VAKOTA has recently completed construction on this stunning, but modest, home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The 1800 square foot former 1960s ranch-style property has been remodeled – creating an elegant and modern structure.
This project has been a particularly interesting one, due to the close collaborative relationship we developed with the owner, who acted not just as a client but as the general contractor throughout the project. We have always been extremely good at balancing our clients’ expectations with the form and function of the finished design – and so working very closely with the client has been a challenging, but thought-provoking experience.
Our client came to us to upgrade their home in a contemporary and almost industrial style. However, as we worked with them, they shifted their taste towards a more traditional elegant style.
We initially planned to renovate the living room, kitchen, and dining room in the property – but as the project grew, we wound up redesigning the entire house.
“Modern living has clients tearing down walls and opening up spaces between multiple rooms in order to have open floor plans. This project is a good example of that.” Matt explains.
We wanted to keep the traditional charm and warmth of the house whilst still bringing it up-to-date and keeping it stylish. “In all the bedrooms, I put in a simple stepping profile for a fairly flat crown that was applied to the ceiling instead of the wall. In the end, I would call this new style created ‘Conservative Contemporary.” Matt told Fairfield County Look magazine.
We realized this specific and alluring aesthetic by playing with shadow lines and layering simple details – adding subtle decorative wood rafters, scissor trusses, and warmly stained wood accents to keep the house inviting and warm despite the cool surfaces throughout.
When you open up spaces to each other it’s hard to distinguish where one room stops and another starts, so we like to use the ceiling design to do this. In this project I used those exposed decorative wood rafters, dormers and wood scissor trusses to do just that. I delineated changes in the open plan floor space – identifying ‘rooms’ and ‘spaces’ with changes in the ceiling design.
“The client wanted to bring more natural light into the spaces, and I wanted to break up the long horizontal roof. The best way to achieve both was to add dormers to interrupt and break up the roof and bring in the natural light through the windows in the dormers.” Matt explained.
Moving to the outside of the house, the client was keen to give the dated looking facade a new level of curb appeal. To achieve this, we added a new contemporary portico, dormers, windows, vertical window trims, cedar shingle roofing, copper gutters, stacked stone cladding and stainless-steel cable railing. We kept existing clapboard siding, but broke it up by introducing new vertical trim to extend vertically to create strong vertical lines on the short eave walls – creating an external visual that is in-keeping with its lush Connecticut backdrop – and marrying the traditional warmth of the original house with the updated contemporary edge of its renovation.
