georgian 'deck'

we love repeat customers! yesterday i met with a client from 2008 who had really wonderful compliments for us on her breakfast room, deck, and garage access. i loved catching up with her and chatting about some new projects for her beautiful home.

and i thought it would be fun to re-visit the work we did on their home in 2008. to summarize, this family was dealing with some tricky interior layout issues and the fact that their main living spaces were completely cut off from their backyard by the basement level garage and driveway access. we designed a generous deck - a bit tricky given the vehicle clearance and structural span issues! - as well as some interior renovations.

we created the 'deck' with refined details in mind. the structure is carefully trimmed out in the same language as the existing georgian. the walking surface is a high quality ipe hardwood with concealed fasteners, so there are no visible screws and no stain required. a local iron artist fashioned the custom rails.

a quick reminder of the 'before':

and some details of the 'after':

inside the home, we shifted the wall between the family room and dining room. the wall is designed as a 'thick wall' with built-ins and double pocket doors so that the kitchen can be very open to the family room. we were successful in maintaining the more formal alignments of the georgian family room and accurately matching the existing trim and paneling details.

shifting the wall location created some breathing room in the kitchen and allowed us a generous breakfast room that opens up to the new deck with a large expanse of glass doors and transoms in the language of the other fenestration on the back of the house. the 'thick wall' and breakfast room also mediate the transition from the more formal dining and family room adjacencies to the less formal kitchen.

spring 2008

this family needed an interior upfit to their breakfast room as well as an exterior transition to their backyard, which was one story down. we needed to mediate the entry to their garage below, so there were some complicated vehicle clearance issues. most importantly, they wanted their exterior space detailed consistent with their beautiful georgian, and much nicer than a 'deck.' here is a 'before' photo of the exterior:

along with some 'before' photos of the interiors. the living room side is a bit oversized and beautifully paneled:

and the kitchen side is undersized for the much-needed breakfast table.

myers park facelift!

23 May 2013

construction is starting on our myers park facelift project! it's always an exciting moment to drive by a house and see the building permit out front. we're thrilled to be working with matt ferguson of the stirling group once again- www.facebook.com/stirlingcharlottenc.

here is a reminder of the before on this project:

13 July 2012

a sampling of some drawings. they're pared down from the original set, which included a very cool glassy dining room extension, wraparound porch, rear 2nd level balcony off the master, and covered outdoor dining area! real estate has been all over the place in the last few years, and this homeowner was very thoughtful about how much to invest, how long they might stay, etc. we LOVE the cool beam / bracket detail and hope that it stays!!!

15 May 2012

we delivered schematics for our myers park facelift last week! 

first and foremost, these clients wanted a front porch. there were some floor plan issues that we needed to work out, but this project is really about the street presence of this home and the front porch. they have a gorgeous front yard and a very small, postage-stamp backyard. so this home needs an inversion to the front!

there were some obstacles - the landscaping cues to very rigid, formal alignments. the family is not a formal family, and the house itself is misaligned all over the place. the upstairs windows don't really have any spatial relationship to each other, and there's a false sense of 2-dimensionality. The property is a beautiful corner lot in myers park and just aches for a 3-dimensional perspective of the house. We designed 4 very different front facades for this home:

simple, simple, simple - a generous front porch, a correction to the middle window upstairs, and a soft eyebrow dormer. this is a very affordable option and leaves the owners room in their budget for a lot of landscaping work.

upstairs balcony - dad really wanted to see one of these!

classic southern porches - charleston style. it's an inversion of that model - which is, of course, always seen from the short front end. but totally fitting for this corner site.

craftsman 2-story - this one had more floor plan changes than the others, and re-worked some tricky spaces upstairs.

all in all we think it's a compelling range of options that all work nicely on this site. we'll see!

16 March 2012

today we begin work on a facelift to a myers park home - for a wonderful family that i'm really looking forward to working with. i have so many ideas for this home that i can barely contain myself!

let the sun shine! - progress

progress on our georgian sunroom project! these windows are awesome, and the sunroom feels just AMAZING inside. I can't wait to grab some photos of this project trimmed out!

let the sun shine! - new project

construction begins this week on a sunroom renovation to this dilworth georgian, so we thought we'd share a few 'before' shots!

the original 'sunroom' was 'renovated' in the 1950s. we went through several iterations of the side porch design before settling on this scheme. this home falls within the dilworth historic district and this project was approved by the HDC in september 2011.

we'll keep you posted - this is going to be a gorgeous space.

georgian refreshed... complete!

this was a great project - a family that couldn't decide between renovating and moving (which is very typical of our clients!). they really took their time through the design process, and as a result their home is perfectly tailored. and that's what we aim for - a perfectly tailored piece of architecture.

the front of this georgian remained mostly the same, with the exception of this new front entry. i love it. the gentle curve, chunky columns... it's all consistent with the style of the home, but refreshingly contemporary, too.

and here is an image of the front before the porch (yes, that's an enormously pregnant ME taking measurements and notes in front). but the real story is the back of this home - that's where everything happened.

you can see the form isn't foreign - it borrows from the original home. but everything else changed. our primary goals were to blow open the interiors in a dramatic way (the original layout was fragmented and cramped), and to design the addition to the back so that it had a gentle, scaled transition to the backyard - the owners were very committed to NOT adding on a 'box' in the back. the scaling of the addition was really successful on this project, as were the details. our attention to detail ensured that the architecture maintained a feeling of clean simplicity in even the most complicated situations (and wow, this house had some complicated situations!). the interiors are wide open for the full depth of the house on one side, and the family loves it.

the existing interior rooms were so small and fragmented that we couldn't really get photos of them - it was impossible to get the camera far enough away in a small room! this photo is a good example - the existing family room. It was about 7-6x14, very tight and oddly proportioned. through those interior windows (!) is the dining room and past that is a small galley kitchen. the route between the kitchen and family room was long and circuitous with some very narrow doors - which was a huge problem for this family.

and the 'after' - the interiors were completely opened up from the front of the house through the back of the house. here is the open interior looking towards the front of the house:

and this is the same space looking towards the backyard:

we were very deliberate in our alignments in this home, too - to get to a very reductive simplicity takes a ton of designing. there are a few spots where these alignments really worked out beautifully. i love this shot of the guest bedroom, it's so peaceful:

it's a gorgeous project, and such a departure from the original home. wow!

working...

i love this photo of us at work this morning! diana and i visited our myers park georgian and spent some time reviewing the trim details. this is a very complicated project, and the goal of the architecture is to create something seemingly simple and clean. the alignments, rhythms, proportions... they're all so critical to the success of this project. it's getting close, and i can't wait to see it!

georgian refreshed... progress

things are happening really fast at our myers park georgian. here are some construction photos from the last few weeks!