Project Profile
Description: Remodel to add more eating space to an already-expanded kitchen area and bring more light and space into the house.
Scope: Kitchen; family room.
Type: Remodel.
Location: Ann Arbor, Mich.
Homeowners: The homeowners wanted a kitchen addition that would give them a larger eating area in the kitchen and a new family room.

Narrative
Key considerations: Provide open layouts and "flower power" to a home with too many walls and too much darkness. Improve the view with lots of windows to the outdoor world. Expand an already-expanded kitchen and improve the long, narrow, hemmed-in family room.

Result: Though the addition is only 12-by-16 feet, natural light from the windows and skylights creates the illusion of largeness.

Highlight: Paul LaRoe uses Andersen® windows 95 percent of the time in his remodeling business. LaRoe lobbied the Michigan state legislature to repeal the Model Energy Code (MEC), which limited the amount of glass relative to wall space in additions. The MEC was rescinded, and LaRoe is currently helping rewrite it.

Testimonials:
"Andersen windows are an easy sell to our clients because it’s a household name. People are looking for a good, insulated window." -- Paul LaRoe, remodeler

"In the past, there was always concern that if you had all this glass, you’d have a cold room and lose all this energy. Andersen windows are good quality, well-manufactured and well-insulated, so they’re not a source of heat loss." -- Paul LaRoe, remodeler

Execution: After analyzing the homeowners’ desires, Goodrich and LaRoe realized what they really needed/wanted was a bumped-out family room. So they began by going westward with a 12-by-16-foot vaulted addition windowed on all three sides.

Solution: Though not a large addition, the illusion of largeness is achieved by bringing in natural light with more windows and skylights. The family has a larger eating space, as well as a new family room where they can go sit and be in a brighter space.

Design Solution
Grab the Sky
What square footage cannot muster, height and light and views of a larger outdoor space can strikingly provide. To open up the smallish family room, architect Goodrich vaulted the ceiling and tucked a pair of Andersen Flexiframe® custom trapezoids and a peak pentagon into the gable. Eleven Andersen casements march along the sofa line. "The mullions between them give more definition, so its’ not just a ribbon of windows," says Goodrich. "There’s some support to it, a rhythm"

Featured Andersen Products
Andersen® Perma-Shield® casement windows; Andersen® Perma-Shield® Flexiframe® trapezoids and pentagon; Andersen® Frenchwood® hinged patio doors.