It's been done since 2009, a modern with familiar shapes and detailing.
It's just two houses down from the Virginia Highlands teardown I blogged a few weeks ago. I think they do pretty well together. You'll have to see for yourself. This one is a custom design, the other is a spec.
This corner has brick, clapboards, batten and board, metal, and glass, shadow-lines everywhere in every direction. It's a collage of vernacular farmhouse finishes.
Here it was. Built in 1935 on .2583 acres, a big lot around here, must be deep.
The lot is flat and level with the street which makes it feel spacious and approachable. Even small houses loom over you on elevated lots.
The hedge on the left shields driveway from the backyard of the corner house next door.
Here it is today:
Does it look like 5,019 square feet? The clapboard reads like a tall first floor. The batten and board 2nd floor doesn't read as a full height 2nd floor. To me it looks like a 1&1/2 story, maybe a 1& 2/3 story rather than a full 2-story.
I guess that's a secret architect trick, making a big house seem not quite so big. It's still big but it could look a lot bigger. They probably even have a name for that sort of thing,
A little closer because I can't get enough gravel. The drive is on the south side as you can see from the shadows.
That chimney, it's modest, tall, and skinny. I'm used to seeing bulked up high-style chimneys they are building these days. It's in scale with the porch columns.
The house rocks with textures. I want all of these at our place.
- Sleek velvety grass.
- Smooth concrete retaining wall.
- Undulating variegated pebble driveway.
- A patch of big round bushes in the driveway.
- Many branched, contorted tree.
- Minimal low rise informal foundation plantings reveal much of the foundation.
- Brick foundation and 2 chunky brick columns support a massive architrave.
- Clapboard throwing horizontal shadows.
- Batten and board throwing vertical shadows.
- Smooth metal porch roof seem so thin. The standing seams echo the batten and board.
- The overhangs seem thin too. No gutters.
- The glass is polished black.
- Thin muntins are in scale with the horizontal and vertical shadows from the siding.
- The 5 windows in a row, shorter but more elaborate are almost the star of the show.
There is one texture AND color. It makes the following view irresistible to me.
The back corner features wood, probably a porch. They saved the warm wood for the owners and their guests to enjoy in private.
I think the "modern" shows in the dark woody goodness. Even the most avant-garde modern wears some wood.
Modern or not, what's the point? I think the wood grounds the house. It makes the family entrance into a warm, informal, focal point. It gives me these sense of age, of having been added on.
I think it's a very fine house. I'd really enjoy seeing inside.
Thanks to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch.
