After slow quarter, remodeling pace picks up in Columbia

Mary Ann Bihr and John Horstman didn’t want to move from their drafty, 60-year-old home at the edge of the Old Southwest neighborhood, so the retired couple decided to pay for an extensive renovation.
They’re replacing all 22 windows, sealing all of the cracks and swapping the furnace and water heater with energy-efficient models.
Hank Ottinger, president of the Old Southwest Neighborhood Association, also embarked on a remodeling project to make his house more energy-efficient, and three nearby neighbors are expanding the sizes of their houses.
In Columbia as a whole, the pace of extensive home remodeling — projects that require building permits — was lower in the first three months of 2010 than it has been since the same period in 2003.
There are pockets of high activity, however, along the 400 to 600 blocks Stewart Road and Westwood Avenue in the Old Southwest neighborhood.
Michael Priest, the Maranatha Construction Co. contractor working on the Bihr-Horstman home, said remodeling projects have been abundant in the past month.
“I talked to another window and door specialist; they do renovations, too,” he said. “They are busier than they’ve ever been, at least this month. April has been almost a record month for them. I dare say that… two months ago… they were scared.”

Hank and Katy Ottinger decided that energy-saving measures at their home were long overdue.
When they first purchased their notable, historic Westwood Avenue home in 1983, Hank recalled, “Some of the windows in the kitchen were such that if you had a candle lit on the table, when the wind blew, you could see it flicker.”
Katy added that up until now, “There was no insulation under the (living room),” which had been so cold and drafty that no one stayed in the room very long.
“It’s really sort of an anomaly to be sitting down in our living room now,” Hank said. “It wasn’t just for aesthetics. It was for comfort… that was the main stimulus for this remodeling project and to make the house less expensive to heat.”

The Ottingers installed a pair of French doors to seal off the attached greenhouse and replaced the living room’s old pine-board flooring with engineered hardwood flooring supplied by Accent Floor Coverings.
Between the 400 and 600 blocks of Stewart Road, three more homeowners are in the process of adding on or building two-car garages with additional space. One owner has built a gambrel-roofed garage to match his house, and another homeowner is building onto the back of his bungalow on the corner.
After a move from San Diego three and a half years ago, Nancy and Matt Robinson, parents of three children younger than age 5, made the decision last year to tear down the existing carport in the back of their Stewart Road foursquare.
“We wanted a real garage,” Nancy said. “We had the two cars but no room for anything else… and it looks nicer. We refinanced our house last year when the interest rates were real low, and we thought, well… let’s do it. Matt’s pretty secure in his job, and we love it here.”
Matt started tearing down the carport in March, she said. “He’s doing all the work, and his dad and his uncle come and help.”
Work on the new two-car garage, carport and storage space, however, takes a back seat to Matt’s regular demands as an emergency room doctor. Whenever they can, his dad, Terry Robinson, a carpenter from St. James, and his uncle, Tim Robinson from Rolla, help out for one-week stretches. For extra carpentry practice, both the front and back porches also had to be completely rebuilt after termites and carpenter ants invaded about a year after the family moved in.
“Houses might take a little longer to sell in this neighborhood, but they are still selling,” Nancy said, “so we plan on staying — long term.”
Bihr, a retired physical education teacher, said their renovations were initiated after Priest did an energy audit.
“It just snowballed after that,” Bihr said. “The city was doing this low-interest loan where you could borrow up to $15,000. We got approved, no problem. I think it was something like 4 percent. It was like free money in a way. I don’t have to go in and take out my savings, which is drawing interest.”
Priest will spray foam into her attic to seal the space and add fiberglass bats and rigid foam board on the underside of the rafters and gable ends. “She has a whole house attic fan in the gable end, but she’s never had any insulation in the attic,” which she uses for storage, Priest said. “What we’re doing with the attic rafters is considered the wave of the future. It stops the air from ever leaving the house.”
After searching awhile for replacement windows, Bihr found an Integrity line of windows made by Marvin at Boone County Millworks.
“Of course they were more expensive, but they fit better,” she said. “There’s a reason for it, it’s not just aesthetics. I had storms, but I hated to clean my windows. I will be so thankful that we did this. Replacing 22 windows will cost about $17,000 to $18,000 — a nice trip to Europe. But we’ll live here until we die. If something would happen to us soon, it’s almost necessary if you want to get top dollar for your house. … I just love this area.”