Skylights, and How They Changed My Life

In 1999, my husband and I got married, and for a wedding present, my father-in-law gave us his house. The 2300 square foot house is located in Windsor Locks, CT and situated at the end of a quiet street, with many retirees who live nearby.

Joe was supposed to move out and live with his girlfriend, when we moved in, but due to unforeseen circumstances, his girlfriend ended up in a nursing home and then she passed on. Her family took over her house, and Joe ended up staying with us. He broke his hip and became bed ridden for awhile but he quickly bounced back but he used his wheelchair to get around because it was easier on him. We all lived together in his house, until he passed from prostate cancer, about five years later.

While he was alive, we talked of remodeling our home with him, but because he was a diabetic, along with having had a quadruple bypass, we decided to wait for our remodel until he had passed, thinking that it was too much stress on him.

I grew up in Colonial's and was accustomed to having windows on the upstairs floors of our homes, but this house is a Cape that had its attic renovated to hold two big bedrooms and a bath. My father in law did all the work upstairs, including laying the wooden floor, the electrical wiring and building beautiful built in drawers in both bedrooms along the half wall.

When Joe was alive, he liked to live in a warm house, and kept the thermostat at about 72 degrees because he was always cold. For us, that meant that we lived with the air conditioning on, pretty much year round, in our upstairs bedrooms. Sometimes there was a 30-40 degree variation between upstairs and downstairs, with our room often in the high 90's. With an air conditioning unit in each bedroom, that gave us a half of a window on each end of the house that provided natural light. We never had fresh air except for the two months out of the year that we removed the air conditioners and left the windows open. I jokingly referred to the upstairs part of our house as the cave because it was so gloomy and depressing. Even after dad died, and we put down our thermostat, it was still hotter than hades.

What did we want out of our remodel?

After dad passed, Bobby, my husband and I talked about what we wanted. At first we talked of raising the roof so that we could stand upright on the sides of our bedrooms and bathroom. But, after getting an initial quote, we realized it would be about $30,000 to raise the roof and add windows. We knew we also wanted to renovate our kitchen, the basement bath and re-wire the house as it was a fire hazard. Because our budget was limited to about 100K, we decided to step back and assess what we really wanted out of our remodel before we did anything.

The bedrooms upstairs were big enough at 17' x 22', so we didn't really need any more footage, but the issues I had were no light, it was hot and we had no fresh air. After consulting a builder friend, we decided to opt for skylights that could open up, instead, and that would give us the light and fresh air that I desired. We had a friend who was a roofer who looked at the insulation in the attic and told us part of our problem with being too hot was because the attic was over insulated and had no breathing room. When we re-roofed the house, we also added a ridge vent to allow the hot air in the attic to escape. We learned that this would help prevent black mold.

During our discussion, I had also asked my husband if there was any way we could add a shower in the upstairs bathroom because it was a pain to go down to the main floor. We agreed that having three full baths would improve the market value of the house as well, and since we were doing a total renovation, he agreed.

Skylights and a dog house dormer saved us $20,000

My husband is the most generous guy I have ever met. Imagine my surprise when I came home from work to find not only the skylights in the bedrooms but a cathedral ceilinged bathroom as well. He decided to add a dog house dormer that gave us an additional six feet of headroom in our bathroom upstairs.

No longer would I have to worry about scraping my hands on the pop corned ceiling when I blew dry my hair in the morning. Instead of just a shower, he bought me a Jacuzzi tub where I could sit and relax, and read my favorite books or take a shower. He knows how to make me a very happy lady, that is for sure!

Now when we go to bed at night, we look up at the stars. Although neither of us is that knowledgeable about astronomy, we both love searching the sky for shooting stars. When we wake up, we can see if it is snowing or raining, or windy, just by the movements of the trees in our view. We sleep with the skylight open in the spring and fall, and don't need an air conditioner anymore unless it is really hot. When I am in the shower or the tub, and feel the hot sun on my body, melding with the water, I feel like a princess. The warmth of the sun fills me with such happiness.

The other good news is that our electricity bill has plummeted because we no longer need the AC window units or the lights on all the time upstairs. In fact, I rarely put the lights on anymore upstairs, because just don't need them. My favorite is when there is a full moon out; I love to fall sleep feeling the moon's light on my face.

Remodeling a house is a huge feat, requiring money and some serious planning. Sometimes you have to step back and ask yourself, what is it that I really want out of this remodel. When we did that, we honed in on what we really did want, which for us was light and air, and a little more room in the bathroom.

In the end, we saved ourselves about $20,000 that we might have spent, if we didn't assess our true desires. Having skylights has changed our cave dwelling bedrooms and bath into a paradise of light, fresh air and has eradicated the depressing gloom. Not only do we have a wonderful place to live, it has become a lot more energy efficient and cheaper to afford, as well.