From the pages of
Renovation Style® magazine

Vive la Difference

Most Americans know their ancestral heritage and honor it in some small way: old-world antiques, for example, or crafts from the family's homeland. Likewise, most good houses reveal something of their own ancestry. Here's a case in point, a suburban Kansas City home with hints of France and traces of tropical Atlantic isles.

"It had always been known as the house from the Bahamas," says the current owner, interior designer David Griffith. With charcoal siding and a white-shingled roof, "it really did look like it was in Nassau."

The home didn't have any glaring flaws (see "Recognizing potential" below), and David utilized that potential "to push the French a little bit further." A gentle nudge launched the transformation.

"The house just cried for French doors," David explains. "That was the starting point." Since then, custom French doors have replaced almost every window — 59 in all, each 8 feet tall. The grand plan, however, reached much further. It would extend both wings on the front of the house by 11 feet, add rooms and a guest annex in back, eliminate an upstairs bedroom to allow a two-story living room, and enclose a gravel courtyard with a broad front wall.

"Once we had the wall up, it became even more French," David says. Pear trees in the courtyard, potted in sunken terra-cotta, gave him "the feeling of Versailles," recalling the palace of Louis XIV.

"The whole feeling we wanted with the house was like we had taken an old outbuilding on a large estate in Provence," David says. "It could have been a caretaker's home or a stable converted into a home. That is one of the reasons for the lanterns along the top of the walls and the tiled floor. That is what we wanted to capture, the sort of rustic elegance of the French-country style."

Additions were built largely for entertaining, which the house does with European grace. David and partner Roger Pilley, an architectural designer, have hosted groups of 100 and more. Before-and-after floor plans show how comfortably they extended the home's entertainment capabilities.

A key to the plan's success is the sunny sitting room that covers an old patio and provides a convenient path to the new family room, so traffic isn't routed through the dining area. More than a hallway, the sitting room offers a cheery spot for breakfast, open to the living room, dining room, and family room. For large parties, David says, "we set it up for a bar and cocktails. Traffic flow is very important."

Less important was an upstairs guest suite that was sacrificed to give dramatic height and volume to the living room. The suite's function now is handled by a new, private guest annex nestled poolside. "The house is still a three-bedroom house with three-and-a-half baths," Roger says. "It's just in two separate units."

They raised the living room ceiling one full story and raised the floor one step. The floor originally had been sunken, a step lower than the entry level. But with crowds milling about, it was awkward and unsafe, Roger says. Raising the floor caused other problems, notably a need to raise and rebuild the living room fireplace. This "domino effect" challenges renovators who may be tempted to work around a problem rather than invest the time and money necessary to set it right. But challenge by challenge, David and Roger set things right.

They kept a vestige of the former second floor as a loft library, perched atop a tightly wound and well-worn antique stairway — from France, of course. A local ironsmith studied the antique stair railing to create the loft's handrail. It's a charming space, but the loft's real purpose is to enhance the living room. "The living room feels less intimidating with the balcony," David explains. It's a space consideration. "If you walked straight into a two-story living space, the intimacy would be gone." Large, open great-rooms, so popular in recent years, "are like hotel lobbies," he laments.

In contrast, this living room's loft and lanterns create a visual break, an impression reinforced by moldings between the smooth ceiling and the heavily textured walls. They suggest a comfortable ceiling height, but they also allow the airiness of a grand space.

David's brother made the shutters that frame windows around the top of the living room. These windows — they once served the upstairs bedroom — now pour sunlight into the living room. The light plays on the deeply textured walls, created with a heavily troweled mixture of cement and plaster over drywall. The effect resembles old-world plaster or stucco.

Living room furnishings mix a variety of antiques gathered on travels in France. They range from primitive to refined, which gives the interior a sense of breadth and timelessness. As David says, "I like the feeling of it being collected over generations instead of weeks."

Like the living room, the renovated dining hall stands taller than before. Its former 8-foot ceiling stretches another two feet into the old attic space. "It could have gone taller but we didn't want to lose the intimacy," Roger says. Antique beams, ordered from a Pennsylvania salvage company, add warmth and a sense of enclosure.

Textures, patterns, and glazes give the walls their French accent. In the kitchen and in the guest wing, walls showcase a plaster-and-straw technique that has a look and feel of antiquity. The living and dining rooms have identical wall surfaces, but differences in the glazing make the dining area appear more textured. The living room has a subtle palette, from beige to ivory, and the dining room ranges from sienna to umber. "If you saw the two rooms without the colors, they would look alike," says David, who did the glazing himself. Woodwork and walls in the sitting room have a crackle finish to simulate age, "like the paint is wearing off," he says.

Almost all ceilings are higher than before, but their heights vary from room to room. The mix further enhances the illusion that the house has grown gradually, to meet generations of changing needs. That's part of its farmhouse character. It's an illusion David and Roger reinforce at every opportunity.

In the kitchen, for example, pine cabinets replaced a contemporary gray-and-white kitchen. "The top cabinets are stained darker than the bottom ones, again for that added-to feeling," David says. Wooden countertops resemble chopping blocks. And, instead of an island, the kitchen has an old French table where friends can sit while their hosts cook.

Furnishings found in the adjacent family room are mostly upholstered and overscaled. "Comfort is the primary thing," David says. "We maintained the French flavor with some of the accent pieces." The hooded fireplace adopts a French style, but the materials are pure Midwest: The red granite was quarried in South Dakota and used originally as paving on the streets of Omaha, Nebraska. "We did the surround in the red granite and the hood has been faux painted with canvas applied first," he adds.

Most obviously, this renovation celebrates the spirit of France with all the gusto of Bastille Day. It also demonstrates how effectively and creatively new construction can mimic the character of age. Finally, it shows the value of experience: As designers and as homeowners, David and Roger have learned to savor the renovation process. After all, it took decades to renovate a simple hunting lodge into the palace of Versailles.

Recognizing potential
Experience often enhances vision: The more you know about what you look at, the more detail you see. Designers like David Griffith have seen so many houses, examining and dissecting them, that they are able to look past the superficial trappings and peer deep into a home's skeleton, like an X ray. And David knew there was a French-style house lurking. "The bones were already there," David says.

Almost any home can be enlarged, but this one cried for expansion, he says. Here's what sold him: Quality construction. The house was built in 1952 as the home of a contractor, so it was well built.

Location. Situated on an attractive hilltop acre, it offered privacy and lots of light.
Architectural integrity. Simple but classic French style.
Sound investment. Neighboring homes were larger, so expansion fit the character of the area. Investments that exceed the values of neighboring homes are less secure.

Credits
Text: Larry Erickson and Susan Andrews
Photography: Judith Watts
Regional Editor: Susan Andrews