If you can't beat 'em....

Can I tell you something you might not know about old houses?
It's not something people talk about. You might say that it's a dirty little secret.
I'm talking about critters.
Where the Wild Things are.
Sharing your house.

In our house, we don't have a problem with insects, except the occasional ant. All of the wood is dry and solid. I'd like to see something try to gnaw through the chestnut posts or beams that frame the house. They are solid as a rock and difficult to even nail or screw into.

We have had more than our share of the four-legged and winged type of critter. We are always stopping up holes and slots and tunnels, whenever we find one of the seemingly endless ways they manage to get in. Of course, having a rubble foundation just about guarantees that this is a constant problem. I would talk about what a big help our cats are here...but they aren't. Mostly the cats just bring the mice up into the house to show us what big hunters they are. Picture walking into a room to find your two-year-old swinging a dead and bloody mouse by the tail, while the two cats look on envy... or approval... or something.

We have had an attic full of bats, and a chipmunk (brought up from the basement by my buddies, the cats, who then abandoned me) so fast and elusive that I had to call the fire department (my brother, Rich) for help. We've gotten to be good customers for a couple of the animal control guys around here. I do count us lucky, though, because I hear that in some of the old houses around here, people used to find snakes quite often. I don't mind snakes so much, so long as they're living somewhere else.

I have noticed a drop in the mice population in the last few years, maybe because there are more red-tailed hawks, or stray cats, or even the occasional owl. As the cold weather moves in, some bigger critters start to show up. Thankfully, they can't get into the main basement, but mostly set up a den under an old porch. Last year, it was the Woodchuck, who munched his way through the potted vegetables during the summer. I hope he enjoyed the jalapenos and habaneros I grow. Last fall, he deflowered fifty dollars worth of mums in a single night, leaving one of them with a mohawk because he couldn't reach all they way. I have to say, he was pretty darn cute. I was almost disappointed when he didn't show up this year.

After many years, we are slowly winning the battle, with Mother Nature's help. We are planning to tear down that old porch soon, but meanwhile, we keep filling up the critter holes with stones and gravel to keep them out. This year, I decorated my pots with dried perennials and other cuttings from the woods.
While I was out cutting the perennials, I noticed that a new hole has been dug under the porch. Now I have to go find the pest guy's number.

Crisis of Scale

When Less is More is sometimes true.....

There are a lot of reasons to build smaller these days. We’re all feeling the financial pressures caused by the economic downturn. We want to turn away from the “bigger is better” idea that has permeated construction over the last decade. And we are more conscious of the environmental impact of our way of life. We talk about sustainability and our carbon footprint, and have given up plastic shopping bags and bottled water.

Renovating an older home has good sustainability karma. You start with an existing structure, which with luck is sound and dry and pest-free. As a first decision, it is a more sensible choice than a tear-down or new construction.

Several of my projects in the last few years have involved adding onto and renovating smaller cottage-sized homes. In each case, there were many reasons, economic and romantic, for the choice to keep part or all of the original structure. The challenge and the beauty of the project is to integrate the old with the new in a natural way.

My clients, Sarah and Shandy, lived in their tiny lake cottage with their young daughter. At about 680 square feet, it did not even qualify as a legal dwelling unit in our state, according to the building code. The two-story addition we planned would just about bring the house into scale with the surrounding neighborhood. As I started sketching possible layouts for the addition, the plan of the new construction started to look like it was overwhelming the existing cottage. I started to get the sense that I was designing a behemoth. Time to switch to elevations, which brought me back to reality. The size of the windows in the wall reinforced the modest size of the addition. This was a good thing, because the new construction retained a cottage-like feel in part because of the window/wall ratio.

Sometimes when I’m designing a renovation I have a crisis of scale like this one. All good and talented architects have an innate sense of space and scale. This skill allows us to visualize a space we’re designing, so that we’re able to walk through it in our mind’s eye and get it right. Once in a while, it’s healthy to have this sensibility shaken up and tested. And it’s nice to know that it may also contribute to a greater good.

The Magic....

And so it begins....

Designing a renovation of an old house is one of my favorite kinds of projects. When I start, I feel like I'm solving a three-dimensional puzzle. Space needs to be added, mass and volume need to worked out, floor plans need to circulate, existing space needs to be tweaked. All of this needs to be done with a sense and sensibility that respects and charms the old house into a new century. There are a lot of balls to keep in the air, and I love it.

Before all of that is the beginning, and the homeowner's love of something about their particular old house. That something that they fell in love with in the first place. For me and my old house, it was a sense of spaciousness, the flow of rooms, and the big windows set low on the walls that did it. Those windows let in streams of sunshine which bounce off the floor and flood the south facing rooms with light. I love the kitchen fireplace with the beehive oven, and wood floors, the wainscot and beaded corner boards, too; but it was the sense of space, not the details, that hooked me. The day we moved in, I walked through the house feeling an expansiveness and sense of belonging that I still have nineteen years later.
My first working meeting with homeowners is usually the programming meeting. We discuss their needs and wants for the new design. I always encourage them to dream big and keep an open mind about what the house may end up being. For my part, I am listening to hear the unspoken desires of the owners. I want to figure out what made them fall in love with this house, and why they want to stay, when new construction would be easier to live in. If I nail this, I can end up designing a home that is more than the sum of its parts.

Old house are a labor of love. If you're reading this, you probably know that, and I'm preaching to the choir. I feel about old houses that way some people feel about cute puppy dogs: they just need someone to love them. Five years and tens of thousands of dollars later, the charm of the old house may be thinner. But if you're still there, chances are the magic is still there, too. Good design respects that magic, and if we're lucky, clarifies it and makes it shine.