NARROW-MINDED
Thin home on thin lot presents big redesign challenge
A16-foot-wide, 1,221-square-foot home should be a remodeling breeze.
But when the house includes a chimney that must be removed, and when it sits on a 20-foot-wide lot with no parking, that home can seem like a high-rise headache.
Just ask Epic Group Ohio, the Dublin construction firm that overhauled the narrow Italian
Village home, which will be showcased with 10 other renovations in next eekend’s Home Improvement Tour, sponsored by the National Association of the Remodeling Industry.
“If you’re new to urban renovation, you’re in for some surprises,” said Bob Dyas, who runs Epic Group Ohio with his wife, Susan, and partner Joe Minardo.
Gretchen Stephenson and Stephanie Belt were in the market for an urban getaway when they came across the two-story Italian Village house a few years ago.
“This came open, and we saw potential,” Belt said. “We saw it as a great opportunity. We knew Italian Village was on the way up.”
They also knew they had a project. The house, built in 1900, had been inhabited for years by an artist who used the home as his studio. Although he had made useful updates, such as adding a tankless water heater, the home was due for a makeover.
Stephenson and Belt contacted Epic Group and Mary Shipley-Smith, owner of Mary Shipley Interiors. With the help of Heidi Machul Bolyard, with Simplified Living Architecture + Design, the team came up with a plan to renovate the home top to bottom.
The plan was the easy part. The home, like many in the oldest parts of Columbus, had no off-street parking, and contractors can’t park a Dumpster on the street. Bob Dyas thought he found a
solution by renting a spot on a neighboring driveway, but that deal fell through after a day.
So, at the end of each day, Epic’s crew piled demolition debris in front of the house to toss into Bob Dyas’ pickup truck, one load at a time.
“The demo never seemed to end,” Dyas said.
“We filled up the pickup at least a dozen times, in addition to the Dumpster once and two tow-away trailers,” he said. “I’d pull the truck up, and they would run stuff out and load it up.”
All interior walls came down, along with all the cabinets, shelves, doors and bathroom fixtures. Then came the chimney, which dominated the middle of the house. Removing the brick stack required removing a 4-foot-wide section of the floor separating the first and second levels.
Removing the floor revealed an inch of soot and one rodent nest that convinced the owners to replace the first floor’s bead-board ceiling altogether.
Very little of the home, in fact, was salvaged, beyond the back door.
The challenges didn’t stop with the demolition. Drywall workers couldn’t simply park a truck at the house and unload stacks of drywall, as they normally would. Instead, the lack of parking required them to carry drywall one sheet at a time from a parking space down the street.
“We parked wherever we could around there,” Susan Dyas said.
With neighboring homes just a few feet away, it was impossible to get any equipment in the backyard to lay the patio, forcing workers to dig the patio base by hand.
Rebuilding turned out to be the fun part. Epic reshaped the interior, adding a guest suite off the front entrance and allowing the rear to be an open living/kitchen space leading to a new deck and patio. The second floor is occupied by the master suite.
Even though they were unable to keep most original touches, Shipley and the owners sought to echo the home’s age. They added wood floors, brick veneer walls and distressed maple cabinets.
The look is accented by decorating touches, including huge old gears mounted on walls, a bathroom shelf made of iron pipes, industrial-looking light fixtures and a metal coffee table.
“They wanted a cleaner combination of urban and industrial,” Shipley said. “The key is to get the correct mix of components.”
Today, more than a year after the completion of the renovation, Belt said she and Stephenson wouldn’t change a thing with the six-figure project.
“There’s nothing I would do differently,” Belt said. “We are so happy with this place.”