What do you say when a prospective client asks you whether or not you would be interested in retrofitting his 1950’s suburban tract house with timber frame roof system? After a long pause and a deep breath, you say, “Yes.”
In this remodeled house in suburban New Jersey, a homeowner showcases his hobby at home by virtue of the home itself. When the conventionally framed roof of his 1950’s bi-level tract house began to sag due to undersized rafters, the timber frame hobbyist seized the opportunity to rebuild his roof with, yes, timber framing.
The homeowner asked me to ensure that thermal efficiency was improved all over the house from the prudent selection of windows to the thickening of exterior walls with additional layers of insulation. His wife established many aesthetic directives to be met, such as updating the kitchen and bathrooms in order to breathe new life into a tired old house.
Aside from obvious technical concerns, I had aesthetic concerns about imposing a massive timber frame structure on this unassuming house– would the results be all brawn and no beauty? And to complicate matters, the homeowners originally wished to retain shiny contemporary furnishings that I initially thought may be out of place among the naturalistic timbers. To sort through this incongruous mix of design challenges, I scripted an imaginary narrative to pull together opposing objectives. It read like this: the house had once been a carriage house built in the Arts and Crafts style that was converted into a family home during the Colonial Revival period. This manufactured history allowed me to accept rustic timbers into the house while providing crisp interior details to accept the contemporary furnishings in harmony.
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Before and After: The street elevation displays the tract house traditionalism common to this neighborhood of 1950's houses. To suggest that the house predates neighboring houses, I placed the main entry Porch perpendicular to the street. Its rounded arch is the first in a sequence of arches used to mark entrances to and within the house. The edge of the roof covered in random-size and –exposure synthetic slate retreats from the street. Dormers of two sizes align with the windows on the first floor. Their standing seam metal roofs repeat one of the accent colors in the slate roof. Shutter-like fixed panels on the larger dormers repeat the diagonal boards of the hinged shutters around the house. These same diagonal boards make up some of the doors inside. Shutters and a Dutch-door style gate close off the potting shed, which is used to store trash cans convenient to the street.
Revelation: Grander elements occur on the garden elevation, where the actual scale of the house reveals itself. The elevation is divided in half by the projecting Dining Room tower. Two levels of covered outdoor spaces give access to many rooms. The signature railing, with its perforated chain of rotated squares and ovals, first appears as a set of spandrels under the Entry Foyer windows on the street elevation. On the back, it creates a balcony-like effect at the Living Room doors: its horizontal members unify the garden face with a belt-like effect. The outdoor stair touches down on one of a series of bluestone landings around the house, connecting the first floor of the house to the garden; landscaping gently flows under the stair.
X-ray Vision: Because the Kitchen cabinets back up to one of the existing staircases in the house, I opted for an open arrangement by creating a see-through hutch with open backsplash and glass-backed upper cabinets that admit light and allow a view to the back yard. The arch in the background is one of several used to organize the elevations. It sits above an entirely transparent pair of barn doors.
Behind Door Number One: What could have been a hotel corridor-like line up of doors was made simple with a wall of sliding panels that give access to the Walk-in Closet, Master Bathroom and Vanity. Constructed to accommodate light sconces, the sliding wall's chevron design elaborates on the pattern of the exterior shutters and dormer panels.
Timber!: Timber framing "touches the ground" in only two places in the entire house, both in the Entry Hall. It proved challenging to determine an appropriate scale so that certain design elements would hold their own against massive timber frame members. Thinking of the horses that would have inhabited this would-be carriage house, I designed hefty railings to look like fancy corral fences. Because gypsum board walls often appear grossly inarticulate against the intricacies of timber framing, I designed board and batten paneling for some areas to relieve the relentlessness of uninterrupted planes of wallboard.
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