A century-old Astoria two-family, taken down to the studs and built back up a floor taller.

A tired two-family that had run out of room.

The house was a standard Astoria two-family: two floors over a cellar, dark red siding over the original frame, a shallow entry portico and a rear yard that had been given over to an above-ground pool. Nothing about it was failing dramatically. It was simply at the end of its useful life — undersized, under-insulated, and laid out for a different century.

The owners did not want a renovation that stopped at surfaces. They wanted the square footage the lot could legally carry, and they wanted the building's structure, envelope and mechanicals to be genuinely new when the work was finished.

Add the floor first. Everything else follows the structure.

Building a third floor on a hundred-year-old wood frame is not a framing question, it is a load-path question. Our recommendation was to resolve the structure before touching a single finish: carry new steel down through the building to the foundation, then frame the addition off a structure that could actually hold it.

That decision set the sequence for the whole job. Steel, then framing, then a continuous new envelope — sheathing, air barrier, insulation and windows as one system rather than four separate trades patching each other. Only once the building was closed, dry and insulated did interior work begin.

A three-story house that reads as new construction, because structurally it nearly is.

From the sidewalk the building is unrecognisable. Black vertical board-and-batten runs the full three stories, broken by cedar-toned window surrounds and a matching entry canopy. The iron fence and the neighbour's brick party wall are the only things in the photograph that did not change.

Inside, the house is finished to the same standard throughout: two complete kitchens with full-height cabinetry and stone counters, four bathrooms with large-format tile and river-rock detail, a rebuilt stair running the full height of the house, and custom millwork carried floor to floor. The mechanical systems, windows, insulation and roof are all new.