Consider the bathroom remodel in the Salem home of Ken and Judith Van Osdol. Ken awoke in the middle of the night in the fall of 2012 to the sound of a waterfall—except there isn’t one on their secluded acreage off Battle Creek Road. “There was a leak in the toilet and the water was cascading down into the dining room below,” he says.
Although it might be difficult see, we added close to 5 feet of width to the kitchen. Clearly this was a lot of space to work with and we took advantage of that. We completely re-worked the placement of the appliances and made the space and efficiency of the kitchen vastly improve.
The kitchen has always been the heart of the home. Over the years though, the kitchen seems to have also become a popular place to do more than cook. While our best intentions are to have guests in other parts of the home, they always mysteriously gravitate back towards the kitchen.
Kaufman Homes is in the final stages of this extensive remodel in Laurel Springs. Our schedule indicates we will be done close to the middle of March which means we will have done phases two, three and four in two and one half months.
We have finally installed the last of the kitchen and family room cabinets and put the finishing wood touches to the cabinets and ceiling areas in each room with 3 ½” crown molding with all cherry crown in the kitchen and painted crown in all the non-cabinet ceiling areas in the family room.
In the progression of things we now were ready to remove the old support beam for the original small opening and put in a larger and longer beam to carry the larger opening and its roof load. To remove the old beam we had to support the ceiling/floor joist carrying the upper floor and the main roof load by building temporary support walls on each side of the beam.
On January 2, 2012 we resumed the remodel job in Laurel Springs. The holidays were over and the kids were back in school.
In 2011, Kaufman Homes began working with a customer in Laurel Springs to determine what would be the best way to satisfy their changing housing needs and desires. They discussed with us about selling their current home and building new.
Indoor air pollutants have increased over the past few decades for variety of reasons. Contributing to indoor air quality issues in homes are construction of more tightly sealed buildings, reduced ventilation rates to save energy, the use of synthetic building materials and furnishings, and increased use of chemical products such as pesticides, housekeeping supplies, and personal care products.
In Salem, as well as most parts of Western Oregon, our weather is usually mild enough to allow certain remodeling projects and custom homes throughout the Fall and Winter without serious problems. In past years, Kaufman homes have begun many various size new homes, remodels and additions in October and November without significant problems.
