Whitmore Lake remodeling for converted cottages
Much of the housing here began as summer property. Small cottages went up close to the water, then got insulated, added onto and lived in year round, almost always a piece at a time and almost always without a permit on file. The result is one address holding what amounts to three separate houses.
One address, three houses
The pattern repeats up and down these streets. At the center sits the original cottage: two-by-four walls at twenty-four inches, a low ceiling, maybe a wood floor over sleepers on a slab. Bolted to one side is a 1960s addition with a slightly different plate height. Bolted to that is a 1990s addition built to a third standard entirely. Nobody tied the three together, so a laser level laid across the whole house reads like a staircase. Older stock elsewhere in Washtenaw County is at least consistent with itself.
That history shapes the estimate. A quote written from a floor plan will be wrong, because the plan does not show where insulation stops or which wall is bearing. We open a small area first, look at the joist ends, the sill and the heat runs, then price the real conditions. On a converted cottage, honest contingency beats a low number that changes in week two. Kitchen flooring alone can turn into a subfloor rebuild once the levels get checked.
Kitchens across two floor levels
Cottage kitchens sit in the original core and the dining space usually sits in an addition three inches lower. Joining them means either a ramped transition, a sistered and shimmed floor system, or accepting a step and designing around it on purpose. Once the plane is settled, kitchen remodeling can proceed normally, with cabinets that hang plumb because the wall behind them got straightened first.
Powder rooms and the plumbing that reaches them
Adding a half bath in a converted cottage is rarely about the fixtures. It is about finding a vent path through framing that changes direction twice and a drain run with enough fall to reach the existing line. Powder room additions often land under a stair or in a former closet, and a full bathroom renovation in the original core almost always means new supply lines.
Crawl spaces and the part called a basement
These houses seldom have one basement. There is a stone or block section under the cottage, a vented crawl under the 1960s wing, and sometimes a slab under the newest piece. Sealing and conditioning that mixed assembly is what basement climate control means locally, and it does more for comfort than any furnace upgrade by itself.
Four-season rooms replacing a screened porch
Nearly every converted cottage has a screened porch that got glassed in one summer with single-pane windows and no insulation under the floor. It is unusable from November to April. Rebuilding it as a four-season room means new footings, an insulated floor deck and heat that is actually sized for the space. Related home addition work follows the same rule.
Decks rebuilt on real footings
Lakeside decks built forty years ago tend to sit on concrete blocks, buried posts or the ground itself. Frost has moved every one of them. A rebuild starts with poured footings below the frost line and ledger flashing that actually sheds water, because a rotted ledger takes the rim joist with it. See our deck and patio services.
What an unpermitted addition leaves behind
None of this means the previous work was bad. Some of it was careful. It means the work was done in stages by different hands with different budgets, and nobody ever stood back and looked at the whole assembly. Here is what we find most often once the drywall comes off a Whitmore Lake house.
- Insulation that stops dead at the line where the original exterior wall used to stand
- Floor levels off by three or four inches between the cottage core and the newer wing
- Joists sized for a porch roof now carrying a bedroom and a full bath above
- An addition resting on posts and piers instead of a footing below frost depth
- Duct runs never resized after the heated square footage roughly doubled
How a project starts on a converted cottage
We measure before we design. Levels get shot in every room, the crawl gets opened, and the electrical service gets checked against what a modern kitchen will pull. Then the drawings answer real conditions rather than guesses. Where past work went in without a permit, we sort out with the township what needs inspection now and what can simply be corrected as part of the build. Our renovation process puts that discovery ahead of the contract on purpose.
Whitmore Lake sits eighteen miles up US-23 from the shop, which puts a crew on site early and keeps material runs short. Wright’s Renovations covers the area alongside the lake properties in Brighton and the river-grade houses of Dexter. Reach the office at (734) 540-0347 on a weekday morning, any time after 8:30.
Let us open a wall, read what the last owners left, and give you a number you can build on.
