Montford Hills Porch Addition
This project was completed in several phases. The first phase was a kitchen and dining room renovation to update the kitchen and make it more open to the dining room, and to add French doors for future access to a screened porch addition.
The second phase was the screened porch addition and backyard landscape project. The existing house is a simple, streamlined 1920s saltbox house and the owner had built a colorful and playful “cob” hut in the backyard as a sort of outdoor room and sleeping porch – but the space between the two buildings was a stark, open area with an old concrete driveway. The goal of this project was to unify the two very different existing structures and create outdoor space that would strengthen the connection between the two. The design solution used curved shapes to integrate the playfulness of the cob hut into the form of the house. The main house and porch roof were clad with galvanized metal roofing to give all the structures a shared finish and a bit of sparkle; and the narrow column spacing enhances the curves and creates a pattern that reiterates the rhythms found in the cob hut.
Matt Sprouse of Sitework Studios collaborated with us on the landscape design, and used curved forms, echoing the building lines, to create a kitchen garden with a seating bench and a gathering space around the fire pit. The end result is that the two buildings and a backyard that play off each other, and emphasize each others strengths.
This project was featured in the Summer 2009 issue of Carolina Home + Garden magazine.
“After” photos by Andrew Crespo
