335 Maplewood Ave Renovation: Eye of the storm

A Brief History

The project entails repairing the building at 335 Maplewood Ave in a manner that meets both preservation and sustainability goals. The building is the new location for Petersen Engineering, a firm that has been located in Portsmouth since 1992, and specializes in sustainable building engineering. We intend for this project to showcase techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability and intend to share all aspects of the project locally and regionally through open houses, presentations, industry tradeshows, case studies and publications. We foresee this project being a valuable educational tool to demonstrate that preservation goals need not be compromised by sustainability goals. We have teamed with Bruss Construction who we know from past collaborations has exceptional experience and expertise on projects with the dual goal of preservation and sustainability.

The project received approval by the Historic District Commission on January 6, 2010 with construction scheduled to begin early February 2010.

The projected peak heat loss reduction is 85%.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Eye of the storm

The dust has finally settled outside as the Bruss crew has been off site for a couple of weeks now. The silence and absence of constant banging and screaming table saws is somewhat eery, as if we just entered the eye of the storm (knowing that first floor structure repair that is scheduled to begin sometime in the next few weeks).

Over the next week or two, there will be local a local carpenter on site (whom i don't know the name of yet!) renovating the interior of our (vacant) office located on the second floor of the addition. On Friday, a couple of brothers from the craigslist "services offered" section came in for a few hours to scrape off and bag up the existing plaster and wall paper. They did a great job.