Editor’s note: Andrew Webster AIA, CPHC is an architect and founder of Graphite Studio located in Amherst,
Mass., focusing on residential architecture in Western New England. This project’s biggest challenge was preserving the charm and character of a two-hundred-year-old building while delivering 21st century performance and comfort. Graphite Studio works on projects all over Massachusetts and western New England, includinging the Berkshires!
When we first met, our clients intended to build a new home.
Husband and wife, they’d been referred to us by a landscape design partner of ours, and they had already been down the typical paths that lots of folks travel—spec-built? modular? timber-framed? They’d decided, in the end, to create a new custom home to the ultimate standard in climate-smart energy efficiency: Passive House. This German-born standard asks a lot of designers and owners, and gives amazing results—homes that require hardly any heating, provide amazing indoor air quality and cost almost nothing to run. We’d designed a couple of homes like this already and were excited to go another round with the German energy models.
Then they got lucky.
During one family trip from Pennsylvania, they found that the house next door to his brother in southern New Hampshire was for sale. What better retirement plan: a modest home in a small New England town, on a dirt road in the forest, next to family, near Brattleboro? Perfect. The only trouble: this was not a Passive House. The house was old, cold, creaky, and leaky. Could we really make it comfortable and resilient, easy to live in, and a cozy place to spend a New England winter? We were confident we could. It wouldn’t be to Passive House standards, but with some careful choosing, even with a fixed budget, it could be a perfect retirement home for the Northeast.
The original home was from 1815. In form, it was basically a Cape—with a first-floor kitchen, dining room, and bedroom, and a second half-story under the eaves with gable windows on each end. Onto this, succeeding generations had added according to their needs—a smaller extension first, and then a larger one in the 90’s.
Its evolution had led to some awkward results. The entry sequence was garbled and the floor plan cluttered. Coming in the front door, we were faced with a blank wall, and a chance to turn left or right, but no sense of where to go.
The nearby laundry room had interior windows that opened onto the small galley kitchen, like we might pass ice cream cones from one to the next. The modern addition had a jet tub in what was essentially the public bathroom. But we all knew there was potential.
The living room was lovely, with exposed timbers overhead, and wide board floors. The primary bedroom was just the right size and boasted a small en suite bathroom. A small room on the south was begging to become a quiet study area. The 90’s addition would make a great home office and guest suite (we just had to ditch that jet tub.) We pledged to work through this puzzle, piece by piece, to find the solution to each distinct part, and make this old place sing.
We love to fold builders into our design process early, to get their feedback, advice, and creative inputs. With a limited budget, too, we knew we’d need their financial insights. The clients hired Jonathan Klein (now retired) to bring his expertise to bear. He was the right match for this delicate project—thoughtful, gentle, kind, serious, attentive to details, and he loves old houses. He was ALMOST ready to retire, but not quite yet. We signed him up and got underway with the serious design.
down to make way for additional insulation.
Button up and modernize
Our goal was to create a modern, great-performing building, without losing the charm of the low-slung, cozy interiors of this old Cape, with those original beams and floorboards. So, we moved the energy work to the outside. We chain sawed the eaves, stripped the failing siding, and replaced it with a thick insulated parka suitable for a New England winter—4-6” of foam outside, new back-vented siding and a standing seam roof. We applied new eaves, put in lots of new windows, replaced the noisy pellet stove with a new wood stove, and attached a small porch to soften the entry sequence.
We added electric heat pumps, for super-efficient heating (and cooling), and an HRV (heat recovery ventilation) for constant fresh air through even the coldest portions of the year. Tiny electric convection heaters help warm in out-of-the-way rooms like the en suite primary bathroom. We added solar to the lower roof to help zero out their electric bills.
Fix the flow
Without changing the footprint, we wanted to remake the house to better serve our clients’ life in retirement. We did add a new landing porch, and just inside a small mudroom to soften the arrival zone. No more opening the door to a blank hallway, but a place for the clients to take off their boots (or skis) and warm up, a place for leashes and walking sticks and raincoats.
A new kitchen spread its wings to capture the space that had been the awkward kitchen and laundry—now with room for two to cook comfortably and to sit and eat. The floor here—straddling two portions of the building—required some heroics by the carpenters just to get it flat enough for kitchen tile. It was never going to be plumb and level, and we accepted that as a compromise with the two-hundred-year-old structure. The ghosts of 1815 aren’t ever banished.
We opened the connection to the living room, and its new woodstove. We made the south-facing windows bigger and better insulated to brighten the rooms in the old wing. And we claimed the southeast corner of the house for a wood-paneled study and a bright new window. On the upper story, we did as little as possible. Our clients didn’t need that half-story space for anything but storage, after we’d set up the newer portion of the first floor for guests, so we
could take the money we might’ve spent up there for more important things.
In the 90’s addition (without the jet tub!), we had room for a new shower and linen closet. The home office and guest space now had an attached bath, and the south side of this newer portion of the house got a writing desk and room for growing things.
What had been a house in three sections, feeling disjointed and cobbled together, became a high-performing home for the coming decades. For our clients, this house in a dream location, with some careful decision-making and thoughtful planning, became their dream retirement home.
