Instant Karma
May 6, 2011
Text by Robert Kiener   Photography by Westphalen Photography
âA love affair.â Thatâs how the owners, designers and builder of this 10,000-square-foot residence describe the collaboration that went into transforming a tree-filled Vermont lakefront property into a magnificent, welcoming, award-winning home.
Five years ago, Florida residents Mary and Jeff Crowe decided to build a summer home on twelve acres they had bought on the shore of Lake Champlain. âWe wanted what we called a multigenerational vacation home,â explains Mary. âIt would be a home away from home for us, our daughter and her two children.â To turn their dream into reality the Crowes enlisted the help of Burlington, Vermontâbased firm TruexCullins Architecture and Interior Design.
Company principal Rolf Kielman flew to Florida and met with the Crowes to see how they lived, what they liked and what style of home they wanted. âEssentially Jeff and Mary told us they wanted a vacation residence that offered separate quarters for themselves and their daughter,â says TruexCullins architect Lee Grutchfield. âThey also stressed they wanted their home to blend in sympathetically with its spectacular surroundings and bring the outside in. And they wanted light, lots and lots of light.â
Grutchfield and Kielman proposed building two separate structures, one for each family, and linking them by a common entryway. âLove the idea,â said the Crowes. The architects also proposed a Shingle-style design for both homes that was at once contemporary and traditional. âWe love it,â the Crowes said.
Joining the team were local landscape architect Keith Wagner and TruexCullins interior designers Kim Deetjen and Rebekah Bose, all of whom enthusiastically greeted the notion of blending house and surroundings. Wagner suggested using local materials, such as regionally quarried stone and transplanted Vermont birches, wherever possible. Deetjen and Bose contributed the idea of hiring local craftsmen to custom-build the homeâs furnishings, cabinets and fixtures. âWe wanted the interior design to respond seamlessly to the architecture,â says Deetjen.
The Crowes were so enamored with the plans, they decided theyâd live in the house year-round. They sold their Florida home and bought a place in Vermont so they could watch over the construction. âHaving the owners right here and so involved made this a unique collaboration,â says Grutchfield.
For example, the original plan called for two dormer windows to bring in more light. âJeff and Mary wanted to add two more,â he says. âThey were right.â
Being able to âwalk throughâ 3-D computer models of the home was invaluable to the Crowes. âI simply cannot visualize anything from a blueprint,â says Mary. The kitchen ceiling on the coupleâs side of the home was going to be lower, but after viewing a 3-D model she asked that it be raised to twenty-six feet. âIâd had enough of low ceilings in Florida,â she says.
The Crowes also asked about changing the color of the steel posts inside and outside the home. âOriginally they were black, and we thought they made the home look too severe, too contemporary,â remembers Jeff. Grutchfield had them repainted an earthy Indian red, and admits heâs glad his clients suggested the change.
Sometimes having an owner on site can be, well, problematic. But in this case, the Crowes were always welcome, especially on Fridays, when Jeff showed up with pizzas for everyone. âFor two years during construction âPizza Fridaysâ were my way of saying thank-you to everyone,â he says.
Keeping in mind the ownersâ brief about building âsympathetically with nature,â Grutchfield, Kielman and Wagner tucked the home into a gentle east-to-west slope. âWe didnât want some hulking house that looked as if it was imposed on the property,â says Jeff. As Grutchfield explains, both structures âsit comfortably and humanely in the landscape.â
Wagner preserved as many of the propertyâs trees as he could, hiring an arborist to cull the diseased and damaged ones. Many of those that were cut down were milled and used inside the house, which boasts floors of quarter-sawn red oak and sugar maple, as well as furniture and cabinetry made from the propertyâs cherry, hickory and other woods. âUsing local wood as well as local craftsmen gives the entire project an organic, integrated quality,â says Deetjen.
Wagner chose a rich palette of materials and textures to work with, including some that could be used both indoors and out, like the bluestone that moves from the walkway right into the house. âI like to blur the line of where architecture ends and landscape begins,â he says.
The grounds slope down through wetlands to the lakefront, so Wagner designed a gently curving cedar boardwalk to protect that fragile part of the property. The house and landscape elements complete a graceful sweeping arc that starts at what Grutchfield describes as âthe prowâ of the house, continues along a curved South Bay quartzite stone wall, then down bluestone stepping stones and finally onto the boardwalk itself. The arc, Grutchfield says, âis a soothing and welcoming gesture, like opening up your arms to the lake.â
To cope with Vermontâs often-severe winters, the TruexCullins team specified triple-glazed windows on the north, east and west sides of the house and used double-glazed windows on the south to maximize passive solar heat gain. âTraditional Vermont vernacular is kind of dark with small windows because itâs so cold here in the winter,â says Grutchfield. âWe wanted to take this traditional form, open it up and bring nature in. So we had to work on making it as energy efficient as possible.â
The pros who built the house call it a âonce in a lifetimeâ opportunity. Builder Dan Morris terms it a âdream project.â And it has won several awards for design, landscape and construction. But perhaps the best praise came from Grutchfield when, on behalf of the team, he accepted the Excellence in Architecture Award from the AIAâs Vermont chapter in 2009. He stepped up to the podium, leaned into the microphone and began his acceptance speech by saying, âThis was a love affair . . .â
Project TeamÂ
Architecture: Rolf Kielman and Lee Grutchfield, TruexCullins Architecture and Interior Design
Interior design: Kim Deetjen and Rebekah Bose, TruexCullins Architecture and Interior Design
Landscape design: Keith Wagner
Builder: Dan Morris, Roundtree Construction
Share
You must be logged in to post a comment.