Open Floor PlansWhy Today's Designers Are Knocking Down Walls
Image Courtesy of Michael Wilkinson
The homes of yesteryear may possess charm that new construction can’t match, but rooms in older homes can be a bit small for 42-inch plasma screens and entertain-a-crowd cooking. Often master baths are tiny, living rooms aren’t so great, and galley kitchens seem built for galley slaves. While some of these houses get plowed under, other moderate-sized homes are finding new life as owners reconfigure spaces by knocking down the interior walls that clog things up. It’s not cheap or easy, but the results can be spectacular and less expensive than starting from scratch. Opening the floor plan is generally done in the public areas of the house, meaning the living room, dining room and kitchen. Although open floor plans are associated with modern interior design schemes, the concept has been around forever, according to Hugh Newell Jacobsen, a D.C.-basedarchitect and well-known practitioner of modern design. “It originated in Japan around the 15th century and was brought west through the Bauhaus school in Germany,” he said. The Bauhaus flourished in the early 1900s and helped launch the modern age of architecture.
This popularity makes sense. Milton Shinberg, an architect with Shinberg Levinas and educator at Catholic University, teaches a class on how space is perceived. “One of the goals in an open floor plan is to share light by moving it from outside to inside. The other goal is to take spaces that are small and make them more comfortable,” he said.
Image Courtesy of Yerko Pallominy
Lisa de Lima and Steve Geest wanted a more comfortable home so in 1999, the couple made an offer on a one-story ranch house in Gaithersburg, Maryland that belonged to Geest’s grandparents — without telling grandma and grandpa. “We wanted to give them a fair price, we knew it was a good deal and we knew the house,” Geest said. The young couple, who both work for an organic food company, lived in the house for five years before exploring a major renovation. Through a referral, they met with Taylor Matthews, a designer with Landis Construction in the District. “They said they wanted to have a more sensible entryway and an updated kitchen that wouldn’t be so closed off from the living room,” he said. The existing front entrance was in the middle of the house and opened directly into the living room. “Because of how the space was designed, the furniture placement forced you to look at the front door,” Matthews said. The original owners had enclosed a car port to expand the living space, but it was 18 inches lower than the rest of the house and unheated. The homeowners and the designer both saw the sun porch, which was being used for storage, as an opportunity to open things up and move the front door.
A fireplace and some skylights were sacrificed to stay on budget. When the couple look at what they originally spent on the house, what they invested and what it’s worth now, Geest said, “I think we’re about even, depending on where the market is going.” Reconfiguring meant building up the floor of the sun porch to the same level as the rest of the house and removing the wall. This was simplified because, as in most one-story ranches, the exterior walls bore all the weight of the house. De Lima and Geest lived in the house for five months of construction by camping out in the basement and bedroom. The front door was slid down the front façade and Matthews designed a foyer with seating and shelving to separate it from the main living area. For de Lima, the architectural changes also changed how the family interacts. “Being able to cook while talking to somebody else helps with the social aspect. In the old space you felt like you were separated from everything,” she said.
Image Courtesy of Hoachlander Davis Photography
The social aspect was also the driving force behind the walls coming down at the Toppenberg residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Erin and Erik bought the house in 2005 after moving out of a Manhattan apartment. Erik, an executive for XM Radio, was charmed by suburban living. “We loved the village and the exterior of the house, but we knew the interior needed a substantial update,” he said. The family, which includes two children, were referred to interior designer Patricia Bevacqua by their real estate agent. “The house as it was just didn’t live the way a young, energetic family would like,” she said. Bevacqua sought architectural advice from Jeff Broadhurst of Broadhurst Architects in Rockville. “The discussions were centered on being able to converse with other people while somebody was working in the kitchen,” Broadhurst said. A wall separated the kitchen from an underused, but good-sized dining room, while the small, main living area was stuck on the back of the house. “It was very evident that the solid wall needed to be opened up,” he said. The design team decided to flip the dining room and the living area to use the space more efficiently. Because the 1903 vintage home had two stories, the interior wall couldn’t be removed without adding support for the second floor. “Structurally, it was a challenge,” Broadhurst said. “We had to bring in a consulting engineer and it required adding a piece of steel.” The I-beam is hidden in the arch that separates the kitchen from the living area and is anchored all the way down to the basement. Other challenges included the house’s location in a historic district and the desire to keep the home’s character intact. “We had historic, crown molding made of plaster throughout the house and we wanted to respect that,” Broadhurst said. The molding survived the renovation, but some of the plans for moving windows around in the new living room were nixed in the historic review process. The design phase took five months and construction lasted another six. Erin Toppenberg and the kids stayed with family in Georgia while Erik rode out the upheaval living in the basement. The budget, which reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, also suffered a few hard knocks. “We didn’t stay on budget,” Toppenberg said, “but we made decisions to add things while always being conscious of resale.” The flow of the space was modernized to fit the family’s needs. “I can sit at the kitchen counter watch my wife cook and see my daughters playing in the other room, it just gives me a warm feeling,” Erik Toppenberg said.
Image Courtesy of Michael Wilkinson
Ruth and Steve Kinsley, now both retired, bought a mostly gutted row house on Capitol Hill in 1971 for $24,000. They did some work to make the space livable, but neither was truly happy. “There were things that we both hated about the house,” says Ruth Kinsley, “Steve hated the fireplace and I hated the room where the furnace, washer and dryer were located.” The couple raised a child and had careers while living in the 1898 vintage home, which measures 15 feet wide. A friend of theirs was renovating her own house in 2005 and introduced them to Georgette Goldman, principal of D.C. architectural firm 3DG. “They came to us with several goals including a new master suite and a kitchen,” Goldman said. Goldman brought in Greg Horgan to serve as the project architect; he saw a number of problems with the downstairs layout. “We wanted to get some light into the space, it was a really narrow row house with the stairs, a fireplace that created this huge mass protruding into the living room and an existing heating and air conditioning duct bumping out of the wall,” said Horgan. Changes involved all three levels in the house, including the dirt-floored basement crawlspace. “We created a small cellar which gave the homeowners room for storage and allowed us to move the stairs and fireplace, which was key,” Goldman said. The basement had to be dug out by hand using shovels and buckets. It was then underpinned and a concrete floor was poured. The hot water heater and heating and air conditioning equipment were moved downstairs as the designers began what would be the hardest part of the project — moving the stairs from the side wall to the back wall. “I was opposed to it at first,” Steve Kinsley said. “It wasn’t what I had envisioned nor had I considered it, but I guess that’s why you should hire an architect.” The designers struggled with different iterations of the floating staircase to make the landings and angles of descent come out right. A bedroom upstairs was eliminated to make room for the new steps. “We went from a three bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house to a two bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house,” Ruth Kinsley said. By reconfiguring the downstairs powder room, moving the furnace and pivoting the stairs, a straight path to the kitchen was created. The kitchen remains separated. A dining area that used to be boxed in by the stairs now floats next to the living room. Carving away part of the ceiling to allow for the new staircase increases the feeling of openness between the two floors. The homeowners tapped funds from a condo sale to pay for the renovation and had a figure in mind for what they wanted to spend. “We gave the architects a number, but it went way over,” Ruth Kinsley said. The Kinsleys stayed in a friend’s basement apartment during the renovation, which lasted about a year. But they think it was worth it. “I love my new kitchen,” Ruth Kinsley said. “It’s easy having people over and it’s nice to have a husband that doesn’t hate the house.”
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