Mudroom addition & hot tub enclosure preserve home’s historic aesthetic.
When the original builders of this stately craftsman house began construction nearly one hundred years ago, the last thing on their minds was where to place a hot tub.
Photography by Jeff Tan
“The challenge was taking a modern hot tub and making it match a hundred year old house, and making it look like it belonged there,” says lead carpenter Patrick Conrad. To meet this challenge, general contractor Hammer & Hand teamed up with architect Gabe Headrick of Steelhead Architecture to design and build a hot tub enclosure and mudroom addition that tied in seamlessly with the craftsman aesthetic of the home while preserving the homeowners’ privacy.
“We really wanted to incorporate the mudroom into the hot tub enclosure and have it be accessible to both their side yard and back ally. The enclosure has four steel posts holding up the roof structure and we did all of the flatwork and carpentry,” says project manager Chris “Coop” Cooper.
The posts were originally spec’d for wood but were replaced with steel to increase stability and durability. “We had the steel posts fabricated with buckets to carry the framing into big footings below,” explains Conrad.
The project team moved the door to the mudroom from the back wall to side wall and replaced the original concrete steps with two sets of wood stairs, granting access to mudroom from both the back ally and side yard of the home.
They say that “the devil is in the detail”, but so is the solution.
“A hot tub enclosure on a hundred year old craftsman could really look awful, so the detail of the corbels underneath the soffit and the way that all the trim details tie together were really key to the project,” says Cooper.
By matching the original details of the home, the mudroom addition and hot tub enclosure offer increased privacy for the homeowners without sacrificing the historic integrity of the home.
– Jeff
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