Spaces: A Modern Marriage

A saltbox home in Tiverton unites its past and future through a bond of sustainability.
Annie Sherman,
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The original portion of the home is done in taupe-colored horizontal clapboard. Photography by Erin Little

Walking along the catwalk in this post-and-beam home is like stepping through a time portal: The suspended corridor relies on the storied past of its existing structure while looking ahead as it connects to a contemporary addition. Hanging between nearly fifty-year-old wooden beams, it’s open to the first floor below and vaulted ceiling above, with a wooden railing and horizontal cables that maximize openness.

With this union of old and new, the entire home exemplifies historic preservation. Built in 1980 by Sakonnet Housesmiths using felled trees from the neighboring woods, the home resembles a traditional saltbox from the 17th and 18th centuries. The new homeowners, a family with two young children, wanted to retain that historic character while adding modern-day efficiency. They brought in Emily Wetherbee of Wetherbee Architecture to complete it.

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In the kitchen, wide windows and European-style cabinetry, painted in Farrow & Ball’s Hardwick White, create a welcoming energy-efficient destination for morning coffee and pancakes. Photography by Erin Little

“This was a deep retrofit to the existing house, with new mechanical systems, bathrooms and kitchen, and we did an intervention at the back with a new primary suite addition,” Wetherbee says. “We tried to use as many local and nontoxic materials as possible. We maintained the tight building envelope of the original house, with the new addition assemblies, and added a new energy recovery system to improve the indoor air quality.”

At every turn, the three-bedroom, 2,875-square-foot home welcomes light. The catwalk soars above an open living room and kitchen, which creates a fluid space with capacity for a lifetime of family meals and game nights. Custom cabinetry by Sean & Katie Design and Fabrication marries the overall traditional aesthetic with flat-slab, European-style cabinets and a cavernous floor-to-ceiling pantry with anodized metal pulls.

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Welcoming light and the hues of nature saturate the primary bedroom. Photography by Erin Little

Eschewing overhead shelving to maintain lightness and breathability, the owners favored a center island to capitalize on storage and act as a runway for school-day breakfasts and art projects. Neolith composite stone counters are a thin, durable and sustainable alternative to thick marble, Wetherbee says, while large, south-facing windows bring the backyard inside and maximize heat gain.

“They obviously are very esthetically driven, but they have two kids. So, when we created this kitchen, we thought about maximizing the workspace in a tight footprint with good materials,” says Sean Mattio of Sean & Katie Design and Fabrication. “We used formaldehyde-free plywood that’s sustainably sourced; water- resistant, high-performance Medex for the panels; and the paint is Italian catalyzed polyurethane. We really maximized utility of the space and material usage.”

Trying to pay homage to the original construction becomes a shakedown of connections, in achieving good air and insulation quality, and better building science between the pieces that make the space dynamic, says Todd Strunk of Sixteen On Center. The challenge was finding the connections between old and new, and they did that by trying to match the sizing of existing posts and beams to install similar materials.

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The catwalk connects the new addition with the rest of the home. Photography by Erin Little

“The catwalk, for example, is exposed from below and you can see some of that connection reads true,” Strunk says. “The hardwood flooring is new in the addition, but we did actually pull up some areas of the old hardwood flooring and reinstall it again in order to better mesh the transition from old to new flooring.”

A neutral color palette throughout complements the original red oak floors and exposed beams, which ground the home in its history. Meanwhile, the original horizontal clapboard outside was repaired or replaced and painted in Bejamin Moore’s Raccoon Hollow, while vertical pine boards in Benjamin Moore Black cloak the addition. This was an intentional effort to make it visually different, Wetherbee says.

“They wanted something warm and modern. The existing house has a very warm vibe to it anyway, with the exposed wood and huge plank floors, but they wanted to make it modern without making it cold,” she says. “So we tried to make the relationship of old and new speak to each other throughout.”