Reading capes and colonials, opened up with care

A postwar town with a prewar core

Just under ten square miles of land hold about 25,400 Reading residents and roughly 9,700 homes, by census figures. The middle of that housing is the postwar build-out: one-and-a-half story capes, ranches and modest colonials from the 1950s. Behind it sits a large older layer, close to 29 percent of homes predating 1940, made up of colonials, foursquares and Victorians.

Each era opens differently. Prewar houses bring plaster and lath, balloon framing and the chance of knob-and-tube wiring still live in a ceiling. Fifties houses tend to have small rooms, one full bath and an upstairs tucked under a steep roof. Their kitchens were often galley-shaped, with the refrigerator crowded into a corner. With a median year of 1958, nearly every house here was painted before 1978, so lead-safe work practices belong in almost every Reading scope.

Basements in houses this age were built for coal bins, oil tanks and laundry, not living space. Many have low ceilings, a fieldstone or block foundation that weeps after heavy rain and old mechanicals in the middle of the floor. Some are worth finishing and some are better left as dry, well-lit storage, and we will tell you which one you have.

If an inspection turns up something to correct, we fix it and tell you what it was.

Gaining space by going up

With about 2,500 residents to the square mile, Reading is a settled Greater Boston suburb north of the city, and lots are not endless. When a family needs another bedroom or bath, the room often comes from above. A shed or gable dormer on a cape turns sloped knee-wall space into full-height rooms, and a second floor over a ranch can double the living area without giving up yard. On a ranch, going up is also a chance to fix a low-pitched roof that has never shed snow well.

Going up is structural work. The existing ceiling joists, walls and foundation have to carry the new load, and Steve checks them before a design is settled, because a 1950s cape was framed for an attic, not a bedroom. The Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License covers exactly this kind of work on one- and two-family homes, and the building department inspects the framing before it is closed in.

Most Reading homes stay with the families who own them, about 84 percent owner-occupied, so kitchens and baths get the same long view. A 1950s kitchen opened to the dining room, a second bath fit under a new dormer, a basement finished for a growing household: those are the projects that suit this housing, and each one starts with the same check of what the existing structure can carry.

What working with us looks like in Reading

The drive up from Raynham is about 42 miles, nearly straight north. The first step is a walkthrough in your house with Steve, followed by a written scope that names the work, the inspections it needs and the questions only demolition will answer. Nothing is left to a handshake.

Permits run through the town building department under 780 CMR, the state building code. A dormer or second-floor addition typically sees inspections at rough framing, at rough electrical and plumbing by the licensed trades, at insulation and at final. Each one is on the schedule from the start, so the job moves from one stage to the next instead of waiting on the calendar.

Once the job starts, you hear about changes before they are made. Floors and stairs are covered, dust stays inside the work area, and the crew cleans up before leaving each day. If an inspection turns up something to correct, we fix it and tell you what it was. Customers put the standard this way: "If its not right; Steve wont put his name on it!"