Barrington Home Addition

Before renovating their home, the owners of this New England ranch residence had a choice. They could either keep their front door open to allow a cool breeze to blow through their house -or- they could close the door and walk from their kitchen to their dining room. But they couldn’t do both because the open front door blocked their way. And if they wanted to entertain, they had to put the kids to bed in the parents’ bedroom upstairs…because the kids’ bedrooms both opened onto the dining room.

The breakfast nook, too, was problematic. There are four family members, but the breakfast nook would comfortably seat three…as long as one person sat in the hallway. This was a house badly in need of a remodel. By playing with ideas about how to efficiently use each space, we were able to dramatically improve the way our clients used their interior space.

The central element of this design involved an addition which, at its largest area, projected only six feet from the face of the existing house. In fact, the addition to the breakfast nook only extended three feet!

But that 3’ transformed a “three-seater” breakfast nook into an area full of bench seats with room enough for 5 or 6 people. Beadboard wainscot and a chair rail detail complete the wall area above the storage-bench seating.

Now the owners have a more private, and lively, breakfast space…and no one has to sit in the hallway.

Directly adjacent to the breakfast nook is the other section of the new addition…the main entry. Where previously the front door could only be opened at the expense of blocking a hallway, there is now a welcoming front entry with a cathedral ceiling, durable slate floor and plenty of room for a bench, coat rack, footwear and glove storage.

The outside of the house needed an addition of some significance to create central massing and a stronger vertical feel to break up the large, unbroken expanse of roof visible from the street.

The new addition creates a strong feeling of focus and purpose. While all of this was happening at the front of the house, the back of the house was getting its own little addition.

“I wanted a place where we could sit outside without being eaten alive by mosquitoes,” says Bill. “It was a concession to my husband”, says Jill of the new screened porch. “…but we use it all the time and love going out there on warm summer nights”.

The old pressure treated deck and railings were removed and replaced with Mataverde which a responsibly-harvested dense and durable mahogany.

We took this opportunity to provide the owners access to their back yard from the deck with a new set of stairs which wraps around a large arborvitae.

The screened porch was designed to blur the line between inside and out. This was the key to allowing the dining area to find a new place in the home. Just indoors from the screened porch, the former playroom became the perfect room for that al fresco dining feeling.

With the dining room no longer near the children’s bedrooms, the owners now had the perfect room to create an “away space”. Old double-hung windows gave way to a zero-clearance fireplace, custom mantle, granite surround and bluestone hearth.

This was flanked by built-in bookcases and 2’ x 2’ awning windows. New baseboard and crown molding added just enough detail to go well with the fireplace surround and bookcases.

The owners called attention to the millwork by setting it off with tannish-taupe wall paint. The room is a great retreat for the adults. “Now if the kids are watching a movie in the family room”, says Jill, “Bill and I can have some quiet time by the fire at the other corner of the house.” Bill & Jill agree, “It’s hard to believe that by dining in a different room and building such a small addition, we could improve so many aspects of our house. But that’s what Modern Yankee did.”