Front the start it was anything but easy! It required us to coordinate the wishes of our clients with the requirements of the Building Department, the Zoning Board of Appeals and FEMA all before the first swing of a hammer. If that wasn’t enough, this beautiful marsh front lot had another challenge. The 1st story of the original house is on the ground and it floods. This forced us to develop some cutting-edge building science details that would allow the ground floor to be as flood resistive as possible. Our goal was not having to replace anything major like flooring, cabinets, walls, etc. and do the least amount of work possible after a flood. But after all that planning the big question was would it work? Unfortunately, we got our answer much too soon about a month after completion with the flooding caused by Hurricane Isaias. It worked! Not only did it function as designed, it was a resounding success requiring no building components to be replaced and was back to normal in a day. Mother nature’s test was no laughing matter the ground floor received approximately 3 feet of tidal storm surge into the house. The finish pictures were all taken after the storm, can you tell there was 3 feet of water inside this house?