A Peaceful Lake House Rises From the Rubble
The dream of a summer lake house seems to exist for a lot of us, perhaps planted by long-held family tradition, a beloved summer camp or nostalgic movies. The owner of this house on Lake Fairlee near Norwich, Vermont, had many great boyhood memories of hot summer days swimming in a lake — and maybe that’s why he bought the 1930s-era property sight unseen as a vacation home. Although he and his wife contacted Smith & Vansant Architects about remodeling the old house, they started using it right away, and the pine-tree-ringed site became an extended family gathering spot. But one night while they were not there, a violent storm sent two of those big trees crashing down into the house, making it uninhabitable — and that’s where the dream (and the planned remodel) took a dramatic turn.
The family took the opportunity to rebuild the house, keeping all of the details and charm they loved while making it better suited to their needs. From the outside an observer would never guess this isn’t the original house — but inside, the structure is vastly improved and includes details that make many areas accessible for a family member who is in a wheelchair. “The original houses built on this lake were constructed inexpensively,” says architect Jason Gaddis. “The old house had no foundation or insulation. In fact, in the kitchen, you could see daylight through the cracks when you opened the cabinets.”
Yet the team worked hard to re-create the elements that worked, including a screened-in porch that faces the lake.
Gaddis calls the porch the hub of the house. “This is where the family gathers and where they get their fishing gear together,” he says. An eclectic group of rocking chairs allows family and friends to lean back and relax, protected from mosquitos by the screens. A beadboard ceiling makes the space look authentically vintage.
Fir floors appear throughout the whole house. “The existing house had fir floors, and the family loved them,” says Gaddis. “We were able to reuse some of those floors. The owner located fir wood that had been salvaged from a distillery and was being stored in boxcars in Washington State. He had it shipped to Vermont, and we used it for the rest of the floors and the wainscoting.”
In the old house a kitchen, rudimentary by today’s standards, was at the front of the house. The architects moved it to the back of the house, alongside the porch. “The porch takes up two-thirds of the back of the house, and the kitchen makes up the last third,” says Gaddis. Elements such as a sloping beadboard ceiling (which mirrors the ceiling plane on the porch), vintage-style light fixtures, Shaker cabinet doors and a farmhouse sink make the modern kitchen feel appropriate for a home that takes its design cues from an earlier time.
The new windows are in a six-over-one pattern — a style Gaddis says is common in the area. “We used traditional double-hung windows in most areas of the house,” he says. “But it’s a pain to lift and lower the sash over a countertop or a sink, so we used hinged windows here.”
Locating the kitchen in the back, next to the family focal point (the back porch), makes practical sense — but it also provides a peaceful water view from the kitchen sink.
More about this peaceful Lake House from the rubble.
A Peaceful Lake House Rises From the Rubble
