This home settles into the hillside to capture
views without dominating its surroundings.
Photos by Architect Peter LaBau.
The Contours were starting a new chapter in their lives,
retiring from California and wanting a place in the Virginia Piedmont where
they could work; he could jam with his musician friends; they could entertain
and be close yet visually separate from the neighboring communities, including
nearby Roanoke; and their children had a commodious place to visit.
The existing early 1800s cabin on the property was
inspirational, but not functional for their needs, recalls Peter LaBau, their
regionally based architect. It wasn’t salvageable, “but did have exposed stone
on the foundation and a rambling look with older and newer pieces joined, and that really moved them," he says.
“They wanted a central core, as the original cabin had been,
with a voluminous feel inside and appendages working off of that. She also
liked the idea of blending in more contemporary flavors so that it wasn’t just
a period knock-off.” Some of the new residents settling in the interior solution were
a compartmentalization of spaces. His office is on the lower level and rather
simple to accommodate his nocturnal work habits, and it is adjacent to his
acoustically isolated music room. Her office and bedroom are directly above
with breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge, owing to her love of day-lighted
space. A berm separates the house visually from their nearest neighbor about a
quarter of a mile away.
The house is situated on a modest plateau enlarged from the
original hillside clearing. The approach is steep and winding, with the first
element that comes into view being a stabilized outbuilding, which serves as
much as a folly as a storage area, LaBau says. The drive ascends just beyond
the house to an overlooking garage connected to the house via a pergola. The
home’s footprint—including a modest landscaped yard (more of a 45-degree sloped
rock garden)—takes up only a modest amount of the couple’s hillside forest
acreage. Boulders and large rocks salvaged from the site became recreated
outcroppings.
A rustic exterior with contemporary detailing hints at the
comfortable and well-appointed interior amenities.
The building materials were also chosen to evoke a feeling of
age and accumulation. The structure is timber with steel roof spans, and the
look of structural stone is created from a cultured stone exterior finish that
came in at $3 a foot. “This stuff gets better all the time,” LaBau extolled.
“And we set it without grout so that it looks dry laid.”
The timber frame was pre-manufactured by Connor Homes, whose
owner LaBau knew when he worked in New England. Shipping to Virginia added
embodied waste energy, but otherwise the materials are sustainably harvested locally
to the Connor factory. Their waste factor is 7 percent that of stick-built
framing, the lumber is superb, and they deliver factory efficiency, LaBau
explains.
Another major factor in making the home appear as if it had
evolved over generations was the look of the exterior siding. “When Erin first
came to me, she brought photographs of Western structures with the
once-painted-now-faded look, which they really wanted,” LaBau says. “And it was
totally fortuitous that a cold e-mail came to me soon after from Harvest Timber
Specialty Products,” (which now works locally through the Eastern Seaboard
distributor WT Fary Brothers, LLC out of Gloucester, VA).
“I wanted to use reclaimed materials on the cladding. But for an
exterior application, I was really reluctant to use something that wouldn’t
last. “The siding from Harvest Timber Specialty Products, though, is harvested
from beetle-killed trees, which they cut before it has deteriorated. So instead
of fueling the massive forest fires we’ve been seeing out West, this timber
sequesters that accumulated carbon. They mill it and give it a textured surface
and treat it so that the wood can be re-coated in the future and will last for
many years. We chose three different colors for each of the separate building
sections to achieve the look the client wanted.”
For more information contact:
Glen Ehrhardt, Business Development
PO Box 59 Lakebay, WA 98349
t. 253.884.6255
e. glen@harvest-timber.com
