Post by Catarina Ferreira, AIA

For an architecturally conservative town, Washington DC and surrounding cities have a decent stock of mid-century architecture, especially homes. A lot of them are desperately in need of a face-lift, sometimes a total overhaul. Mid-century renovations are one of our specialties at arc-T.

In the case of our Courtyard House renovation, our clients had purchased a 1950's home near Mount Vernon in good condition, specifically because it was a modern house, a few years before I met them. Bit by bit, their the house started to feel a bit dated, and no longer modern enough...

The house pre-renovation

I met them on a Saturday morning a year or so before they actually became clients, to talk about how they could make their dream of owning a true modern house come true, and encouraged them to buy a mid-century house in need of a renovation. After searching for a few months, my clients decided that, ironically, the home they already owned was the best candidate and gave me call. The budget was tight, as is often the case. We needed to devise a plan for transforming the house into a more up to date, comfortable modern home as efficiently as possible.

Most of the house received only a light face-lift inside and out. The big moves involved converting a small garage into an extension of the living room, raised one half of the existing gabled roof in the new living room, and adding a new garage, creating an entrance Courtyard, and added a screened porch. On the interior a new kitchen (w/ Zampieri Cucine cabinets, of course!), a new master bath and dressing room, a new hall bath and powder room were provided, in order to bring the house up to 21st century standards.

We are giving our clients a little time to settle in, but we hope to be able to share professional photographs of this project with you soon.