N-01 The program
What the house had to do
The owners grew up in old houses and wanted a new one that obeyed the same rules: rooms, not zones; windows in walls, not walls of windows; a stair worth walking up. A five-bay Georgian plan gave them that discipline without the drafts and knob-and-tube of the houses they loved.
The house sits at the head of a working pear orchard the owners were determined to keep. The kitchen wing looks down the rows; harvest crates still stack on the back porch every September.
N-02 The materials
The palette, and why
- Painted brick in Flemish bond
- A lime-based mineral coating, not film paint — it weathers, it doesn't peel.
- True divided-light sashes
- Individually glazed panes with slender muntins — the reason the facade reads as real from thirty feet.
- Limestone sills and keystones
- Cut locally, tooled by hand — the shadows do the ornament's work.
- Plaster cornices and ceiling roses
- Run in place by a two-man shop we've worked with for fifteen years.
- Reclaimed heart-pine floors
- Salvaged from a decommissioned mill; every board carries a century of grain.
N-03 The timeline
As it actually ran
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Feasibility 5 weeks
Orchard preservation shaped the siting — the driveway moved three times on paper, never in the field.
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Design & documents 8 months
Classical proportion takes drawing time. The cornice details alone were eleven sheets.
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Permitting 6 weeks
Straightforward — traditional forms rarely frighten a review board.
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Construction 14 months
The plaster shop's schedule set the winter sequence; we planned around craft, not the reverse.
N-04 The collaboration
Designed in-house
An in-house design led by our studio with a classical-detailing consultant reviewing every elevation. The discipline paid at pricing: repeatable bays and honest materials meant the lowest cost-per-square-foot of any Hartwell home this decade — proof that classical needn't mean extravagant.
“Visitors argue about which century the house is from. That was exactly the brief.”
