A real retrofit

Writes about a modern family in a mid-century showpiece

“It was kind of like she was the architect and I was the client, more or less,” Reiskin said. “Christine is very good at designing a renovation that blends in with what was there before. It is hard to tell what’s new.

“I’m analytical. She’s intuitive. In a design firm, she’s the designer and I’m the project manager.”

Chan maintained the layout of the home. The most significant modifications were to the kitchen and dining room, which she opened up. She had wanted to reconfigure the bedrooms but lost that argument.

“I came home from work and looked at (her design) and said: ‘No way,’ “Reiskin said. “The owner said there’s no budget for that,” Chan said with a laugh.

She didn’t lose every argument, though. When her suggestions were met with “but I grew up in this house”, she would have to convince her husband that the change was for the better.

Reiskin initially balked at her proposal to move a door in the den that opened to the back yard.

“Oh, man, that took a while for me to accept,” Reiskin said. But once she showed him how much better traffic would flow through the room, he capitulated.

On some design elements, they worked as a team. Reiskin and Chan wanted to replace every piece of glass in the house with something more energy-efficient. But what seemed like a simple project became a complex problem.

The first thing Reiskin did was consult his father’s drawings for the home.

“It was interesting to see his own hand, his lettering, but also his choices of how he detailed things, how everything came together,” Reiskin said.

After spending hours studying the drawings, Reiskin realised that standard residential wood windows weren’t in keeping with his father’s design.

“That’s why we kept poring over the drawings: to see what he intended,” Chan said. “As architects, we understand the difference. The builder would have just put in any old thing they could find.”

“This was a family house,” Reiskin said. “I was not going to junk it up.”

In the end, they chose commercial-grade aluminum windows typically used in condo buildings.

The centrepiece of the house is the atrium, enclosed by glass on three sides. Leon Reiskin designed it be an outdoor living room, but it ended up being too warm in the summer. Chan wanted to turn it into a garden.

“I wanted something softer, to soften all these angles,” Chan said.

She suggested to her husband that they build a low planter wall.

“He’s like, ‘Dream on’,” Chan said with a laugh.

But Reiskin found an affordable option one day while flipping through a magazine. The company that made planters for High Line Park in New York City also made planter walls out of CorTen steel.

“The soil and everything is green-roof technology,” Reiskin said. “We had a landscape architect from my office design the planting plan. It looks pretty crazy, but there’s actually a plan to those plants.”

Because of the atrium, Chan describes the house as a “square doughnut”. The layout is ideal for their daughter, Julia, who sometimes runs laps around the atrium to burn off extra energy – just as her father did when he was growing up. Julia now sleeps in her father’s old bedroom, while her brother, Noah, sleeps where his uncle once did.

The house is “definitely kid-friendly”, Chan said. “Their perspective is different. All their friends come over and say: ‘Where’s your upstairs?’ But all the adults come to our house and say: ‘Oh, I wish I had this, because when we get old we won’t have to worry about the stairs.’ “

Living in his childhood home as an adult has been a revelation for Reiskin. “The first morning, I remember we woke up and just thought: ‘Wow, this is ours, this is cool.’ “– The Washington Post