Final Photos of Modern Farmhouse After a Fire

New Front of House

Front- BEFORE

Back- BEFORE

Move in day has come to the family whose house burned down! It's been rebuilt in a new bigger, better way with modern air sealing and HVAC systems, upscale finishes, and reorganized spaces with a focus on open rooms that connect to the outdoors, while also offering private spaces to each resident of the extended family living here. This 'Modern Farmhouse' used to be a Cape Cod style home with a cramped kitchen, awkward dated sunken family room, and small dark bedrooms, without much connection to the beautiful mountain views and sunlight available on the site.

New Back of House

When the home burnt, the foundation was the only piece we could re-use and the grading around the house- with it's back basement walk-out door- remained as is for our new design. Staying atop that footprint (while adding a mud room and garage to the side of it) set the design constraints, but when thinking about rebuilding, we made bold changes to the building massing, roof shape, floor plan, windows, and feel/style of the home to better fit the dynamic family who lives there. We omitted the back sun room and wrap around porch, increased the size of the back deck, and added a traditional front porch entry.

Living Room - Wet Bar near Glass Doors to Deck

Living Room - toward front and Foyer, Hall to Bedrooms

The new home is light-filled and spacious with a chef's kitchen connected through a brick archway to a great room with a fireplace, wet bar, and enormous deck. All those windows and glass doors made the interior so bright and open that the old "sun porch" room you see in the "BEFORE" photo didn't need to be recreated in our new design. All the public spaces have glazing toward the south/back/mountain view and the deck. The new bedrooms have full-height or vaulted ceilings with glass doors to individual balconies and their own custom bathrooms. The building envelope is super tight and well insulated and the new HVAC system is super high efficiency. The materials are classy inside and out - and the site work, when complete, will boast a circular drop-off driveway at the front porch and two-story foyer front entry, and a patio with a hot tub off the back. (The spa tub was existing, and remained untouched by the fire and the water damage after the fire.)

Kitchen - toward front

Kitchen - toward Dining/Back & connection to Deck and Living Room

Mud Room - Cubbies by Garage Entry

Dutch Door from Kitchen to Mud Room
and a Pet Door too

Walk-in Pantry in Kitchen

Darker colors used in Upstairs Study

Laundry Room

Interesting and unique custom details abound here to make you smile. We have built-in cushioned benches in the eating nook and the mud room entry. We have cubicles for organizing in the mudroom, dressing room, and pantry. There is ship lap wainscoting in the bathroom and the mud room and custom live-edge wood used as a sink base and as the fireplace mantel shelf. Barn wood creates a cozy plank ceiling in the master bedroom. Fun flooring appears in the Dressing Room and the Laundry Room. And high transom windows let in lots of light. The tile floors have warming mats to prevent cold feet, and while most of the interior door and window trim is painted white, the Study received a stained wood finish instead. Some of the smaller, private rooms have special wall colors, but the main public spaces remain neutral with their wall color. The interior doors and door/window trim is modeled after a traditional Craftsman design and has oil rubbed bronze hardware. While each room has its own unique features, theseconsistent details like doors, trim, and wood flooring bring continuity to the house as a whole.

Two Story Foyer Entry

Custom Hall Bathroom

Restaurant-style Dramatic Powder Room

Happy Dressing Room

Shoe Cubbies in Dressing Room

Master Bedroom w/ Barn Wood on Vaulted Ceiling & Lots of Light

Pet Doors allow the cat to leave the bedroom

This project was a joy to work on. I am often helping people improve their housing by making it work better for them and be more beautiful and efficient, but in this case, it was more than that. These client's took lemons and made lemonade, to use an inadequate phrase for the circumstances. The house they had moved into only months before was gone, along with all their belongings, and they always had smiles when I met with them. They  deliberately choose awesome interior finishes everywhere- from the lighting, to the fireplace design, to the plumbing fixtures and tile, to the kitchen appliances. They had a great contractor who could implement the ideas shown from a photo. And now they have a house that is truly personal to them and they are so happy to be living in it together.

Click here to read the previous posts about this project:

http://cwb-architect.blogspot.com/2018/12/modern-farmhouse-after-fire-finishes.html

https://cwb-architect.blogspot.com/2018/10/modern-farmhouse-mechanicals-roofing.html

https://cwb-architect.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-house-after-fire-framing.html

https://cwb-architect.blogspot.com/2018/07/rebuilding-modern-farmhouse-after-fire.html

Chapter 3: Adirondack Cottage on the Lake Framing, Porches, Roofing

Adirondack Lake Cottage - view from across the lake

Great Room feature window bump out on toward lake

The Adirondack Cottage on the Lake I designed is now enclosed from the weather. The roof is on, the walls have their insulated sheathing and windows installed, and some temporary doors are installed. Porch and deck floors have been framed and one can really see the entire massing of the building and get the feeling for all the rooms - interior and exterior. It looks and feels fantastic!

I am pleased by how connected each room feels to the lake in particular, and the outdoors in general and how the balcony bridge and soaring feature window really make the interior unique the moment you step through the front door. My layout of windows, glass doors, transoms, and outdoor decks/porches, as well as the placement on the site, really maximized this water-front property. The house totally takes advantage of it's location.

View from Great Room back toward Kitchen and Balcony above

  Other than the master bedroom suite tucked to one side of the floor plan behind the fireplace, most of the first floor area is open. The great room is the focus with many, many windows reaching upward toward the roof, and fireplace, and a high ceiling with a balcony looking over into it. The kitchen and dining spaces are in view, and a first floor office/bedroom is also very visible, with glass French doors as it's entry.

Glass doors in Dining Room to the deck

Bridge Balcony 

The second floor rooms and balcony are tucked up into the roof. This helped the massing of the home fit in with its petite neighbors a bit better. Windows pop up in dormers from the roof and the bridge balcony allows one to be high up with views down into the foyer, the great room, and out the many lake side windows toward the water.

Front Porch - dormers above (temporary door)

View from Bridge Balcony down into Entry Foyer

Lake Side Elevation

Front/ Street view with protected existing tree

Glass doors/windows in Master Bedroom have small roof overhang

To read the previous post on this project click on the link below:
cwb-architect.blogspot.com/chapter2-adirondackcottageonlake

Making 2 Small Bedrooms into 1 Larger Bedroom

Here is a fun post that shows the same "solution" implemented at two different projects of mine.

Did you ever hear it stated that people used to be smaller? Well, furniture certainly used to be smaller. And people had way less stuff. Houses have grown much larger compared to the average family home of decades years ago. From the Census Bureau:

Over the last 42 years, the average new US house has increased in size by more than 1,000 square feet, from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 (earliest year available from the Census Bureau) to 2,687 square feet last year. (2015)

With our king or queen sized beds, dual dressers, matching nightstands, and perhaps a cozy chair or bench at the bed's foot board, many bedrooms in older homes are simply not large enough to fit us! Add to that the issue that average folks years ago did not have nearly as much clothes and shoes as we often do today- and that means many homes do not have enough closet storage space either.

This was the issue with two different clients of mine. We removed a wall between two small bedrooms to create one larger "master" bedroom.

The first example was originally two really small rooms in an older home. The new room spans from front of house to back of house, 17.5 feet, allowing it windows on 3 sides. A new window was added for balance/symmetry, so there are a total of 6. windows (Six!) two on each wall. The area that used to be hallway to access the back bedroom was taken over to become double closets in the new master bedroom. We kept the windows, doors, and trim matching the rest of the existing home, but the clients personalized the space with more contemporary touches like interesting flooring, mirrored closet doors, and lighting. The carpenter cut back the oak stair rail such that no one can tell we made a change. This is always a design goal of mine: for an addition or renovation, especially in a historic home, to be seamless and harmonious- being sure to not have an abrupt or glaring line between "old" and "new" changes.

New 11'-8" x 17'-6" Master Bedroom

New back window and a whole wall of closets

New abridged handrail & balusters

BEFORE: Hallway was traded for closets

The other project I did this type of renovation on is also an older home, where bedrooms were small and there were almost no closets. One bedroom had already been re-purposed into a more useful second floor laundry room. Below is the before and after floor plans, where you can see how the design created a stair up to the attic, a renovated bathroom with a shower, a second floor laundry room with lots of storage, and a new large master bedroom with a large walk-in closet and many windows toward the river view.

Not everyone can remove a bedroom- some 3 bedroom homes, no matter how small the rooms, need to remain 3 bedrooms. But when it's possible, I find folks who live alone, or whose kids are grown and gone, are very happy to make the layout of the spaces work better for them personally, rather than worrying about re-sale. The  truth is that there are many homeowners who don't have 2 kids or need 3 bedrooms, and so more and more we find that renovating to create a more personalized living environment rather than the "standard" family home makes sense.

Chapter 2: Adirondack Cottage on the Lake Site Planning

View of New Adirondack Cottage on the Lake

Doing a site analysis and the subsequent site specific design that an architect can bring to a project is showcased in this design. The client had lake side property, with a gutted 1950s ranch home on it, and wanted to create a contemporary Adirondack style cottage where they could enjoy the lake year round, and into their retirement.

BEFORE: View from Street Side

BEFORE: View from Lake Side

The existing house on the property was very small and in a state of incomplete interior renovation. It was located very close (only 3') from the NE side property line and the rooms didn't take advantage of the lake views as one would hope. It had a front-loading 2 car garage about the same size as the house. It was determined early on that the engineering to change what was there into what the clients wanted was going to cost more than building new. It was the location, on the side of a peaceful lake, that was the important thing, so we set out to create a new design that took advantage of that.

Site Plan for Adirondack Cottage on the Lake

The town planning and zoning boards were happy to see our proposal to center the new home on the width of the property. With special permissions from The Department of Environmental Conservation and the Zoning Board of Appeals, we kept the construction footprint a bit closer to the back-lake side than was standard, so that an established tree in the front yard could stay. The clients wanted to keep an attached garage, and one of the "Aha" moments came when I suggested rotating the garage entry to the side, instead of having the doors face the front, so the house could look more traditional by "hiding" the garage. For other posts about how architects deal with the unsightliness and impossibly large massing of a garage near the house, click HERE and HERE.

Lake Side with Door to Recreation Room below Living Room

The grade slopes down from the street to the lake with enough vertical change that a the Recreation Room in the cellar can have nice windows and a door out the back, and the cars can drive into the attached garage from the front. This large change in elevation can make the living levels - which are at the level of the street- feel an unfortunate separation from the lake because they are at a a much higher elevation.

The new design works to mitigate this separateness with some re-grading with retaining walls to create a usable level area at the base of a large deck accessed off the Dining and Living Rooms. The choice of a "One and a Half Story" cottage style, in which the second floor is located within the roof space and dormers provide the window space, also serves to minimize the height of the structure. This type of massing also provides for a greater square footage on the ground level, and less upstairs, which works perfectly for the client's wish for a ground-level Master Bedroom Suite. The new Living Room, open to the Entry, Kitchen,  and Dining is to be a soaring high space with a balcony above and many, many windows toward the lake view.

There are always trade-offs, and unfortunately one large tree that was close to the back wall of the former structure did have to be removed . But amazingly, the sewage treatment system (aka septic leach field area) was able to fit outside of the 100' wet lands buffer established around the lake, and this new system will be a major improvement in terms of the health of the lake.

View from Street

Click here to see the previous post about this project:
cwb-architect.blog/adirondack-cottage-on-lake-1

Family Room Addition to a Village Home- final pics

New Family Room looking toward back yard

This project was a fairly simple and small addition off the back of a historic village home, in the place of a former covered back porch, but it creates a huge change in the house for the family living there.

Like many historic homes, the kitchen is not open to the living area. While new home layouts often have a family room open to the kitchen, layouts in older homes usually have the kitchen tucked away from public, socializing spaces and in a more "service" role. This doesn't really work well for our more casual lifestyles today.

Pocket door to kitchen and Sliding glass door to Covered side porch

Standing in Kitchen looking thru pocket door

This project created a new first floor family room, connected to the back yard with a large deck and to the kitchen with a glass pocket door. This simple change expands the family's space dramatically, allowing for separate teen hangout room, entertaining space between kitchen and yard, possible guest bed space, and even, if needed someday, a first floor bedroom for an older person who can no longer climb the stairs. (The owner created a full first floor bathroom already- another element not often found in older homes.)

Deck notched around tree & connected to side porch & new room

New Window over Kitchen Sink

One "Aha" moment in the design was when I suggested a large back deck off the back of the new room. It offers outdoor living space and helps focus the room toward the large (for the middle of a village) back yard. The deck shape notches around an existing shade tree and has contemporary materials and a large size.

Ditching the idea that because it's an addition on an older home, we needed to mimic historic materials and details, was the other "Aha" moment. The new spaces have a bold color scheme and interior trim that is sleek, not fussy. The window and glass doors are decidedly contemporary in their layout/style/shape/color. The new room has a bit higher-than-standard sloped wood ceiling and recessed lights. The deck has a funky "cattle panel" wood and metal guard rail design.  All this gives it a very different, updated feel from the rest of the historic home. (The exterior woodwork does match the existing home. Siding will be painted to match in warmer weather.)

To see the earlier post about this project click here:

cwb-architect.blogspot.com/family-room-addition-to-village-home