Dear Homework,
We bought our first home a little less than a year ago. The façade is reduced to a bare minimum, and while this gives us a lot of room for upgrades, we feel it would benefit from more details that add character and depth.
—Bare Minimum
Dear Bare Minimum,
In a way, it is helpful to see a house reduced to its bare essence. In this case, it shows what some structures look like with no ‘jewelry.’ What we see here is a well-detailed brick box with, frankly, tiny openings, no color and few details that cast interesting shadows and add charming detail.
Frequent readers of this column have, no doubt, already identified the obvious need for shutters. A close examination of your existing photo even shows the presence of the previous shutter “tie-backs” still on the wall. In this situation, the shutters double the size of the windows, add a jolt of color and cast some welcome shadows, which single-handedly move the house from naked to fully dressed.
The next transformative initiative would be landscape upgrades. Here I show a new, low stone wall that acts as a planter and projects forward at the entry to emphasize this area’s importance. Tall, columnar evergreens on either side of the front door will increase its apparent scale, almost the way a front porch would. Further foundation plantings are kept very low so as not to block the new, wrought iron Juliette balconies. Taller foundation plants would have the effect of making the façade feel shorter. Finally, small details such as a larger lantern above the front door and new French doors with decorative iron balconies are better scaled to the façade, meaning that they do a better job of getting noticed.
In this situation, we could have added an elegant portico, widened the windows, painted the brick, etc., but that would have taken the response beyond the bare minimum required to make this an attractive, elegant home.
Thanks for asking,
—Homework
[HomeWork is penned by Paul Doerner, president, The Lawrence Group. if you would like your home critiqued, contact us at homework@townandstyle.com]