rebuild on piles
- Setting
- shoreline
The starting point
A small three-season cottage on stilts, on a lakefront. A summer building, small in size, on a lot worth several times what stood on it.
The client wanted a home they could live in year-round, considerably larger, on the same spot.
The constraint
The project was authorized by the municipality as a renovation project. The whole question of the site came down to that sentence: delivering the intended transformation within that framework, from the first day to the last.
There was also the setting. On a lakefront, the footprint of a foundation is closely governed, by municipal regulations as much as by provincial shoreline protection rules. Soil close to the water table also means widening the supports considerably to spread the load, which runs counter to the wish to minimize the footprint.
What we did
The building was lifted. A specialized crew built a new foundation on piles, about twice as wide as the old one, sized for the soil and the final load. The cottage was then set back down on it.
Then we worked in phases. One wall at a time. One section of roof at a time. At every stage the building had to stay load-bearing and the site had to stay in accordance with the permit issued and the plans sealed by the engineer.
It's a much longer method than rebuilding. At every phase it requires solving the same question: how to hold the whole thing up while replacing the next section. It also requires a team that stays the same from start to finish, because the logic of the sequence doesn't get passed along in a purchase order.
The result
Floor area tripled. Height doubled. Four seasons. Exposed beams, plank walls, a building that has nothing left in common with the summer cottage it started as, in the same place and on the same lot.
Every phase was carried out in accordance with the permit issued. That's what made it possible to run a project of this scale without ever interrupting the structural integrity.
The cottage delivered, four seasons
So, what are we working on?
Eight questions, two minutes. We call you back to talk it through, and we tell you frankly whether it's a project for us or whether you'd be better served elsewhere.