REMODELING PORTFOLIO: ADDITIONS

A Mansion Gets a Makeover

Winner 2006 Montgomery County Builder's Association
Winner 2007 NARI Contractor of the Year Award, Metropolitan Washington Chapter

By Kai Tong AIA
Hopkins & Porter Architecture Department

In Georgetown, a spacious contemporary mansion's immense interior volumes and expansive outdoor views were cluttered and blocked by ill-conceived walls and ceiling planes. How to open and enhance this space required a careful, almost surgical design approach by Hopkins & Porter's Architects, as well as equal precision and timing on the part of the H&P Production team.

H&P's Architect Kai began by 'erasing' two bulky existing rooms in the immense house that were not only blocking a two story glass wall view of a nearby body of water, but congesting an otherwise spacious "sunken" living room level. Also, looming stair shaft walls and clunky stair banister walls were obliterated to create openness and transparency throughout a multi-story entry foyer volume. Wooden stairs were removed to create space for a much needed first floor powder room. The resulting vestigial space below the new powder room was a perfect location for hidden lighting to shine up through the glass floor tiles of the powder room.

A new set of curved hardwood custom stairs, with a light and airy custom steel railing, introduce another highly transparent element into the newly realized spaces, and land on a newly curved hardwood stage floor that serves as a backdrop for family theatre productions. The new open railings continue up two flights to a new curved balcony landing outside the Master Bedroom suite overlooking the diamond-plate flooring of the foyer. Another open railing allows one to look over the living room level from the dining room. The porthole in the new stainless steel front door is a motif carried throughout the house, again allowing unimpeded visual connection between different volumes of the house.

The family now enjoys an unimpeded flow of energy, what some refer to as "chi", throughout the house. Beautiful vistas and soaring expanses can be experienced as an all-embracing whole, rather than through piecemeal glimpses and visual hints. And the interior views now fully surround and embrace both the homeowners and their visitors.

H&P's Production team met the unique demands for planning and precise execution required of a project constructed around the daily lives of a family of six people and one hamster, near the busy heart of Georgetown.

The Georgetown project has been awarded a 2007 Coty Award from the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of NARI.