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A New Slant for a Pondside Home

By: Roe A. Osborn

Photography:

Jennifer Eldredge Stello

Design & Construction:

Chatham Building & Design

Mention “Cape Cod” and “water views” in the same breath, you’re probably talking about salt water. But the Cape also has over 450 ponds and lakes, each with its own unique character and scenic views. When Bob and Nancy Simmons, of Newbury, came to the Cape looking for a house on the water, a lake house made lots of sense. They’d get the water views without the high price of “salt,” along with other benefits such as cheaper insurance and easier maintenance. Their search took them to Hinckley’s Pond in Harwich.

A skinny house with a purpose

The house the couple found was not ordinary. The single-story ranch was over 60-ft. long, but only 16-ft wide. And if that wasn’t strange enough, the house was broken into three sections, each at a slight angle to its neighbor.

This design served two purposes. First the faceted shape of the house focuses all views on the pond, like a visual parabola. Secondly the 16-ft. width makes the house only one room wide, so every room enjoys a view of the pond.

However, despite this clever design, this pondside house left much to be desired. Built more as a summer camp than a year round home, this angled ranch needed a complete upgrade to become the full-time residence the couple wanted.

Grandfathered footprint
Just a frog’s leap from the pond, the house sat in an environmentally-sensitive location, which placed myriad restrictions on any upgrades. First they had to save a good portion of the original house. Plus they could not increase the living area without a special variance, and the remodel could only have two-bedrooms instead of three.

The Simmonses were also told that the new house had to fit within the existing footprint that happened to be in violation of current setback requirements. A single-story house would be grandfathered in, but a second floor would have to conform to the new setbacks. With all these obstacles, the couple turned to Jeff Nelson of Chatham Building & Design.

Squeezing in the stairs
After seeing some preliminary ideas, the couple settled on Nelson’s gambrel design that created a second floor. To deal with the setbacks, Jeff pulled the ends of the gambrel in from both ends of the house. The spaces left open were then covered with water-proof membrane and decking material, and became private decks off the study and the master bath.

The approved plans stipulated that the first floor walls and the existing deck were to be reused. But when Nelson’s crew opened up the 2x4 walls, they discovered that foam insulation had been glued to the framing and T-111 siding making the walls unusable. Nelson went back and got the OK to replace all the walls with 2x6 construction, which meant thicker walls, more insulation and a fresh start for the entire house.

The toughest part of the design was fitting in stairs. “They put (a) spiral staircase in the original house for a reason,” mused Nelson. It was hard enough to fit stairs into the 16-ft. width, but a second floor that was made narrower by the gambrel roof made matters worse. Nelson solved the problem by wedging the stairs into the crook between two sections. The stairs ascend to a landing, and then turn in a slight switchback and continue to the second floor.

The new upstairs houses a private master suite. To maximize floor space, front and back shed dormers expand the end sections, while gambrel dormers open up the master bedroom in the middle. The original first floor plan had a bedroom at each end with a kitchen in the center. Nelson kept the bedroom in the south section, but turned the north section into a kitchen/dining area. The central section then became a living room with the stairway as a divider.

Old world craftsmanship for the 21st century
Nelson proudly acknowledges that he graduated from Wentworth, and thus brings an old-world approach to his work. The meticulous attention to detail in this house, both inside and out, support his claims.

The materials on the exterior march seamlessly from section to section, no small feat given the angles between the sections along with the multiple planes of the gambrel roof and dormers. Small intricate details such as the dentil molding on the frieze boards and the decorative shingles in the gambrel dormers are executed to perfection. The white-cedar sidewall shingles, red-cedar roof shingles and white trim are time-honored choices to highlight the home’s traditional appearance.

Inside the house, the angled walls raise the bar even higher. In every room, Nelson’s crew custom made and installed built-ins that disguise and soften the odd angles. Each piece has the look of elegant furniture. A wonderful example is the living room storage cabinet that fits into the angled walls of the stairway. Even the interior trim elements, from the tapered plinth blocks to the beaded corner boards, underscore that same level of precise detail.

A kitchen out of furniture
The kitchen in this house was designed and built as a ‘fitted’ kitchen where the elements are custom-made and installed to look like assembled pieces of furniture. The built-ins begin in the dining room with a wide cushioned window bench flanked by two end tables. For regular meals the chairs at the dining table work fine, but Bob said, “We press the bench into service when we’re feeding a bigger crowd.”

Next to the bench, an armoire-style pantry steps out slightly. Instead of running the cabinet to the ceiling, Nelson capped it off with a shelf for storage or display, a detail echoed in the refrigerator cabinet on the adjacent wall. Next to the pantry, the cabinets step back again to a traditional arrangement. But wall cabinet extends above the pantry to break up any continuous lines.

The work center of the kitchen is an “ell” of base cabinets, with the wall cabinets above artfully interrupted by the range hood and a window that looks out on the pond. The base cabinet to the left of the sink ends at a short wall. The cap for the wall continues the lines of the window sill and then forms the top of a hutch on the other side of the wall.

Instead of plaster or drywall, the kitchen walls are random-width V-groove boards all fabricated in Nelson’s Chatham shop. The end panels of the cabinets, as well as the island panels, are finished with narrow V-groove boards. All the doors and drawers are inset into beaded openings. Above the stove, the earthy tones of a travertine backsplash are a perfect complement to the bright white cabinets and the Ubatuba granite countertop.

Witness to winter
Bob and Nancy were back in their house before the trees around Hinckley’s Pond donned their fall colors, nearly a year after the construction phase of the remodel started. Outside, Littlefield Landscapes had completed the hardscape including a curved flagstone walk, stone steps to the walk-out basement, and a large oval fieldstone set as the front entry step. The rest of the landscape will wait until spring.

As the days shortened, this tight little house angled its face steadfastly into the winter wind. The kayaks and sailboats of summer yielded to ice-fishermen trudging across the frozen pond. Regardless of the season, the splendid views framed by the artfully pruned pines are welcome sights from every room in the house.