Regardless of an extensive renovation, this 1820s petite Cape in Vermont still maintains a tiny footprint. “The house is quite small by today’s standards,” says Pi Smith, the project builder. “All of those spaces we made are working extremely hard.”
The client had owned the house for 15 decades, dreaming of and preparation for a kitchen renovation for each of them. While she waited, she stuffed her barn with collections in anticipation of their afternoon they’d reconstruct, storing vintage plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, cabinet hardware and antique tiles, among other things. “Our client has a big interest in all kinds of design and also has a excellent eye; the project was a wonderful collaboration.”
Between producing storage options, squeezing as much functionality from every inch as possible, allowing in natural lighting, making outdoor rooms, planning around the client’s cherished collections, this is only clever and striking transformation.
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Charming old homes come with their own host of care issues, but they compensate for it in allure. This house had a great deal of issues typical of an older residence, such as water in the cellar; Smith and her client went to great lengths to maintain the antique home.
“The client came to me to help her revive the kitchen and get more functional space, like laundry,” Smith states. “The project snowballed from there.”
Roof: “Englert Kynar Ultra-Cool Low Gloss” metal roof in a matte black finish.
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Here is the rear of the house, which will give you a good sense for your plan. Here you may see the garage/mudroom with studio overhead on the rear, the connecting piece of the house in the middle is your kitchen with the guest suite overhead; about the right is the living room with the master suite overhead (the part most prominently seen in the first picture).
The footprint of the house remained very much the same; the biggest difference was that the garage wing, that was torn down and rebuilt so that it might have a one-car garage, a mudroom and office and a studio overhead.
See the exterior before
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“The client lives outside a whole lot,” Smith states. Therefore, in the renovation, a major regrading of this land was in sequence, producing level areas for a series of outdoor rooms. This beautifully covered porch is the garage off. The door leads to the mudroom, and was intended for traffic.
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A new patio contains a new outdoor dining room and a rock walkway into other areas of the yard. From the distance you can see the client’s barn and a white fence that marks the border of their house.
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It is hard to believe that the rock walls have been recently built. They are composed of stone out of reclaimed walls.
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From an engineering perspective, all of this gorgeous earthwork also incorporated solutions to this possible flooding problem in the cellar.
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This is the distance between the single garage stall and the kitchen/dining room in the very first volume, or form of the house. In a room roughly the exact same size as a single garage stall, Smith was able to match a mudroom, dog shower, laundry room, powder room, hall and pantry.
“Since the owner has two big labs, we had a sturdy, durable route to the rear porch and yard for your puppy traffic,” Smith states. The flooring is a multicolored slate that coordinates with the transferware tile composition in the shower.
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The tiled area that you see on the left is your dog shower. The client’s collection of English transferware tiles has been written along with new tiles to decorate this area. “This was a labour of love,” Smith states.
The Moravian star pendant is in the client’s collection, the bigger lights are LDLs. This is an ideal case of vintage and modern elements mixing together, as are the futuristic front-loading machines adjacent to the 100+-year-old transferware tiles.
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The mudroom is a great illustration of how hardworking the distances in this house are, as it multitasks in so many ways. Since the client is also an avid gardener, there is a pot filler for watering cans in the shower.
Overhead, the masonry countertop can be extended over the puppy shower, extending a surface for sorting and folding laundry. A cabinet over the machines offers more storage. Not pictured are a very small office at the other end of this space and the pantry. There’s also a powder room in this little area.
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The next part of the house contains the kitchen/dining room on the first floor, and measures 16 feet wide by 20 feet deep. This is maybe the most striking transformation in the house; you will not think the “Before” shot , next.
“We wanted to maximize storage without losing lighting, thus we used very few upper cabinets,” Smith states. “We also attempted to make storage pieces that seemed like furniture.” The china cabinet on the left is this type of piece, and displays more of their client’s collections.
The kitchen it’s actually tough to think that this is precisely the exact same room. One can see why the homeowner has been dreaming of a kitchen renovation for such a long time.
Here’s another picture of the kitchen before
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The renovation began with the kitchen, and the kitchen began with this oversize salvaged sink, which had been waiting in the barn for decades for its moment in the sun.
“We laid out on the kitchen and the windows around this massive sink; it had been among these fun constraints that winds up driving a layout,” Smith states.
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Here’s a better look at the way the windows were created around the sink. The backsplash and countertops are neighborhood Vermont Danby marble.
In addition to this new windows, a carefully planned scheme adds all kinds of lighting options from very bright to a soft glow. It includes a blend of vintage-style brass and glass pendants, little modern LBL lights and a modern fabric-covered drum pendant over the table.
Pendant Lights: Conant Metal and Light
LBL Lights: Bare Head Swivel I
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Another among the client’s collections comprised cabinet hardware. When you look closely around the kitchen, then you will see that there are different sets of knobs and pulls anyplace. These are fun little details that add large personality to the room and show exactly how long she had been dreaming of this renovation.
Flooring: Locally salvaged wide plank pine
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The drum pendant fixture from Galbraith and Paul over the table helps add to the dining room feel within this multipurpose room. “This fixture adds beautiful luminous colour, feel and introduces a modern shape,” Smith states.
Range: Viking
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This is one of the toughest working staircases in America. It leads up into a studio over the garage in addition to a guest suite over the kitchen. The bookshelf contains the client’s cookbook collection and a little television; the cabinet comprises glassware and to the left of it (not viewed) is just another market that contains a microwave.
The stair’s handrail is made from a mast in the client’s childhood sailboat; they left that the rigging on it. That tool over the barware cabinet is an old wood measurer, which serves as sculptural found object, as does the snowshoe hung in the stairwell.
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This powder room takes advantage of this space beneath the staircase on the other side. A recessed bookshelf follows the angle of the staircase to provide more storage for the client’s cherished books.
The sink, taps and accessories were part of the client’s collection of salvaged fittings. A snowshoe gives a unique and proper framework for a mirror, with the forest background offered by Cole and Son’s “Woods” background.
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The front door opens directly into the living room, which is the most important type of the house.
“The entire house is a library,” Smith states. “Our client is extremely organized, with each room featuring different genres of novels. She has just as many design publications as we have in our office.”
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This segment contains the living room onto the first floor and the master suite over, in addition to a staircase connecting the two. “The client had work completed on the living room upon moving in, such as adding all of the bookshelves, so all that was really needed this was refinishing the floors, changing the paint palette and adding lighting to illuminate the novels and art,” Smith states. This lighting system consists of monopoint track fittings.
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The staircase obtained a makeover, with a brand new bigger window installed to let in the light and also a much-needed bookshelf to take advantage of this thick wall.
Click here to check out this distance before
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The stairs lead up to the master suite over the living room.
“Repairing the leaky skylight, new lighting, a new built-in for linens and fresh paint give this upper stair hall a crisp makeover,” Smith states.
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Over the staircase was what Smith described as “a musty old toilet.”
This salvaged clawfoot tub was repaired and replumbed, and it’s a perfect fit underneath the slanted roofline. Smith incorporated another built-in bookshelf for storage and added a new window. A vintage ladder of the client’s serves as an antique towel rack.
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More collections were put into action within this shower : this moment, the client’s collection of antique Delft tiles came in handy. The shelf and threshold are Vermont Danby marble.
“We increased the shower ceiling to stick to the roofline so that we could add the skylight,” Smith states. She also borrowed a bit of distance that had formerly been a storage area over the staircase to expand the shower stall.
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Slanted walls and dormers created for an already-cozy master bedroom, which obtained a mild makeover. Windows were repaired and walls were repainted, while storage has been enhanced with a reconfigured closet and new built-in drawers and shelves contained within a knee (not shown; reverse the mattress).
Knee walls are typical on the next floor of Capes. Instead of having the room extend all the way to where the roofline meets the floor, they cut this off distance at about three to four feet high. “There are small triangles behind knee walls that may be used for drawers or shelves,” Smith states.
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To achieve this guest room area, one ought to ascend the staircase off the kitchen/dining room (there were always two staircases in this house). The staircase entered by the dining room/kitchen leads up here to the guest room and the homeowner’s studio (that is through that cute small angled door that follows the roofline of this garage form of the house).
“By stepping every form you back get nice corners you can fill,” Smith states. When you look back at the next picture in this ideabook, you’ll find a fantastic idea of how this works by the outside. Whenever you spy a diagonal inside this house, it can help you read a roofline or the line of a staircase.
The thick bookshelf on the left makes the most of what’s always a wasted area, the distance over a radiator. The radiator is encased in a perforated cabinet on the base of the shelf.
Paint: DKC-22 latex in eggshell complete, Donald Kaufman Color Collection (by Pratt & Lambert)
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This is the studio across in the guest room; it sits atop the mudroom/garage portion of the house. The client’s hobby is creating custom cards, and this studio filled with storage and light is a wonderful workspace. The skylights let in natural light, and also available to let in the fresh air.
More vintage plumbing fixtures were used here; the shallow spout on the right is made from soapstone and Smith made a custom base for this. Moreover, an antique ribbon rack holds the client’s ribbon collection. In contrast to this, George Nelson’s midcentury contemporary pendant lights and a contemporary enthusiast hang overhead.
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Let us wrap up with a more ingenious space-saver. This cabinet is a lot deeper than it seems; as the roofline goes down, the drawers take advantage of the higher depth supplied by the angle. The base drawers here are 42 inches deep. The drawer pulls are, you guessed it, a part of this owner’s collection; they had been card-catalog labels in the days before the Internet.
“This was a really fun project; it’s so much pleasure to collaborate, to have clients who have thoughts and let them bring their visions to mild,” Smith states. “This client had really lovely taste, and it has become a good friend.”
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