The empty-nester couple who own this house could have bought or built a large house in the suburbs beyond West Hartford, Conn., but they chose instead to buy a small house in an older neighborhood, within walking distance of shops, restaurants, and a farmer's market. The couple initially hired architect Jamie Wolf to reconsider the living room, because they didn't like the traditional fireplace or the colonial cabinetry. What began as a consultation about color became a larger conversation about design, then a living-room remodel, and ultimately a transformation of the entire house. Jamie designed an “indoor back porch” that mitigates the elevation change between the kitchen and the cozy backyard; otherwise, the rooms stayed where they were. But the owners encouraged Jamie, and interior designer Peter Robbins, to think boldly (but respectfully) about the opportunities each space presented. The resulting remodel exemplifies richness of detail, imaginative use of space, thoughtfulness in design at every scale, and a balanced use of materials, all executed with an extraordinary degree of craft.
The house isn't lavish — it has no golden chandeliers or marble staircases — but the remodel was not inexpensive. The owners were willing to invest in quality materials and expert craftsmanship as well as in design time for the many things designed expressly for the house. They also invested their own time to collaborate with Wolf and Robbins. What they have for their investment is a home that's tailored to their needs and tuned precisely to their sense of style and expression. At just over 2,000 square feet, the house is a finely wrought jewel box, which makes perfect sense when you learn that one of the owners is a jewelry artist.
In redefining the character of the living room and the tiny sunroom adjacent to it, Jamie arrived at a palette of colors and materials and an approach to details that includes anigre (a light, warmly colored wood) cabinets, pale limestone countertops, wire-mesh door panels, bold but simple steel elements, and glass shelving. These choices were influenced by practical requirements, of course, but also by Jamie's artistic sense of what feels right. The skewed angle of the low cabinets on either side of the hearth can be explained as making up the difference in depth between the deep speaker cabinet in the corner and the narrow chimney face, but the truth is also that the angled cabinet feels right. Same with the curved track for the spotlights above; it just looks good. True, the curve of the track echoes the gentle arc of the limestone mantel, but the track could just as easily be straight.
Design is an exploration of possibilities. As the remodel continued from room to room, Jamie arrived at fresh interpretations of the ideas introduced in the living room and sunroom. For instance, the black steel bolts that fasten the mantel brackets above the living-room fireplace reappear in polished form to pin wood railings to the half wall between the indoor back porch and the kitchen. Jamie also introduced entirely new ideas.
Several details that are repeated upstairs first took shape in the indoor porch addition, including the grouping of three square awning windows. Similar windows appear in the stairwell and in the upstairs study. The wallpaper and floating lattice ceiling in the upstairs hallway feature squares meant to echo the awning windows in spirit.
Another detail that first appeared in the indoor porch is a window with trim that leans into the room. Tilting the side trim inward is a simple thing to do, but it generates a subtle energy. In the indoor porch, the tilted trim also emphasizes the thickness of the wall into which the windows are set. But then the lean of the window trim in the vertical is really a variation of the lean of the living-room cabinets in the horizontal, so the lean is not something that first appeared in the porch after all. When a high degree of care and attention has been given to unifying materials, colors, textures, and details, there's almost no end to the connections you can find. It's through unity of effect — which does not mean sameness — that this house achieves coherence.
Sarah Susanka is an architect in Minnesota, and the author of several books including her best-seller, The Not So Big House; www.notsobighouse.com. Architectural design writer Marc Vassallo received a degree in architecture, and designed and built his own energy-conserving house in Virginia before turning his attention fully to words.