This is a project that I've worked on for almost two years — a major renovation of a 6-storey Tudor style house built in the 1920's.  When my clients bought this house, about a half of it was uninhabitable, with unused storage rooms, 1970's fake wood paneling and broken windows.  The house had a good "bone structure" but was very poorly planned and unattended to for many years.  My clients wanted to make their home bright and airy, and to take advantage of the fantastic views overlooking the town from a cliff-side.

We came up with a game plan where we would concentrate on completing the upper three floors (what you see in the pictures below, a view from the street) first so the family could move in, then isolate the bottom levels and build those out.  First, the new central A/C system had to be put in, which became a challenge because all exterior walls and the majority of interior partitions are hollow cement block.  Normally, you snake the A/C ducts in the cavities of the walls and ceilings, but here we couldn't do it everywhere, only in select locations where the interior partitions were wood framing.  Everywhere else the contractors had to break their way through concrete.   Luckily for us, almost every level has its own roof, and we used those attic spaces for all the ducts, wiring and equipment.

It was peculiar that there was no outside access from the street level down to the backyard.  You could only go through the house.  So, after sliding down the cliff-side a couple of times, we decided we needed a stair.  Realizing the potential cost of such stair that would drop almost 50 feet, my clients felt it would add so much to the house, both functionally and aesthetically, and decided to go ahead with the stair. Now it looks like it has always been there, thanks to the masons' craftsmanship.  A pond at the bottom of the stair was cleaned up and a self-containing waterfall feature was added, controllable with a remote.