Updating the New England Shingle Style

From a windy point of land in Stonington, Connecticut, you can look across the mouth of Little Narragansett Bay and see Watch Hill, Rhode Island, home to some grand examples of New England shingle-style houses. Starting in the late 1880s, summer communities along the Connecticut and Rhode Island shore developed their own style of dormered cottages with shingled porches. Summer estates of Watch Hill transformed both Georgian and Palladian architecture into a shingle style embellished with classical details.

Because of this rich architectural tradition, a shingle-style house seemed a natural choice when my wife and I built on a 4-acre parcel in Stonington. Kathy and I wanted more than a place to live. Like many architects who specialize in residential design, I faced the challenge of building a house that could be shown to discriminating clients while addressing the very practical requirements of a growing family.

Our house borrows a number of familiar shingle-style themes, from a cedar-clad exterior to a large, steeply pitched roof. But our construction budget was tight. We were careful not to design beyond what the real-estate market would support. Our 3,400-sq. ft. Floor plan included features we knew would have a high resale value while making the house comfortable and inviting.

Exterior shapes and materials honor an old regional style

The shingle-style house is truly an American creation. Inventive, organic and delightful, shingle-style houses often present us with porches, loggias and arcades that create outdoor rooms. What may be most remarkable about the style is how it uses volume and space. The main parts of these houses often were designed under massive gable or gambrel roofs, with porches sculpted out of the main volume rather than added to it. Interior spaces and features often were reflected outside in the form of decorated bays, bump-outs, towers and chimneys. And, of course, most surfaces were covered in cedar, whose skinlike quality gives rise to a rich variety of surface textures.

We incorporated all these features in our design. We started with the basic shape—a heavy attic volume sitting on a base. A very steep pitch on the main roof (18-in-12) allowed us to get the most possible floor space with a minimum of exterior wall. For the attached garage, a 14-in-12 pitch on the roof gave us 400 sq. ft. of additional attic space for possible expansion.

The triangular second-story and third-story volume is really a truss in section, so I could use 26-ft. long 2x8 rafters instead of deeper framing material. I was also able to use balloon-framing, which saved some money and led to an interesting interior detail (for more, see Balloon-framing saves time and money).

The roof, end gables and dormers are clad in a lightly stained red cedar. All walls are clad in a clear, finished white cedar. This two-tone palette emphasizes the visual weight of the roof and gives the base of the house a pedestal-like quality. Exterior trim is clear-finished red cedar that we let weather right along with the siding, and the tongue-and-groove red-cedar soffits required no vent openings (for more, see Venting a roof at the rake).

Instead of carving up the first floor into separate rooms, we opted for connected living, dining and kitchen spaces. When we entertain, guests move naturally through the three spaces, and the long counter island between kitchen and dining area becomes a buffet. Living and dining areas are separated by a freestanding fireplace hearth. By opting for a two-sided, zero-clearance firebox as opposed to masonry construction, we saved enough money to use cherry paneling at the kitchen island and fireplace enclosure. The living room, separated from the dining area by the fireplace, is accessible without being smack in the middle of traffic

.

We added a brick patio surrounded by a low stone and slate wall on one side of the living room. Capped by a trellis of western red cedar and accessible through a pair of French doors, the patio makes a pleasant extension of the living and dining areas.

A kitchen is an easy place to spend a lot of money, so we looked for ways to keep costs down. We found a set of cherry cabinets with a granite countertop at a showroom liquidation. We sprayed the paint-grade lower cabinets on site in a rich hunter green and added a long butcher-block counter along one wall. The resulting kitchen cabinetry is economical, but it gets vitality from being eclectic. Floors are finished in a rough, earthy Italian tile, and the glazed green tile backsplash is accented with hand-painted tiles from Deruta, Italy. With all the open space beyond the kitchen, it made sense to add a more intimate breakfast nook off one end of the kitchen. This space has its own access to the outside.

A built-in fan keeps the second and third floors cool in summer

Second-floor bedrooms are on each end of the house, where gable walls allow for plenty of windows. In the master bedroom, the 15-ft. ceiling goes right to the ridge, and a bank of east-facing windows adds both light and ventilation. Although we put in two gable dormers in this high ceiling, I kept dormers elsewhere on the second and third floors to a minimum. Indiscriminate or decorative use of dor-mers would have inflated construction costs dramatically and undermined the simplicity of the structure. A third-floor space, accessible by a circular stair we have yet to install, overlooks the master bedroom and will make a good office space when it is finished.

The house is naturally air-conditioned by cool air from the surrounding woods. Ceilings on the first floor are 9 ft.; they vary from 10 ft. to 15 ft. on the second floor. For super-hot weather, we have a 2,000 cfm fan installed in the side of the chimney chase. With intakes at the third-floor level, this thermostatically activated fan will exhaust hot, stratified air and pull cooler air up through the stairwell from the first floor. This approach saved us a lot of money when compared with a much more elaborate central-air system. The chase also was a good place to put plumbing vents, keeping roof penetrations to a minimum.