Travis Neighbor Ward

This Old House Magazine's Latest Building Project Redefines An Old Neighborhood With Its Unique Blend of Modern Design and Traditional Details.

By Travis Neighbor Ward

For the first time since the Timeless Home project started 12 months ago, no subcontractor vans or lumber piles block the view when builder Jason Yowell pulls up the steep drive in his 4x4 pickup. Stepping down from his truck, he stops to admire the freshly painted exterior of the house. "This was a challenging site to build on," says Yowell of the wooded hillside that the house is nestled into. Just figuring out where to put the house so its driveway wouldn't be too long and steep and its backyard wouldn't be hemmed in by retaining walls took some doing. "We all had to stretch our imaginations, but we made it happen." Designed by architect Jeremiah Eck and built by Yowell's Metropolitan Design & Construction, the Timeless Home is the newest arrival in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. This desirable community, close to Atlanta's city center, has seen its older housing stock steadily remodeled or replaced, often with colossal mansionettes ill suited to their surroundings. With this house, Eck and Yowell took another tack. "We wanted its scale and form to be steeped in the tradition of a more modest, more human-friendly design, one that is carefully adapted to its particular site," says Eck.

To realize Eck's vision, This Old House magazine joined with Yowell and the Masco Corporation (one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer home-improvement and building products) to build a house that celebrates the features people love in older homes as it incorporates the latest in modern amenities that accommodate how people live today. The result is a distinctive, low-maintenance structure with easy-to-live-in spaces where classic materials are deftly integrated with the latest electronic home-management and entertainment technologies.

All of which goes to show, Yowell says, that a good house depends more on careful planning and exacting attention to details than on enclosing giant volumes of space. "From top to bottom, this house is precisely what it was intended to be: timeless."



THE LIVING ROOM/​ DINING ROOM

Down the corridor from the vestibule-size entry, at an opening flanked on one side by the limestone-clad fireplace, the Timeless Home dramatically opens up. A steeply pitched ceiling soars 20 feet above the floor of the dining area, drawing the eye to the three narrow windows punctuating the arrow-like gable. This is one ceiling that measures up to the term "cathedral."

The room reaches horizontally for 24 uninterrupted feet to two adjacent window walls, each 17 ˝ feet long and rising 10 feet from the floor to a low-pitched ceiling. Standing in this part of the room, with its wide, 180-degree view of the wooded hillside above, is like being on a majestic second-story veranda, sans bugs.

This is the breathtaking space that Jeremiah Eck likes to call the "living hall"-part living room, part dining room, part library. "The open layout reflects the more informal way people live today," he says. To highlight the window muntins and casings and the built-in bookcases and cabinets surrounding the dining area, interior designer Kay Douglass had them painted a deep charcoal color, to contrast with the expanse of white walls and ceilings.

Eck's open floor plan offered builder Jason Yowell some interesting challenges. To shoulder the roof loads over each of the 171/​2-foot-long window walls, he installed doubled headers made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL), a multiple-ply beam capable of bridging long spans with minimal deflection. Likewise, 17-foot LVLs support the base of the tall gable at the end of the dining area. And the gable in turn holds up one end of a massive beam made of two 2x12 LVLs in the peak of the cathedral ceiling, eliminating the need for visually intrusive collar ties. Yowell is effusive about the performance of this engineered material. "It's so incredibly stiff, it's almost like steel," he says. "But because it's all wood, you can still nail it."

In contrast with all the modern-day lumber incorporated into the framing, and with the crisp new windows, walls, and ceilings, the floors in the living hall are covered with real antiques: planks of longleaf heart pine milled from beams salvaged out of 150-year-old textile mills. "We randomly selected widths so that there wouldn't be any set pattern, just like on an old floor," explains wood flooring contractor Scott Banks, of Pacific Hardwoods. "And we didn't fill in any of the cracks or nail and knot holes because it makes the floor look more rustic."

After Banks's crews installed and sanded the wood, they got down on their knees and rubbed in a dark walnut stain. "You have to do this with pine to make the color consistent," says Banks. Then they sealed the wood with tung oil and two coats of satin polyurethane to protect it and make it look softer and older.


THE KITCHEN

Not just a place devoted to cooking and cleaning up, today's kitchen is the hub around which modern home life revolves. Every gathering of friends and family naturally gravitates there for the food, the conversation, and the cheerful warmth. Recognizing this central role that kitchens now play, Jeremiah Eck created an 18 1/​2-by-13 1/​2-foot room that is literally at the crossroads of all the public activity in the Timeless Home.
From the kitchen, one can pass through the screened-in back porch to the backyard; into the mudroom, laundry, and pantry area off the garage; or through a pair of pocket doors into the dining area. "It's a sociable, informal space, so we didn't wall it off by itself," says Eck. Douglass used color to visually connect this focal-point room with the rest of the house. She chose maple cabinets stained the same charcoal color as all the windows. The cast-concrete counters are tinted the same flannel gray as the limestone that clads the fireplace. And to unite the elements within the kitchen-the copper apron sink, the stainless-steel appliances, and the pumpkin-toned backsplash tiles-she chose marble floor tiles: big 16-by-16-inch squares that range in color from rich brown and gray to terra-cotta. "The finishes end up complementing each other incredibly well," says Yowell.

The kitchen's 1 3/​4-inch-thick countertops are all cast from concrete. Mike Lobdell, who poured all seven at his Killercrete shop, etched their top surfaces with a dose of muriatic acid. "Etching peels away some of the active lime on the surface to give it a coarser texture and improve its resistance to scratching and staining," Lobdell explains. To enhance that resistance even more, he hand-buffed the etched surface with carnauba wax.

It took six men to carry the slabs, two of which weighed 450 pounds apiece, from the truck into the house and rest them on top of the cabinets. In contrast with all the hard work involved to get these counters in place, Lobdell says, "the final result is very laid-back."



THE MASTER BEDROOM & BATH

Every master bedroom ought to be a sanctuary. That's why Eck thoughtfully located the 345-square-foot room in its own wing, at the end of a short corridor off the entrance foyer. "This is a private and elegant space that deserves to be separated from the main living area of the house," says Eck. "As far as master suites go, this one isn't huge," Yowell admits. "But the windows make the space seem expansive." Indeed, the bank of 6-foot-tall casement windows provides a splendid view of the property's wooded slopes. "You feel like you're in a tree house," says Douglass.

The bed facing these windows is flanked by a pair of walk-in closets, each with the necessary complement of shelves, clothing rods, and cabinets. In one closet, a 170-pound safe stands ready to secure any valuables from theft or fire. Small casement windows in each walk-in face the front yard and can let in a pleasant breeze or plenty of natural light-very helpful when trying to match socks.

Daylight also floods into both ends of the 7 1/​2-by-20-foot master bath, gleaming with a matching pair of pedestal sinks, chrome-plated fixtures, a luxurious 6-foot whirlpool tub, and a shower stall equipped with four body sprays and an oversized, ceiling-mounted shower head. Every inch of the stall, including the ceiling, is covered with glass tile tinted a cool greenish-blue: ˝-inch squares on the floor, 6-by-6-inch and 3-by-6-inch on the walls. The same material, cut into 1-by-3-inch mosaics, surrounds the tub. "It looks like old-fashioned bottle glass," says Douglass. "The color is fun, and because of its transparency and light tone it makes the space seem bigger."

For the bathroom floor as well as for the deck around the tub, she chose 12-inch-square tiles made of pale honed limestone. "What we wanted to do in this room-as with most of the house-was to keep it simple," she says. "The limestone and the glass tile lend a very spare, refined look."



THE HOME OFFICE

“We can access the whole world from our homes now," says Eck, "so we need something different from the old-fashioned desk tucked into the corner." For the Timeless Home, therefore, he designed an office that occupies a central spot on the first floor, just off the main entrance hall, befitting its role as the place where important business is accomplished. Eck incorporated 8-foot-tall interior windows on one wall and a glass door flanked by full-length sidelights on the other. These admit light from the entryway, and give the room a transparency that emphasizes its connection, both physically and visually, to the rest of the house.

Equipped with a high-speed Internet hookup and lines for phone and fax, the cozy 10-by10-foot room is the high-tech, digital nerve center of the house, where e-mail messages and online schedules can be easily updated or accessed. "This should make obsolete the chaotic refrigerator
magnet, sticky-note system most households use," says Yowell.

A bank of whitewashed maple cabinets provides filing and storage for all the paperwork needed to manage a home; a 11/​4-inchthick concrete slab, like the counters in the kitchen, serves as the desktop. The wall overlooking the courtyard is graced by a triangular bay window that echoes a similar window in the kitchen. "The striking fenestration is just one of the features that makes this home office distinctly different," Yowell says.


THE MEDIA ROOM

Even the most cursory visitor to the Timeless Home will note that Jeremiah Eck loves windows. He's used them everywhere, to open up rooms to sunlight and fresh air; to frame views; and to highlight certain architectural features. Everywhere, that is, except the media room, a 12 1/​2-by-26-foot space in the basement that lies next to the high foundation wall. Says Eck, "When we redesigned the house to accommodate the slope, it seemed appropriate to drag the TV out of the living room and put it where we couldn't have windows anyway."

Douglass decorated this room with vintage movie posters and six reclining leather club chairs. The floors are covered with wall-to-wall carpeting to improve the acoustics; the five speakers (plus subwoofer) produce cinema-quality sound.

Electronics specialist David Pierce hooked up these and the other state-of-the art components, including a 50-inch flat-screen television (a high-definition, wall-mounted unit); a progressive-scan DVD/​CD player that can hold up to 301 discs; and a multi-channel receiver housed in the cabinets below the TV. The video components can be linked to the rest of the house via a network of RG-6 coaxial cables that will allow satellite TV programs or DVD selections to be viewed simultaneously from televisions elsewhere in the house. The media room also functions as the main hub for the distributed audio system: a separate network of wires that pipes music from the media room's DVD/​CD player and receiver to speakers throughout the upstairs.


THE BASEMENT QUARTERS

The finished 1,100-square-foot basement in the Timeless Home is a bright place meant for guests to sleep, children to play, and parties to spill indoors from the back deck. Families can also enjoy the latest Hollywood releases in the media room. "I expect this part of the house is going to be a very social place," says Yowell.

This is no dank, cobwebbed cellar. The site's slope leaves one side open to ground level, and the house's irregular footprint, in combination with numerous windows and the French doors leading to the outdoor deck, ensures that plenty of natural light reaches into this space. At the foot of the heart-pine staircase -- under which is one of two powder rooms in the house (the other is just off the front entry hall) -- the big 21-by-40-foot playroom overlooks the deck and the wooded side yard. Next to the stairs is a jewel of a kitchenette, stylishly fitted with such amenities as maple cabinets, stainless steel and butcher-block countertops, a microwave oven, and even an undercounter wine cellar. It's ideally located to make popcorn for media-room movie fans or supply snacks (and drinks) to playroom and back-deck partygoers.

The 350-square-foot bedroom located at the end of the basement under the living room is the largest in the house and enjoys abundant daylight through its 9-foot wall of double-hung and fixed windows. Attached to that room is a full bathroom with a bathtub-shower surrounded with white ceramic tile and a vanity topped with a solid-surface counter and integral sink. The bathroom floors are tiled, as well, with the same marble found in the first-floor kitchen. "When you add together the kitchenette, sleeping quarters, outdoor access, and all the storage space in the closet next to the media room, this entire downstairs could easily be turned into independent living quarters," says Yowell.

In this room as well as the playroom and kitchenette, linoleum flooring contractor Fred Seagraves covered the concrete slab with colorful sheets of linoleum. This durable, easy-to-clean flooring, a marbled mix of linseed oil, rosin, wood "flour," and limestone on a jute backing, comes in 6-foot-7-inch-wide rolls or 13-inch square tiles. He laid tiles in the playroom and kitchenette, rolls in the bedroom. Here, Douglass chose sepia for the central field of color and surrounded it with a blue and ivory border, simulating the look of a large throw rug.

Before Seagraves could install the flooring, he first had to coat the concrete with a latex sealant that stops any moisture from migrating through the slab. After waiting 48 hours for it to cure, he troweled out a synthetic rubber adhesive and laid down the tile and sheets. Linoleum cuts with such ease-Seagraves uses just a straightedge and a utility knife-that preparing and installing the basement bedroom flooring took only 6 hours. "One of the great things about this material is how simple it is to make colorful custom patterns," he says.


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