Each part of the house is connected to the next. The term “building blocks” reminds us that if you change a detail in one room, it may create a domino effect throughout the house. Change the size or pitch of the roof, and as we witnessed last week, the juncture of other walls such as in the connecting dormer, may be affected.
Last week this resulted in the inclusion of a shed dormer off the back of the new attic dormer. This week we are witnessing what happens when new loads are put on existing walls. As is has been throughout this design and renovation process, where the two structures meet up – the older deck house with the 80’s addition – is where we are experiencing all the problems.
Steve and his crew removed three out of fours of the walls in the top floor of the original deckhouse structure. We saw the results in mid-September when the front of the house was literally taken down.







New walls were constructed to house the main living area and kitchen – the new hearth of our home. All the windows needed replacement, after years of fogging and for improved insulation and performance. So new walls were the most expedient way to accommodate the framing for these.
The windows are also an extremely important part of the new design aspects of the house, which includes a complete revamping of the window placements – from swapping out extraneous sliders with fixed units, to enlarging views with a wall of windows onto the anticipated gardens, to maximizing views to Vineyard Sound. The new design also works with a more unified approach, repeating window patterns around the entire house, rather than the selection of randomly sized units on the 80’s addition.






Okay – back to the issue at hand. Once the walls of the deckhouse were removed and the master suite addition put on above, new stress was created on the sole remaining wall. Over the course of a few weeks, this wall began to bend into the room, pressured by the new weight and began pulling away from its juncture to the 80’s addition. The best recourse for correcting this problem would be to reconstruct this remaining wall as well.
A question is posed whether we could have anticipated this problem? Given that there is little way to see the actual construction of a house prior to taking it apart bit by bit, I’d say there was only a small possibility that anyone would predict this situation. Houses settle, sometimes quickly, sometimes over the course of many years. We were actually lucky that this issue came up so quickly, and did not cause trouble after the walls had be closed up by presenting cracks later on. There will be the inevitable cracks and settling, but let’s hope this remediation will mitigate what could have been a more costly problem down the road.