Locust ReLocation

Thirty days from today we will be homeowners again. It has been a long escrow; nearly 3 months in all. We're itching to leave our two bedroom rental for the spacious two-story, four-bedroom house down our street; Locust Ave. In just 6 months we will have transitioned from an 800 square foot apartment in LA (with two kids and no yard) to a house nearly 3 times as big with nearly 1/2 an acre. And it can't come sooner. Every morning our 2-1/2 year old begs to go outside and we look forward to having lots of place for him to run around. [More "before" photos can be found on our flickr.com page]


The house was built in 1940. Most houses surrounding it on the street date from the early 20th century, towards the end of what Frank Shirley calls the "golden era of American residential architecture" (1740 through 1940). Emili and I have typically gravitated toward older houses over the last 7 years; in LA we rented a 1930s apartment in Hollywood and bought an early 1920's Spanish style house in a historic district in Pasadena. There we renovated the kitchen, replaced some windows and doors, added a patio, and built a fence. Almost all the work was cosmetic.

However after we sold our house in Pasadena we rented a mid-century modern apartment dating from the late 1950s. It came complete with Japanese screens around the covered porch and tons of windows in every room. We also collected several modernist pieces of furniture during our last 2.5 years in California as our aesthetic shifted away from traditional "cottage" furnishings.

In moving to our new house we again are planning to do some renovations though they're shaping up to be much more extensive than the last go around. The work includes:

• A porch across the entire front
• A grade-level sunroom off the back
• A rear screened in porch off the kitchen
• Air conditioning
• Updating the kitchen, bathroom, and layout of the 500 square foot detached cottage
• Removal of asbestos shingles and residing of the 2nd floor
  

One question we dealt with early on was: What style should characterize the additions? The house is a traditional Mid-Atlantic colonial. How would we incorporate modernist aesthetics in the traditional house? As disparate styles are difficult to execute on the exterior without looking shoddy we opted to maintain the traditional feel but push it to a more farmhouse (and thus less colonial) look. The new 2nd floor siding will be vertical; 1st floor brick will be whitewashed to match the new siding color, all new roofs would be hipped rather than flat or gabled. A book that has heavily influenced our design decisions is aptly titled: The Farmhouse: New Inspiration for the Classic American Home.

We have plans for the interior as well. This is where the 'modern' concepts of openness, honesty, and light will really come into play. All of the individual rooms are currently divided by walls. There is little connectivity between rooms, even on the first floor where you might expect fewer divisions of space. Thus, once the exterior renovations and additions are complete, we'll be turning our attention to removing most of the 1st floor interior walls (one benefit of being a structural engineer!) This will allow us to "connect" most of the first floor together and bring more light into the darker portions of the 1st floor. It will also give us the opportunity to tweak some of the spaces we feel are a bit awkward. In the coming months I will post progress photos on the blog, so if you're interested, subscribe to the RSS feed for updates.