Upon returning to Vermont, Bryan and his wife embarked on a journey to renovate a small 1850’s era “factory-worker” house, and their vision and efforts became nothing less than transformational.

The principal idea was to live as large as possible in the modest 1,000 SF house. To achieve this a major plan reorganization and small addition were needed to optimize use and expand the sense of space. To begin, they demolished an eastern porch to create, in its place, a 500 SF two-story addition, will all of the needed service spaces; entry “mudroom”, sunroom, and two bathrooms, one being a private en-suite, and the other being a guest/family which, to open up the first floor plan, was moved from the first floor to the second floor.  With the expansion of their family, the renovation of the third-floor attic was also needed to add 400 sf of flex space which they enhanced, and opened to the site, with a roof deck. This final “interior addition” brought the total usable area of the home to ~1,800 SF - the bones for which were largely in-place.

Relocating the services spaces to an ancillary “service box”, clean and contemporary in its massing, and employing several glulam beams to support second story and roof loads above, they were able to free-up the first floor to create an open plan with a spacious kitchen, standard dining room, and cozy living room - all encircling a central wood stove.  The addition of a large bay window on the southern side of the house expands the living space further as an oculus - illuminating the living room and connecting occupants to the landscape with wide views into the private wooded hillside.  An intermediate space, floating between indoor and outside, the bay window becomes the center stage for family affairs, evermore so with the warmth of radiant heat under bottom. It too is centered in constant balance with the large central woodstove which anchors all primary spaces. A small sunroom and “sitting room” further open the house to the rear yard and woods with views and pathways into the rear yard, in all seasons a place of quiet and repose.

To improve the connection to the site throughout, wide eye-level “ribbon” windows replaced existing narrow windows - to maintain privacy, create panoramic views, and spread light up and across rooms. Unlike most of the house, the second-floor plan remained untouched, with only closets being added to improve each of the three bedrooms.  Mold in the existing plaster, from the constantly humid regional climate combined with lead in the existing floor paint, necessitated that the majority of finishes be redone.  What could be salvaged was celebrated, including exposed rough sawn timbers and decking in ceilings and details throughout.  

An energy retrofit was necessary to counter the extreme, and often manic, weather patterns of Vermont’s central valley.  Exterior insulation now blankets the entire house, with a rainscreen of local northern cedar offering protection from hard wind and rain in the shoulder seasons.  With daily heating needs met entirely by a woodstove, an 80-gal heat-pump water heater provides back-up and shoulder-season heat through a hydronic heating system consisting of new and salvaged radiators and a radiant floor slab in the entryway, sunroom, and window seat - all of which run cozy and quiet.

The building’s massing is consistent with the neighboring two 1850’s era factory-worker houses, each incorporating a large front porch and rear additions on the east side of the 2 ½ story New-England vernacular “gable box”.  Following this “pattern of the place”, the home’s size, scale, and organization fit well in the row of original houses, with its new, locally milled northern cedar siding casting it as a type of contemporary cabin, which, with continuity in material, slowly and subtly reveals itself to be a more dramatic product of function, context, and personal vision for domestic architecture. As one moves past the screened eastern entry, a sense of novelty comes into view. Gently, the eyes are pulled around (and by) the light contemporary form of the addition, arriving at the southern facing rear yard where a more dramatic yet functional facade balances past and present in a poetic dance, its rhythmic composition, quickly transporting viewers to a place for dreaming, and, for now, a place in the universal imagination of inspired domestic architecture.

The home stands, completed after 3 years, as an addition to New England’s vernacular housing language - a model for the comfort, accommodation, and connection to place that all small structures can have when ingenuity, economy, and locality are combined with craftmanship, collaboration, and context.