|
Before & After
Readying for Retirement
Renovate Rather Than
Relocate
By Scherrie Goettsch • Photos by Brad Noblitt, courtesy of Kliethermes Homes & Remodeling
After being married for 35 years and living in their 1960s home near Hulen Lake for 25, Mark and Lynn McIntosh considered downsizing.
However, after raising five boys in the house, gaining two daughters-in-law and two grandsons, with a third on the way, the thought of moving shed no light on their dilemma. Update, expand, contract in size or sell?
“We just loved our neighbors,” Lynn says. “We loved how close in we are, and it was like that decision you make somewhere around 55 or 60. We didn’t want to move.” But, how could they age in place?
The floor plan was choppy and they wanted more space — especially a porch.
Admitted creatures of comfort, the couple concluded that they wanted to keep their well-worn home. The major catalyst for direct change, however, was a disintegrating deck. Lynn called only one contractor for the job: Dan Kliethermes.
“I selected Dan,” Lynn reflects, “because of what I read in the (Columbia) Business Times over a year ago.” The Business Times routinely features people you should know with a series of questions, one of which is name a Columbia businessperson you admire. In this particular issue, the person featured “admired Dan Kliethermes as a businessman -- that he was an honest man,” Lynn says. “I went with that. I was familiar with the name and reputation from Hickman and friends, but the honesty sold me.”
 Honesty also helped build Kliethermes’s business — so much so that under its name Kliethermes Homes & Remodeling, Inc. is the motto, “a Tradition of Trust.” With more than 25 years of experience, Dan tries to treat all of his jobs — big or small —with the same degree of attention. “I continually go back to the clients and ask, what did you like, what didn¹t you like? What I kept hearing over and over was, Wow, you came in and asked us questions so that you could understand us,“ Kliethermes says. He realized that the homeowners heard themselves verbalizing the answers. The process helped them confirm in their minds what they wanted.
Ultimately, Kliethermes also discovered it allowed clients to change from what they thought they wanted into what they really wanted and I thought that was pretty profound. Applying that process to help couples agree on their focus, Kliethermes reasoned that with Mark and Lynn McIntosh the discussion had a different purpose initially, but the outcome was what he hoped would happen. “You can’t force people to tear down walls,” he says. “The understanding has to come from the clients, they have to verbalize it.”
Lynn had a hard time believing that the living room wouldn’t be the living room and the dining room wouldn’t be the dining room when the job was finished. “I have to admit,” Lynn says, “Dan was right about placing the porch off the kitchen. It makes you feel like you¹re more outside than inside. I had nine windows in a row in the family room, but I¹d covered them up with ugly curtains so we could watch TV. It was hard for me to take the wall down, and now, I’m so glad I did. I kept hanging on to it making it smaller and smaller. Finally, (neighbor) Rena (Wegener) said it had to go, and she was right. I was still hanging on to what I call my insurance room, the one room where someone could come to the door and see that it was clean because I had five boys.”
Soon after the remodeling team arrived last October, Lynn realized it was her turn to host the family Thanksgiving just before the living room wall would be demolished.
Opportunity, in the way of a blank canvas, knocked.
With a flare for creativity, the McIntosh family proceeded to decorate by painting turkeys, whales, a Nemo shark and whatever the grandsons wanted on the wall scheduled for demolition. While short-lived, the art wall is now a permanent fixture in the McIntosh family folklore.
With the wall gone, seeing straight through from the front door to the back yard was still a slow transition. As Lynn recalls, “pulling the trigger is the hardest part, but that it’s all behind me is really good. If we didn’t do it all at once, we wouldn’t have done it, because it’s just too hard. We had to live in the basement. It was a cold, wet winter. Now kids come home and we’re totally comfortable.”
What started out with a deck falling off the house turned into more than 2,600 square feet of change to the main floor, an additional 20 by 22 square-foot screened-in porch, a new deck, an 1,100 square-foot, stamped-and-stained concrete patio on the lower level, with a retaining wall to shore up a sloping yard.
Regardless of where the changes occurred, additional decorative lighting was significant. “I guess I don¹t like to clean house,” Lynn muses, “so indirect lighting is huge. My best parties were when the lights would go out. At Christmas time I have nothing but (strings of tiny) white lights all over everywhere. I told them I needed light.”
With their master bedroom consuming two of the three old bedrooms on the first floor, cove lighting around its perimeter adds to the ambiance. “Now, we can live on the first floor,” Lynn says. “If we couldn’t have lived on the first floor it would have been very difficult. And when we get old we can drive to Schnucks, or to Wal-Mart, or to the Mall, all without getting on the highway. Those are things you have to start thinking about. Those were some of our considerations.”
Resources:
Contractor: Kliethermes Homes & Remodeling, Inc.
Cedar logs: LaCross Lumber
Iron railing: American Sun Control
Composite/plastic decking: Timber Tech
Stamped concrete: Kliethermes Homes & Remodeling Inc.
Kitchen granite countertops: Dave Griggs Flooring America
Kitchen/bath cabinetry: RSI Kitchen and Bath
Indirect lighting in crown molding: Phillips Supply
Kitchen tile flooring: Dave Griggs Flooring America
Wood floor: Precision Wood Floor
Brick: Modular Masonry
Landscape Boulders: Midwest Block & Brick
Patio Doors: Pella Windows & Doors
Therma Tru front door: Boone County Lumber
Windows: RSI Kitchen & Bath
Plumbing: Wallace Plumbing
HVAC: Star Heating & Cooling
Electric: Phillips
Electrician: Reams Electric
Painting: Garrett Painting
Mirrors: Koonse Glass
|
|
