CotY 2017 Awards Entire House $500,001 $750,000 Brady Lane
This home was built by a locally renowned architect more than 50 years ago. He designed over 100 homes in the area, several on the same street as this project. The first challenge to renovating such a distinctive home is maintaining the exterior look so that it continues to fit in with the neighborhood. And after 5 decades, walls crumble, roofs leak, and families now live in ways the architect could not have imagined in the early 1960 s. The exterior needed a refresh, and the interior had to be modernized and expanded without ruining its original appeal. With a unique use of angled glass and a split level flow that utilized spiral staircases, this home was ahead of its time. Our client wished to maintain the mid-century soul of the home, but make it work for their family today. They asked for more bedrooms, better bathrooms, private guest quarters, an open kitchen that overlooks the outdoors, enclosed parking, and an overall better floorplan. They wanted more yard, more pool, more light, more living. They also wished to enhance the elements that drew them to the home in the first place: amazing natural light, an interesting use of materials, that treehouse feeling, and a little bit of groovy.
One challenge of this home was its poor overall condition. The exterior façade rock walls were failing, the existing windows were inoperable and the roof had large sections of sag and rot.
We removed the rock façade from the exterior and from where it was used on interior walls. We cleaned each rock, ordered more aged rock to match, hand mixed the stones, and rebuilt the walls so they would appear original to the home.
The wall of windows on the back of the home maximized both the view and the light. We replaced the angled sheets of glass, added a north-facing window for even more daylight, and built an open chef s kitchen in this previously underutilized corner.
The original kitchen was dark, at the front of the home, and was walled off from the rest of the house. This corner is now the formal living room. Lighter, brighter, and open.
Just inside the front door was an original spiral staircase that had been converted to a mechanical lift for lower level access. Toward the back of the room was a second mechanical lift that replaced a second spiral staircase for upper level access. These were the only ways to access the other floors.
Instead of two disjointed methods of accessing the other floors, the 5-level staircase travels through the center of the home surrounded by this custom poplar vertical screen. The screen serves as a safety measure as well as an architectural detail.
The lowest level of the home leads to the guest quarters: a bedroom, bathroom, and living room. The client requested custom storage anywhere it would fit, so built-ins are everywhere.
The pool was to be refurbished during the remodel, but was in such disrepair that it had to be replaced. The setbacks were a challenge, we created the largest pool possible.
The back porch was small and dilapidated. The new balcony is covered by a steel canopy, and the railing mimics the custom screen around the interior staircase.
The original terrazzo floor of the home was preserved in the living and entry. In all new areas, or where the terrazzo wasn t salvageable, new pecan flooring was installed.
Cement counter tops were used in the baths and kitchen. The kitchen backsplash tiles are glazed cement in a color selected by the homeowner because it reminded her of the 1960 s.
The client wished to maximize outdoor living space, this lower deck and gravel area more than quadruple the original balcony square footage.
The existing home had only driveway parking. We converted the downstairs living and bath into a carport. It was necessary to raise the height of the ceiling by 1 foot in order to accommodate vehicles.
Challenges The client loved the home so much, they requested a remodel so they could preserve as much of the original design as possible even though tearing it down and starting over would have been cheaper and easier. We were determined to keep the home looking the same from the street so it would blend in with the neighborhood, but add double the space and improve the flow of the interior. One important feature did not survive: the original fireplace (photo). This home featured a wrought iron fireplace in the center of the living room, a signature of the original architect. It was not up to code, could not be brought up to code, and unfortunately had to be scrapped. We had to make changes on the fly as we discovered issues such as the ruined roof. A new roof was not in the plans, not in the budget, but we managed to repair and reinforce the roof while staying on budget. Other on site changes included raising the low ceilings on the bottom floor to accommodate vehicles in the new carport; the vertical wood staircase screen had to be custom designed on site when the plans couldn t be implemented as drawn; and when the pool wasn t repairable we had to build a whole new pool from scratch and stay within the new setbacks.
First Floor Demolition Plan
Second Floor Demolition Plan Part 1
Second Floor Demolition Plan Part 2
First Floor Remodel Plan
Second Floor Remodel Plan
Building Section 1
Building Section 2