Hampton Avery Architects

On the Boards

It’s funny how jobs wind up with nicknames in an office. Usually it is just the clients name, the street name, address, etc. since those are easy and tend to avoid confusion. Sometimes though, it’s a characteristic of a job or client that gets attached. For example, on a recent job the clients were a couple who both happened to have the same avocation, teaching actors how to fight and otherwise be convincingly violent on stage. Even though they are two of the nicest and  most easy going people I know, the job got the shorthand of “the violence guys”

The in-progress job shown above has garnered the nickname ‘the playboy house’. This has nothing to do with the our clients, the current owners. As far as we know, neither of them have anything to do with the venerable lad rag, nor do we suspect them of trying to emulate Hef’s lifestyle. It seems that even six months after he sold the existing house, the old owners personality still looms large in the house probably always will. It turns out he bills himself as a magician, escape artist, mentalist, and, because that was not enough on the resume, an architect. In short, to quote our client, he is ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World‘. From what we understand he grew up in a circus family. attended architecture school and still keeps busy performing and designing. His biggest architectural claim to fame, and it is a big one, was being the architect of the Playboy Clubs in the 60’s and 70’s.

In his tenure in the house, he took care to decorate it in the spirit of his work and the times. I’m probably being conservative when I say that there was at least a quarter acre of deep shag carpet in the house when we first saw it. An equivalent amount of surface area in smoked mirrors covered most walls and ceilings. The look was completed with various wall coverings liberaly applied to the remaining walls and ceilings, appropriate light fixtures, and what must be the longest sectional couch on earth. We are told that when he held a sale to clean out the house prior to moving that the line of people stretched around the block to get in. It was an amzing total environment, though I have to say that 40 years might be a little too long to hold onto shag carpeting.

Based on all of this, the choice of nickname was a given.

The existing house is a beautiful and well built example of mid-century modern design. It was constructed in 1953 and the exterior features walls of roman brick with concrete block back-up, cedar eave soffits, and a massive sandstone chimney. The interior features a flagstone floor in the entry, oak built-ins, weathered pine paneling in the breakfast room, and bathroom floor and wall tile set in a one inch mortar bed. We also recently discovered a wall of cedar louvers lining the enclosed porch. It had been hidden behind masonite paneling at some point in the past and looks to be in terrific shape. In a not so great development, we also discovered recently that there are 8 (!) layers of asphalt shingles on the roof.

Our task is to renovate the existing house and add a second floor. On the first floor, about all we will be doing other than removing all the shag carpet and mirrors from the walls and ceiling, is reconfiguring the kitchen bathrooms and adding a stair. Otherwise all that really needs to be done is some clean up and finish restoration that due to water damage from roof leaks. The new second floor will feature bedrooms, a bath, and a master suite with access to a big planted roof deck that extends over the garage (because the house almost fills its trapezoidal lot, this will be the primary open space). The completed house will feature high performance roof and exterior wall construction at the new second floor, tankless water heaters, new energy star windows, and whatever else the budget will allow. We are also exploring solar thermal heating, but existing neighborhood tree cover may prohibit that.

The job is currently leaving design development and we expect to bid and permit the work in the next month.