Recent projects

To make room for this new 7000+ square foot home, an existing circa 1950’s ranch style house on their property was demolished. The client’s wish list included ample space for entertainment and 5 bedrooms including a large master suite. The owner runs a financial services business out of the ground level of the house. In order to convey a sense of stability and success it was also important to the client to create an impression of grandeur.

The slope of the site works to the advantage of the outdoor space in that when viewed from the rear yard the house’s mass is substantially reduced thus creating a more pleasant, pedestrian scale in the rear yard.

The substantial change of grade present on this site was gracefully controlled by a number of stone walls that blend into the landscaping. For guests arriving at the front door, the elegant circular driveway leading to a covered entry or porte cochere begins the process. After entering the front door, a three story entry foyer with a custom built, circular stairway further conveys the stateliness the clients were trying to achieve.

The client’s office occupies most of the ground floor space. An elegant bar and billiard room off the main entry foyer affords the owner and his guests a comfortable space to relax and unwind.

The family’s living space is on the second floor which, due to the grade changes on the site, opens right out onto patio and lawn area in the rear. In contrast to the grand scale of the entertaining spaces, the owners chose to have a cozier, more family scaled kitchen.

The owner, dissatisfied with the original architect, engaged me to complete the design and oversee the construction. The contractor had partially completed with construction of the second floor at the time I started work on the project. And as
if replacing the architect part way through the endeavor hadn’t created enough drama, the contractor doing the work on the initial phase of the construction was dismissed as well.

My task wasn’t just to redesign the first floor spaces but to incorporate several arguably unfortunate decisions that had been made in the initial design and subsequent construction into the final scheme so that the end result looked like it had been thought through from the beginning. There was the temptation to demolish a number of ill-considered features and actually one of them was but in the interest of overall budget considerations it was in the owner’s interest to save whatever could be saved. Needless to say, this was a challenging project.

After a number of iterations, we arrived at a solution that satisfied the owner’s desires while staying as close as possible to the initial budget.

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This project involved the demolition of a vacation home that had been in the family for several generations. The new house was relocated slightly on the site to gain a better view of the lake behind the house and to improve the vehicular access to the Garage. The owners and their two sons are active skiers at nearby Mount Snow and the home has been used extensively since its completion last year.

Given the heating load of its Vermont location and the fact that it’s a second home, energy efficiency was high on the list of the client’s goals. By utilizing smaller sized rooms, a heating system that is 97% efficient and by paying attention to construction details this home was awarded a 5 star plus rating for energy efficiency by the State of Vermont. The house is warm and cozy at a fraction of the cost to heat their primary residence in Framingham, MA.

This project was another example of a growing family that had outgrown its original house. The existing circa 1918 bungalow style home had tiny rooms with unusually low ceilings. A poorly designed addition, built in the early 1980’s just barely satisfied their needs when they purchased the home but didn’t begin to solve their expansion requirements. The 1980’s addition was demolished to make room for the new construction.

In order to create more ceiling height without dwarfing the original structure, the first floor of the new addition was dropped four steps below the existing first floor. This made the scale of the new first floor rooms much more appropriate to their size and made a smoother connection to the rear deck and lawn area beyond.
The second floor connected at the same level as

the existing.

The owners achieved all of their design goals; have plenty of space for their growing family to spread out and they can easily accommodate big family get-togethers. Although the addition is bigger than the original house, when viewed either from the street or
the rear yard, there is no sense that the new construction overwhelms the existing space.

This project involved a major addition to an existing home built in the early 1920’s. The current residents raised four children in a house better suited to themselves and just two kids. As the children entered their teenage years the space issue became a major problem. The primary purpose of the project was to create more living space on the first floor and two additional bedrooms, an additional bath and a laundry area on the second floor.

The relatively deep and narrow layout of the property dictated that the new space would be located behind the existing house. Another condition impacting the layout of the addition was the left side lot line that angled in as it extended toward the rear of the site. This further restricted the width of the buildable area. To make room for the addition and to comply with Needham’s rather restrictive zoning regulations, the existing garage was relocated onto a new foundation further back on the property and its existing foundation was demolished.

By offsetting it just two feet from the existing, the new space was able to stay just within the setbacks. Extending the front porch around the side of the house into a new mudroom/entry softened the appearance of the building from the street and the new entry substantially improved the flow of the interior. A new kitchen in the space of the existing kitchen and dining room made the space much more open and usable for a grown up family. The adjoining family room/dining room affords the family another space to relax and spread out as well as providing a gracious entertaining area

Absent some glaring problem with the existing structure, I am of the opinion that most additions look best if they complement the style and exterior detailing of the original house and when the integrity of the original structure is left intact. The owners of this project agreed with those basic premises; they were concerned that the new space should complement the existing architectural style and not overwhelm it.

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