Gambrel Roof House is Reborn

The client’s purchased this house in Warren, NJ for the neighborhood, school district, property, and potential. Their goals were to expand the house with additional and up-to-date living spaces, create a more usable multi-car garage, provide the house with more curb appeal, and somehow add storage space especially since the house was constructed as slab-on-grade without a basement or a usable attic. The clients did not like the gambrel type roof design but weren’t sure if it was possible to change. We advised them that, unlike a real gambrel roof, their roof system was not structural but rather “applied” so it would be fairly easy to change. Since they also wanted an accessible attic for storage and they did not like the low slope roof, we removed the roof rafters and designed longer span engineered wood rafters on a steeper slope. A 10-foot addition was added to both the first and second floors across the entire back of the house to expand first-floor living spaces and second-floor bedrooms. The room over the garage was reconfigured and an additional story was added over this area to provide a large master bedroom suite. New exterior materials included maintenance-free siding, stone veneer, and maintenance-free trim, corbels, corner pilasters, etc. New windows were aluminum clad simulated divided lite. The custom arch trim elements were designed to be fabricated on-site by heating standard profile PVC trim.