The Green Bungalow

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A view of the completed exterior. The dormers which add so much to the upper floor are barely noticed from the street and finished to match the home. Wood storm windows and storm door replaced aluminum storms and give the house a more traditional look. Refinished vintage front door and vintage fixture along with period paint colors are details which enhance the front of the home.

A view of the completed exterior. The dormers which add so much to the upper floor are barely noticed from the street and finished to match the home. Wood storm windows and storm door replaced aluminum storms and give the house a more traditional look. Refinished vintage front door and vintage fixture along with period paint colors are details which enhance the front of the home.

Here's a good shot of the house before we started the project.
Kitchen before- yes that's 1960's plastic tile on the wall. Electric range.
Kitchen after-This room was gutted and insulated with closed cell foam. All new
Living/Dining room before.
Living/Dining Room After. The goal here was to enhance the space without comprom
The best part of this house was the upper floor.
We gutted the attic and cut the roof open framing a dormer off each side
Here's a shot of that space again after it was finished. We only really added ab
The dormer on the other side provided room for a ľ bath and walk in closet.

 This featured project is my own home. It was purchased and remodeled quite intentionally as a demonstration project for what I feel is a huge area of potential—the Twin Cities “Bungalow belt” of homes from the early 20th century. This was a pilot project for the MN Greenstar program, which achieved a Silver rating fora type III project. A type III project is a remodel that adds living space without expanding the footprint of the home. We were able to dramatically increase the home’s usable space by finishing the upper half story, adding two dormers to make space for a master suite and bath.At this time, it is the only type III project to achieve a Silver rating. We achieved Gold levels in every category but water conservation, which resulted in the Silver rating.


Our goal was to transform a run down but very well built craftsman style home into a comfortable, beautiful and environmentally-friendly living space. The Greenstar website summarizes the tenets of green building:

Green building is a whole-systems approach applying the five (5) key concepts ofGreen   building – energy efficiency, resource efficiency (including durability), indoor environmental quality, water conservation, site and community – to the eight components of the traditional building process – outdoor and site building, envelope and systems, mechanicals, electrical and lighting, plumbing systems and fixtures, finish materials and coatings, waste management – in order to improve the impact of building on individuals, their families, the community, and the environment.

For more information on this project, see the article we wrote for the Twin Cities Bungalow Club newsletter. The home was featured on the Bungalow Club's 2008 home tour and got a great response, despite the scarcity of furniture owing to the fact that we had just moved in.

http://www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org/files/gazette.PDF

We picked this house because it had much of its original oak woodwork intact in the living and dining room. The kitchen was a mess and the upper half story had a lot of potential. We also wanted to live in walking distance to a light rail station. In my opinion the housing in the light rail corridor is great asset that is only barely tapped.  There are some very nicely built homes at affordable prices in this area.As in our case the low price of the fixer upper gave us a pretty big budget to work with for renovations to make sure were able to get all the amenities and efficiencies we wanted without skipping anything. The goal was to have a “not so big house” with a lot of nice spaces an attention to architectural details. It was very satisfying after a career of remodeling other people's houses piecemeal, a kitchen or bath at a time, to do a whole house top to bottom, inside and out to get it all right the first time.