Garrison Colonial Home Update – Front Of House

• While we're going to work with a Garrison Colonial overall, this is particularly a study in porch design to Front Of House.
• Garrison Colonials are plentiful across the fruited plain and not so easy to dress up, especially splits.
• The house designer, when updating a Garrison Colonial, has two choices
  • Emphasize the Garrison’s L2 overhang feature at Front Of House by unadorning in the true Early American style of Northeast Colonial
  • De-emphasize that Garrison feature with gussy-up.
• Before The Architect prefers gussy-up.
  • Otherwise, Early American stark is
    • Really stark and is not for broad market appeal
    • Needs special siting
    • Adequate fenestration gets difficult
  • Further, it is so that, having chosen gussy-up, two paths appear
    • Pavillion-out a foyer
    • Portico the main entry
    • Along with several assistive features to plus-plus the Front Of House update to this Garrison Colonial
• In the other Garrison Colonial article herein under, Before The Architect pavillioned plus-plus...please see http://searchwarp.com/swa212291.htm
• This time, Before The Architect will portico plus-plus 

• This house was a dump 
  • Its presentation was repellent outside (looked abandoned a long time) and in (unless you, too, punctuate your family disagreements with food fights all over the house…everywhere…and that’s what’s fit to print)
  • In addition to its overall appearance as a worn out Garrison Colonial
• Before The Architect gave this one
  • A fabulous facelift on the outside and
  • A major cleanup and redesign, major remodeling work on the inside, too  
  • For now, we'll focus only on one before and several after pics to convey ways in which you can do what you never thought possible for very little money considering the eye candy at the end of the rainbow and very careful planning 
    • These pics should highlight Front Of House update materials and methods —
      • One at the very beginning, before update - it's a pic of the multiple listing picture
      • Several at the very ending, when even the new landscaping was finished.
    • They're both "Wow!" pics in the sense that —
      • The first one is "Wow, how run down and covered over and drab and dull"
      • The rest should generate a collective "Wow, how'd you do that?  Is it really the same house?"

• Here's our diamond in the rough taken straight on, huge tree-in-the-wrong-place and all 

• You can sort-of see that certain features predominate —
  • Typical Garrison Colonial with its characteristic second-story overhang.
  • Lost in the woods
  • Single-story garage on the left, main 2-story residence in the middle, and single-story screened porch on the right
  • Stereotypical
  • Blah, blah, blah

• And here's what happened to it, principally you'll see a variety of custom home design elements centered on the portico design addition

Wow, Really The Same House? . . . . .

First,  on street entry...

Next, straight on...

From the front right corner of the property

From the left of deck, looking right

From right of deck, looking left

From deck to front yard, looking left

From deck to driveway entrance and turnaround

Comment:  This Garrison Colonial update was one of a couple of dozen within blocks in the neighborhood.  And this Garrison Colonial update was the first....but not the last.  In the following couple of years, at least a half-dozen other Garrison Colonial owners attempted their own mimic styling, though none succeeded in this designer's opinion.  Sniff.  Sniff.   

• There’s the new portico over the new front door, supported by slightly oversized, round, and tapered columns
• Here’s the plus-plus
  • Removed the overgrown flora
  • Added a turnaround driveway
  • Added entablatures over the windows in the main residence
  • Built a walking deck across the entire front of the main residence
  • With direct access to the interior of both
  • Living room with single-swing Atrium and side panels and
  • Entertainment room with single-swing Atrium and side panels
  • Added a deeper sitting deck outside at one end of the walking deck.
  • Constructed two wide and welcoming staircases from grade to decks.
  • Closed off the below-decks with lattice
  • Added a couple hundred yards of fill (almost all for free from nearby excavations), graded even, and seeded for about 3 times the original yard
  • Laid a wide slate walkway from driveway across the entire front of the house to access either new stairway construction
  • Enclosed the old porch complete with a new a second fireplace to compliment our redesigned family room

POSTSCRIPT

• On the inside, this old house changed, too 
  • At the garage end, we extended an abutting room over the garage to take interior space advantage of a very low-lying garage floor and developed an entertainment area off the kitchen
  • We dropped walls between kitchen and the new entertainment area and installed both a wet bar and a sitting bar
  • The kitchen was gutted and redesigned from scratch
  • The screened porch got enclosed
  • These redesigns and others were done in addition to upgrading floors, trim, paint, paper, lighting, security, etc.
  • Oh yes, no more food stains, no more bits of broken dishes, and no more smashed walls

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Comments on this article:

» left by JL from US (1 year 53 days ago.)

This is an amazing makeover. It would be good to see the house from the same view as the "before" photo.
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» left by Ralph Pressel ^(46,463) (1 year 53 days ago.)
Dear JL,
Well know you've done it. Yes, you have.
AG and The Missus have looked for years to find other pics of after for this Garrison Colonial's exterior and only came up with that one. 17 years to be sure.
Until now.
Motivated solely by your note and its right-mindedness, The Missus looked once more and there they were. Not many, but more than one. None exactly depicts the Before pic; however, taken together, the new sense of our work abounds.
AG and The Missus are sorting, digitizing, prepping, and packing now and may have more up today or tomorrow, the Searchwarp's cranky uploader be willing.
Thanks for the win-win. You get to see more of the new. AG and The Missus get to see more of their good times.
All the best,
AG and The Missus
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