This Connecticut House Renovation Mixes the Aged and New

Others choose a more modernist solution: flat roofs, rectangular designs, open up dwelling parts, easy and all-natural elements and flooring-to-ceiling windows. They converse about a link to the exterior, an abundance of light-weight, and a deficiency of muddle.

Architect Sarah Jefferys has intended a residence in West Cornwall, Conn., for her spouse and children that has all of the above.

Fifty percent of the residence is an previous stone cottage, something that seems to be like it jumped from the internet pages of a Jane Austen novel. Connected to that is a geometric, cyprus-clad addition, with just one box cantilevered off the other and huge home windows. From the outside the house, it seems to be like two wholly distinctive residences which just come about to be located ideal up versus every single other, but not awkwardly.

“The cottage appealed to me, but the web-site lent alone to a present day structure,” says Ms. Jefferys, who established New York Metropolis-centered Sarah Jefferys Architecture, acknowledged for strength-productive townhouses that blend the aged and the new.

Ms. Jefferys, 53, and her partner, Stewart Osborne, 55, a founding associate of architecture and enhancement agency NAVA, purchased the 1,870-sq.-foot, 1940s stone cottage with a few bedrooms and two bogs with a lifelong pal who life in India with his household of 4, splitting the value, for $470,000 in 2017. Established on 19 acres in this small Connecticut town in Litchfield County, in the northwestern corner of the condition, it is right up against a forest, has sweeping mountain views and contains a pond populated by noisy frogs. Ms. Jefferys calls the incessant cacophony the “frog opera.”

The sizing of the residence permitted the couple’s three sons, now ages 11, 17 and 19, to participate in baseball and ice hockey at property. The woods have paths for cross-state snowboarding and Mohawk Mountain Ski Space is just down the road.

After working with the cottage for primarily winter excursions for many years, they made a decision to layout an addition and renovate the interior of the aged dwelling, a job that cost about $790,000 in full. Finished plenty of to reside in by early 2020 (even though not entirely comprehensive until finally 2021), the relatives was equipped to decamp there from their townhouse in Brooklyn throughout the early levels of the pandemic. The other family members split the charge of the renovation but was not able to visit in 2020 for the reason that of travel limitations.

To join the new, present day half of the residence to the cottage with out blocking the look at of the mountains outside of, Ms. Jefferys built the next floor to cantilever off the initially floor, leaving a square reduce out of room involving the roof lines. The cantilevered second flooring also makes a coated porch under.

Getting to the remaining structure took a ton of cardboard designs, claims Ms. Jefferys. Before drawings involved a glass box, which also would have maintained transparency from the front to the back, but in the conclude Ms. Jefferys most well-liked there be no barrier.

Whilst the home’s aged and new sides are to some degree discordant on the exterior, they are entirely built-in within, with the design and style flowing congruously from one room to the following. The whole sq. footage is now 3,400. There is a frequent shade palette, with a dominance of wooden flooring and white partitions punctuated by shiny wallpapers, home furniture and pillows. Ms. Jefferys replaced more than enough of the small windows in the outdated home with major modern windows to produce cohesion.

On the modern day stop, the very first flooring is an open kitchen area with pine cupboards and Carrara marble counters. Future to it is a sitting down place in what was the aged aspect of the property, which continue to has the authentic hearth but has a new contemporary window. What was the kitchen area in the aged dwelling is now a mudroom. The previous living room is a eating and dwelling room, with a vaulted ceiling, the initial cabinetry, and wooden beams, but the furniture and lights are modern-day, the cupboards are painted blue and there is also a big new present day window.

The separation of outdated and new allowed for two independent sleeping wings, each individual with two bedrooms. The new area has just one total lavatory and the old area however has two comprehensive bogs. That operates perfectly when it is just their family members because it enables their youngsters to have their own place. When their co-homeowners, a relatives of 4, are there at the exact time, each household will get its very own space. The households tend to overlap a few weekends and split the relaxation of the time.

Ms. Jefferys, who is American, claims she was initially attracted to the outdated stone cottage for the reason that it reminded her of England, in which she grew up. Following graduating from Tufts University in Boston in 1991, she labored for an architect in Siena, Italy, for a year and then used a calendar year in Delhi, India. She met Mr. Osborne when they were the two having their master’s in architecture at the College of Pennsylvania.

Her encounters in each Italy and India gave her an appreciation for both of those previous and new architecture, she claims. In Italy, she labored converting 15th-century farmhouses into contemporary households, holding the exteriors as they were but redesigning the interiors. In India, she figured out the significance of coloration and warmth, which she injects into her modernist, minimalist types.

Since she started her very own business in 2001, Ms. Jefferys has increasingly targeted on passive residences, which call for minimal electrical power for heating and cooling since of a significant stage of airtightness and new air exchange ventilation. Her household in West Cornwall uses 70% significantly less electrical power than standard homes, with heat coming from radiant floors and radiators, she says.

From inside of the new, modern day wing of the house, home windows give a perspective of the previous stone exterior of the cottage. From inside of the old cottage, home windows give a see of the new present day wood containers. “I like common architecture, but I’ll in no way replicate it—I’ll usually style and design modern architecture,” states Ms. Jefferys. As her 11-year-old son Callum places it, “we like two points mixed together.”