A Handmade, Debt-free Home
(Page 4 of 6)
February/March 2007
By Steve Maxwell
We could have enjoyed more living space in our design, but we opted to devote about one-fifth of the second floor area to an open cathedral ceiling space above the living room (see photo) and masonry heater. Light, space and a chance to expose some beautiful white pine timbers are the reasons we recommend this approach. It also allows the wooden stair stringers to be showcased in a way that wouldn’t have the same impact otherwise.
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The importance of trim and architectural woodwork (see photo) are often overlooked because they come near the end of the building process. Owners are often eager to move in at this stage, with budgets running tight. But skipping this step is a risk because trim exerts some of the most powerful influences on the atmosphere of a house. We milled all our own molding and wainscoting from inexpensive, locally cut pine routed to simple, classic profiles for a beautiful effect.
Built New to Look Old
One of the best compliments we receive about our home comes in the form of a question that visitors often ask as they step into our yard for the first time: “Is this a historic home that you’ve renovated?” Even professional builders sometimes wonder, and the reason is the stonework.
We laid a 9-inch-thick layer of hand-squared, limestone blocks to form the exterior surfaces of the stud frame walls using local materials we gathered ourselves. It takes months of work to complete the same amount of wall you could cover in a day with vinyl siding, but we wouldn’t consider anything other than stone. Besides, when you consider the amount of maintenance required by a finished, wooden exterior over the course of a lifetime, hand-quarried stone isn’t any more work.
Things We Might Change
There are only a few things we’d change about our design, and a couple are worth mentioning. The open concept living space created by the cathedral ceiling in the downstairs living room looks terrific, but when we created our design back in the mid-1980s, we didn’t realize just how noisy a houseful of kids could be. So if you’d like to reduce sounds traveling from upstairs down into the kitchen, you might consider closing in the cathedral space and gaining another 200 square feet of floor area in the bargain.
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