Author Archives: alanna

How to Improve the Façade of a Colonial Revival House

Answer:

Enhancing your home’s façade is a smart investment both financially and emotionally. Design choices for a façade remodel are not to be taken lightly, and don’t underestimate the architectural sophistication of future home buyers. Most homebuyers are not design professionals, but do have an intuitive sense of whether remodeling looks right… or not. Be on the right side of that knowledge.

Guidelines for Enhancing Your Colonial Revival Home

Go with the Flow

If you have a Colonial Revival (circa 1880 – 1955), work with its Colonial-ness. Visit Williamsburg, Virginia and take in some of its architectural history. Take a look around your own town. For instance, some of the finest Colonials were built in the DC Metro area in the 1920s and 1930s. Don’t try to turn your Colonial Revival residence into a Tudor Revival or an Arts and Crafts Bungalow. It’s a lot of work and difficult to accomplish—unless you have an unlimited budget. These days, it’s popular to dress up a house with Arts and Crafts details. It won’t look right in a decade when this Arts and Crafts trend fades… like a bad dress you can’t take off. Remember “Formstone”?

Use Quality Materials

A simple way to enhance your Colonial Revival is to use authentic high-quality materials utilized when your Colonial Revival home was built. In fact, if your house was built after the era of quality materials, you can embellish your newer home by using materials found in those older Colonials.

Slate roofing shingles, or imitation slate, will help make your house look more sophisticated. If you can’t afford slate, use a high-quality architectural grade shingle in a gray to suggest slate.

Copper gutters and downspouts, preferably half round gutters and round downspouts, are a nice choice. And for the roof of a bay window, porch, or tricky roof areas where you need metal, a great option is copper, or a copper colored metal.

Windows need to have true-divided window panes or simulated divided window panes. Avoid snap-in window grids at all costs. Be consistent with the window types used (such as double hung or casement if originally specified), and keep the window pane pattern appropriate to the home’s style.

High-quality materials will also help with the surrounding exterior areas. Use flagstone paving for walks, brick for stair risers, and brick or stone for retaining walls and fencing. To further resonate a sense of quality, use heavy iron, painted gloss black, for railings and trellis treatments.

Porches & Entries

Porches, when well designed, always enhance a Colonial Revival home. There is often more architecture expressed in a single front porch than in the rectangular box of a colonial Revival. Tuscan or Doric columns provide eye appealing architectural detail when accompanied by proper beams and entablatures.

Just as with a handsome porch, the use of door sidelights, over-door fanlights and pediments, perhaps flanked by pilasters, provides a rich amount of detail that will not disappoint.

Window Boxes

A simple, cost-effective flourish for a front façade can be a custom, wood paneled, copper lined window box—custom sized to fit a single large window as a focal point. It can also be designed in pairs to provide architectural detail otherwise lacking in the house.

No Shutters

I don’t recommend shutters for a façade enhancement of a Colonial Revival house. The real wood ones can cause maintenance issues. Plastic shutters look fake (unless you spend a fortune) and most installers don’t size or mount them properly to look authentically functional. Spend your money in other areas.

Paint

If you have a handsome brick colonial, don’t paint it. Keep the brick—it requires less maintenance. Feel free to paint the trim and use colors that complement the brick and mortar colors, using the paint color to pull it together aesthetically. A splash of color might work on the front door, but we architects and designers look at this on a case-by-case basis. It’s okay to be a traditionalist and use the old Charleston Green. You can always show your hipness on the interior.

Conclusion

To sum it up: be authentic, be respectful, and know your architectural history, and you will succeed in creating a handsome façade for your Colonial Revival.

Have another question? Want to know more specifics about period style homes? Feel free to contact us!

Bruce Wentworth, AIA, is a practicing architect whose insights on residential architecture have been published in House Beautiful, Southern Living, Washingtonian, Colonial Homes, and other periodicals.

Stumped By A Shed Roof

Answer:

Reston is fortunate to have many contemporary style homes. Washingtonians often tell me they are frustrated that they find so few contemporary style homes in the metro area and are overwhelmed with the abundance of colonials. The use of shed roofs in contemporary home design was popular in the 1970’s and early 1980’s and is often attributed as originating with the work of architects Charles Moore and Robert Venturi. Reston, being a forward-looking planned-community, sought out these modern home designs. In this contemporary style various blocks, each with a shed roof, were arranged in functional groupings to create a visually pleasing and sculptural appearance. As you have described with your home, entrances are often recessed or obscured for privacy.

You are right to be careful about how you handle the design of your addition. The design of shed roof style homes require that the massing of forms and their proportions be aesthetically pleasing. A badly handled design will diminish your home’s value. Most shed roof contemporaries utilize two or three shed roofs in an asymmetrical arrangement.

Roof Forms

In terms of the design for your new addition, I suggest that the existing house remain the dominant form within the design. I see three ways that the addition can be designed depending upon site conditions. In each scheme the new addition should be subordinate to the original house and the new roof pitch should resemble the existing.

The addition can be designed as a smaller separate block with a shed roof turned perpendicular to the existing larger roof. Depending upon site conditions it might require altering windows at the second floor or creating an unobtrusive notch in the new roof to accommodate the existing windows.
Another option is to extend the existing shed roof out to encompass the addition. This could be very cost effective but will require careful blending of old and new materials which might be tricky because of the age of your house.
A third scheme, and more difficult to achieve, is a flat roofed cube-like addition. With the right proportions and roof details for water drainage, the “cube” form can be visually pleasing and unique. This design will require a slightly sloped roof to drain rain water, concealed by a low parapet. An architect can help you with this design concept.

A shed roof has the benefit of the large vaulted interior space it creates. As you mentioned, your home has a dramatic interior with large expanses of glass. With your new addition it is possible to have a vaulted ceiling in your kitchen or breakfast room which greatly enhances the drama of the space.

Exterior Materials

The contemporary nature of the shed roof style home requires that the exterior materials be simple, often uniform and accentuate the simple block forms of the design. For this reason, architects Charles Moore and Robert Venturi typically utilized wood-shingles as an exterior skin. Cladding for most contemporary shed roof homes ranged from wood-shingle, horizontal, vertical and diagonal boarding, which is sometimes mixed with brick veneer or stucco. Occasionally the shed roofs are clad in metal or wood-shingles. Most frequently these homes utilize a cost-effective asphalt shingle.

Fenestration

The window styles for shed roof contemporary homes are usually simple. Large expanses of glass without mullions are used in the designs to maximize views, natural light and bring the outdoors inside. Casement windows, awning windows, slide-by windows, or fixed glass panels are typically found. Double-hung windows, common in Colonial style homes, are rarely used in contemporaries. Sliding glass doors and double French doors can also be found. In recent years homeowners have begun to replace the old single-glazed windows of the 1970s with energy efficient double glazed units.

Old deck

You mentioned building the new kitchen addition in the footprint of your existing deck. However, your old deck will not be structurally appropriate for your new kitchen addition, so it must be removed. You can add a new deck beyond the addition if local zoning laws allow for it. Every addition requires a proper foundation and ideally it should be masonry.

These design guidelines will help you in planning your home’s new addition and when communicating with the design professional of your choice. For further design and construction guidelines contact your local neighborhood association.

Bruce Wentworth, AIA, is the principal of Wentworth, Inc, a residential architecture, interiors and construction practice. For questions about architectural style considerations in the greater Washington area, consult our free resources at www.wentworthstudio.com or call 240-395-0705.

Popping-Up Grandma’s Folk Victorian

Answer:

You do indeed own a fast-disappearing classic, and your concern for preservation is well-placed. Homes in this style were common from 1870 to about 1910, so yours was likely built at the end of the 40-year late-Victorian period in which this idiom flourished. The “folk” modifier, incidentally, simply clarifies that these homes were usually built by local carpenters who embellished their work with brackets, spindles, and other decorative millwork ordered from catalogs and transported to the site (along with the lumber) by rail. As a rule, the selection of decorative elements depended upon what was available- which explains why the ornamental detailing styles on folk Victorians can vary from Italianate to Queen Anne to Gothic Revival. A good first assignment for you: identify the style of all existing design elements. This is critical in a cohesive remodel.

An L-shaped floor plan with front-facing gable roof and a front porch is found in both one- and two- story variants– so it will not be difficult to develop elevations that provide a new second floor, yet protect the integrity of the original house. Your decision to “pop-up” implies that your lot has space limitations. In this case, I recommend a second level that exactly adheres to the footprint of the existing house and doubles the available square footage. The new structure is, therefore, a two-story version of your current house. No problem.

But here are considerations to help assure the second level is also as seamlessly integrated possible:

This style’s exterior cladding was typically a cost-effective wood clapboard covering the entire house and painted. Today, however, you can use highly durable cementitous products that resemble wood clapboard, yet sharply improve longevity and ease of maintenance. On the other hand, if your house is clad in vinyl or aluminum and you cannot afford to replace all the siding: a design compromise might be considered. A horizontal band board at the line of the second floor, for instance, creates a transitional device that allows you to combine old first level siding and new second level siding while presenting a balanced and historically accurate facade.

The window style and placement should replicate the home’s original double-hung wood windows. Do not use vinyl or metal windows and select a mullion pattern that replicates the originals. (Usually 2 lites over 2 lites). With regard to decorative pediments over your windows, it’s important not to overdevelop an inherently understated style. As such, consider that simple square trim on the second level windows avoid competing with the original window pediments. In your case, less may be more.

The new roof pitch should copy the original and utilize the standing seam tin that was first installed on your home.

The decorative brackets and spindle work should be replicated as complements on the new addition. These decorative elements are what people see first; the siding is merely background. If you are unable to find ready-made components that match the existing – it is worth spending the money to have them custom made. They are the sizzle in a historically accurate remodel.

On the practical matter of floor structures: the former attic floor will have to be heavily reinforced, or replaced with new floor joists sufficient to support the new floor loads (added weight) of your addition.

Lastly, your front porch is the facade’s most important architectural component. Careful restoration of the railings, columns, spindle work and brackets is critical to the curb appeal of your home’s presentation. When building a second floor addition, protect your investment with an historically correct porch restoration.

Thoughtful planning and design will enhance your family’s lifestyle and protect the quality and relevance of this historical property. As ongoing development trends continue, there will be fewer of these Folk Victorian residential treasures. Thank you for respecting architectural history.

Bruce Wentworth, AIA, is the principal of Wentworth, Inc, a residential architecture, interiors and construction practice. For question about architectural style considerations in the greater Washington area, consult our free resources at www.wentworthstudio.com or call 240-395-0705.

Elaborating A Tudor

Answer:

There are many classic Tudors homes in northern Virginia. Country Club Hills along the east side of Glebe Road, as well as several older neighborhoods in McLean, Alexandria and Fairfax, derive much of their character from their exceptional Tudors. You should also know about the Newlands/Corby Mansion in Chevy Chase. This textbook example is a showcase of the relevant dormer styles, window types, and richly decorated chimneys. It features uncoursed stone; half-timbering; wide, decorated verge boards; and a stone porte cochere. Architectural scholars swoon over it!

By way of background, Tudor was regarded as an admixture of late Medieval and early Renaissance influences in the period from 1890 when most of the American examples were built. Still, along with Colonial Revival, it was the style-of-choice in the 1920s and 1930s.

Often built for wealthier homeowners, Tudor houses were constructed of solid masonry with elaborate decorative stone and brickwork. They were sometimes called “Stockbroker Tudors” because their financially successful owners had frequently made their wealth in the booming 1920s stock market.

Hence, the style fell out of popularity in the more populist post World War II-era when a resurgence of patriotism demanded a more American home style: Colonial Revival. Of course, the fact that Tudor architecture was also expensive to build, not easily replicated and prone to maintenance issues may have been a factor.

So What’s the Style All About?

Tudors are characterized by their steeply pitched gable roofs, playfully elaborate masonry chimneys (often with chimney pots), embellished doorways, groupings of windows and decorative “half-timbering”, this last being an exposed wood framework with the spaces between the timbers filled with masonry or stucco.

Some guidelines you will clearly want to consider when elaborating a Tudor are:

Materials: There are several easily identifiable features of American Tudors, the first being stucco walls with or without decorative wood half-timbering. A few houses of this style have weatherboard or shingled walls with stucco and half- timbered gables. Other Tudor-style homes have stone clad walls, often trimmed with a decorative stone. Historically, the most prevalent building material for American Tudors was brick, however, frequently laid out in an elaborate pattern on the first story and presenting a second story of stucco, or wood and false half-timbering, in a decorative pattern.

Roof: A distinguishing feature of the Tudor house is, of course, the steep gabled roof– often punctuated with small dormers and clad with slate. The main gable frequently has a secondary side or cross gable. Gable ends are often decorated with verge boards whose decoration ranges from simple to highly carved. One variant is the gable with parapets, which is an English detail.

Windows: Tudor-style houses usually have casement windows grouped in rows of three or more and framed in either wood or metal. Double-hung windows are less common. Windows are often divided into six or eight panes, sometimes made up of rectangles or (in some cases) arranged in a diamond pattern. Windows are usually positioned symmetrically in the main gable

Entrance: The entrance is part of an asymmetrical assemblage of architectural elements, some decorative and some meant (in the late medieval period) to provide protection from intruders. Added security accrued from the thick masonry wall that allowed the door to be recessed, as well as from a projecting bay window or small roof over the door. Renaissance embellishments included arched openings, board and batten doors, luxurious black metal door hardware and tabs of cut stone set into the brick wall lend a quoin-like effect.

Bruce Wentworth, AIA is the principal of Wentworth Inc., a metro area residential architecture, construction and interior design practice. Questions on residential and architectural styles can be sent to www.wentworthstudio.com or by calling 240-395-0705.

Home on the Range: Enlarging and Elaborating Your Ranch House

Answer:

The Ranch house is, of course, an American classic. It originated in California in the post-war era and quickly became one of the dominate “modern” architectural languages of America’s suburban landscape. What Ranch homes lacked in distinctive design details they made up for in relative spaciousness, latest conveniences, larger lot sizes, attached garages, and solid construction. Ranch homes also had a particular appeal to growing families seeking to escape urban density for greener, less crowded environs. Larger ranch homes, in fact, are often referred to as a “ramblers” owing to the way the single-story, multi-winged structure opens expansively, utilizes space and rambles across its site. Not coincidentally, the rambling effect may also be one of the reasons why ranch homes are comparatively easy to enlarge— an undertaking that generally takes homeowners on one of two possible routes: up or out.

It should be noted here that architecture classified as “modern” is almost astylistic when compared to the more differentiated design elements of earlier historic languages. In this sense, a ranch is something of a stripped-down, blank slate that can be redefined and accentuated into an authentic architectural statement. On this score, I have seen strikingly beautiful, well-integrated homes in styles ranging from Tudor to Contemporary that started life as a modest ranch. Still, before changing to a radically different language the existing house most be analyzed carefully. To choose an appropriate course of elaboration, you must thoroughly understand what you’ve got.

If your goal is to substantially increase square footage, and the lot is small, the savvy remodeler can implement what is humorously referred to as a “pop-top”. This involves removing the existing roof and building a new second floor above the existing single story. “Pop-tops” can accommodate drastic changes to the home’s original architecture, mainly because a full-scale remodeling of this magnitude will impact all aspects of the existing house. A “popped up” ranch, for instance, can be readily redefined as a Colonial, although Craftsman, Tudor, and even Contemporary are suitable stylistic alternatives. The “pop-top”, however, is a more expensive enlargement strategy (by about 25% or more) than adding a new single-story wing. Among other factors, the plan requires altering the first floor to accommodate a new stair well, reconfiguring existing living space and developing a new façade. As little of the existing house is untouched, “pop-top” remodeling requires vision, commitment and deep pockets.

On the other hand, if you are fortunate enough to have a large lot that accommodates a new rear or side wing (and there are no setback restrictions), you can minimize costs with a new same-level addition. This simpler approach will often allow your family to continue living in the house during the remodeling. Building a wing that forms a courtyard within an “L” plan configuration also has the benefit of creating space for a patio—a change that often improves the home’s indoor/outdoor continuum. For a cost-effective architectural solution, Ranch houses are most easily elaborated in a Contemporary style. A variation on Contemporary that we frequently use when remodeling ranch homes is Prairie style, a subtype of modern architecture popular in the 1920’s. The Prairie employs hip roofs, overhanging eaves, and horizontal bands of windows with cladding treatments that handily adapt to the specifications of traditional ranch houses.

The “pop-top” addition

A “Pop-top” to a Ranch is frequently executed in a traditional Colonial style aesthetic. Because adding a second floor effects all elevations (exteriors), the homeowner can have pretty much any of the desired Colonial sub-types. Roof lines can be made steeper, shapes and sizes of windows changed, and surface materials enhanced. Generally, the second floor addition stays within the existing footprint. As a rule, the two-story house is reconfigured so that the first floor contains the living spaces while the second floor is designated for bedrooms and private baths. A “pop-top” remodeling is only limited by imagination and budget.

One-story addition

If your lot is spacious enough to accommodate expansion at the rear or side, integrating a new addition with an existing ranch house can result in a very compelling design– at about 25% – 30% less than the cost of a “pop-top” approach. Ideally the addition’s roof lines should match and extend the existing roof. Ranch houses usually have low pitched gable or hip roofs which are easily replicated and emphasize the horizontal. Window styles are simple and range from double-hung to casement to slider. Probably the most important design characteristic of a ranch house is its emphasis on a horizontal rhythm.

Exterior Materials

Historically, ranch houses are usually clad in exterior materials that reinforced the horizontal character of the design. Examples are brick, stone, and clapboard. The cladding materials should, thus, be chosen for this purpose. Slim horizontal brick, horizontally cut stone, and long lengths of clapboard all work well to enhance the ranch home’s style.

If you wish to enlarge your ranch home some of the most important considerations are: maintain the horizontal, repeat roof lines, and be consistent with exterior materials. Adhering to these principals will take you a long way towards achieving a sympathetic addition that won’t look tacked on, and will enhance your home’s aesthetic and market value.

Bruce Wentworth, AIA, is the principal of Wentworth, Inc a metro area residential architecture, construction, and interior design practice. Questions on residential architectural styles can be sent to www.AsktheArchitect.org or call 240-395-0705 x 100.