Remodeled Right

A Winnipeg builder recently renovated his own 1950 house, a project worth noting if you're weighing a similar addition-without-expansion. Rather than tearing down or bumping out the foundation, he turned a cramped half-story into a full second floor, growing the home from 1250 to 1600 square feet while keeping the original footprint, foundation, and even the old fir floor joists. The result added a third bedroom and two full bathrooms upstairs, plus a mudroom, without changing the house's size on the lot or its look on the street.

The energy upgrades are the more transferable part of the story. The home went fully electric, capping the gas line and heating and cooling with a 2-ton cold-climate air-source heat pump (a system that moves heat rather than burning fuel, and still works in extreme cold) backed by electric resistance for the harshest days. A 12-panel, 7.2kW solar array on the garage covers about half the home's yearly energy use. The building envelope got serious attention too: triple-pane windows, thick exterior foam insulation, a fluid-applied air barrier, and an energy-recovery ventilator (which brings in fresh air while capturing heat from the air leaving the house). The finished blower-door test, a measure of how much air leaks through the walls, came in at 0.62 ACH50, far tighter than typical code-built homes in the area.

The project shows what's possible when you keep sound original structure and invest instead in the envelope and mechanicals, rather than assuming a bigger footprint is the only way to get more livable, efficient space.