N-01 The program
What the house had to do
The owners grew up in old houses and wanted a new one that followed 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 old wiring of the houses they loved.
The house sits at the head of a working pear orchard the owners were set on keeping. The kitchen wing looks down the rows, and harvest crates still stack on the back porch every September.
N-02 The materials
The palette, and why
- Painted brick in Flemish bond
- Finished with a lime-based mineral coating instead of film paint, so it weathers rather than peels.
- True divided-light sashes
- Each pane glazed on its own with slim muntins. It is why the front reads as real from thirty feet.
- Limestone sills and portico
- Cut locally and tooled by hand. The shadows do the work of ornament.
- Plaster cornices and ceiling roses
- Run in place by a two-person shop we have worked with for fifteen years.
- Reclaimed heart-pine floors
- Salvaged from a closed mill. Every board carries a century of grain.
N-03 The timeline
As it actually ran
-
Feasibility 5 weeks
Saving the orchard shaped the siting. The driveway moved three times on paper and never in the field.
-
Design & documents 8 months
Classical proportion takes drawing time. The cornice details alone filled eleven sheets.
-
Permitting 6 weeks
Simple. Traditional forms rarely worry a review board.
-
Construction 14 months
The plaster shop's calendar set the winter sequence. We planned around the craft, not the other way around.
- Final cost vs. signed budget
- 0.6% under
- Move-in vs. promised date
- On the promised day
Fictional figures for a demonstration project. Every project's results
N-04 The collaboration
Designed in-house
Designed in-house, with a classical-detailing consultant reviewing every elevation. The discipline paid off at pricing: repeatable bays and honest materials gave this house the lowest cost per square foot of any Hartwell home this decade. Classical does not have to mean extravagant.
