Remodeling newer homes in Pittsfield Township
Pittsfield Township wraps the south side of Ann Arbor and runs down toward Saline. Most of its housing went up between the early 1990s and the 2010s, which makes the work here different from anywhere with old plaster and stone. These houses are not worn out. They are dated, and the fixes are predictable.
What a subdivision house from this era hands you
A colonial framed in 2003 has poured foundation walls, engineered floor joists, a truss roof, a hundred-and-fifty or two-hundred-amp panel and mechanicals a person can actually reach. Nothing is rotted and nothing is a mystery. What it also has is a two-story family room that is loud and hard to heat, a mudroom the size of a phone booth, oak cabinets with a honey stain, and a basement with a drain and a vent stubbed through the slab.
That combination is good news for scope and for price. Because the framing is modern and the load paths are documented, planning moves quickly and demolition finds fewer surprises. The Washtenaw County service area covers this township from end to end, and our design-build setup means the person drawing the change is the person responsible for framing it.
Kitchens
The builder layout usually puts a peninsula where an island belongs and a desk nook nobody has used since laptops. Kitchen design starts by testing whether the wall to the family room carries load, then rebuilding the work triangle around a real island. Cabinet boxes from this era are often square enough to keep, which changes what kitchen remodeling work has to cover.
Bathrooms
Primary baths of this vintage came with a corner soaking tub, a small framed shower and cultured marble tops. Pulling the tub buys a shower worth standing in. Downstairs, a guest bathroom or a half bath near the entry gets used far more than the one upstairs. Details on bathroom remodeling apply the same way.
Basements
These are the easiest lower levels in the region to finish: eight or nine feet of clear height, poured walls, an egress window in many plans and plumbing already stubbed for a bath. Finishing a stubbed basement costs less per square foot here than in any older housing stock, because the rough-in and the framing surfaces are already there.
Additions
Truss roofs make a second floor an expensive proposition, so added space usually goes out the back. Adding a single room covers most of what these houses lack: a first-floor office with a door, a bigger mudroom, or a dining space that fits the table. See the range of home additions we build.
Outdoor
Subdivision lots came with a builder deck of pressure-treated framing, and thirty years is about all that framing gets. Rebuilding it with proper flashing at the ledger fixes the leak nobody knew about. Outdoor living areas here work best when the door, the grade and the deck are planned together.
Modern framing makes some things easy and one thing hard
Engineered joists and roof trusses carry more with less wood, and the trade is that you cannot cut them. A plumber who notches an I-joist for a new toilet drain has damaged the floor system, and a homeowner who removes a web from a truss to make attic storage has done worse. Every route for a pipe, a duct or a wire gets planned against the manufacturer’s hole chart before anything is drilled.
The upside is that when the load path is clear, the big move gets cheap. Dropping a flush beam into the ceiling between a kitchen and a family room, with posts carried to a footing, opens the floor plan these houses should have had at the start and leaves a flat ceiling behind. That is usually the same project as putting in an island that seats four.
- Plumbing for a new bath is laid out along joist bays, in a soffit or through a chase, never through the middle of an engineered member.
- Removing the kitchen wall means confirming the load path down to the footing, then sizing a beam and posts that land on something solid.
- A basement bedroom needs an egress opening and a second exit path, and basement permit requirements are worth reading before framing starts.
- Subdivision associations often review exterior changes, so a deck, an addition or a new window opening can carry two approvals rather than one.
- Sump systems and grading matter even on new construction, since discharge lines and downspouts were often set for a grade that beds, patios and twenty years of mulch have since changed.
Closest municipality to the Platt Road shop
Five miles separates this township from our shop, which is shorter than any other town we serve. The completed work we can point to sits on the streets immediately around it: Ypsilanti to the east and Saline to the southwest, along with Ann Arbor. A finished example nearby is this Ypsilanti basement refinish, framed and finished the same way a Pittsfield basement would be.
Being this close changes the small things. A crew starts earlier, a material run takes twenty minutes round trip, and a warranty call gets handled the week you make it rather than the month. Office hours run Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the phone is (734) 540-0347 if you would rather talk it through than type it.
Send us the floor plan and we will tell you what the wall is holding up.
