A tweak – not a teardown – for that just-right house

MODEST homes are routinely demolished to make way for supersized houses. But there are exceptions to this market trend.

Daniela and Chris Sicuranza, both 40, live abroad and chose to expand and renovate, rather than replace, their old brick home.

“We didn’t want to tear down and start over,” said Daniela, a freelance TV news producer. “The house was solid and in great condition. We just felt it needed some tweaks to suit our needs.”

Their biggest change was to build a 227m2 rear addition, large enough for a dining room, a master bedroom and a screened porch on the main level.

“For us, it was just the right amount of space we needed,” said Chris, a risk and compliance consultant for consumer banks.

The three new spaces are contained within a wood-clad, rectangular structure that makes a bold statement in the backyard but can’t be seen from the street. “It’s our little secret,” he said. Drawn to clean lines and simple shapes, the homeowners insisted on a modern design for the addition.

Rather than looking like an addon, the porch is treated as a room well blended into the new wing of the house. Screened openings are sized to match the large windows of the adjacent dining room. Wood siding and an overhanging roof line extend from the protected outdoor space to the rest of the addition.

“Maximising outdoor space and preserving landscape was key, so integrating the screened porch into the addition served to reduce its footprint,” said architect Jon Hensley, who led the design and renovation.

“We had a lot of ideas at the beginning of the project,” he said.

“We looked at adding to the front and back of the house, and going up. The biggest challenge was matching the ideas with the budget.”

The couple took three years to choose the home they wanted and made the decision based on its culde-sac location, remodelled kitchen and proximity to public schools.

“The lot is huge and private in the back, so that was the icing on the cake,” Daniela said.

After moving into the home, the couple became parents to two daughters, Gabriela and Lucia, now 7 and 5.

In 2015, they decided to add the essential spaces missing from the home and renovate the interiors to improve family life.

They declined to say how much they spent on the remodelling project.

The original dining room had disappeared when the previous homeowners incorporated it into their kitchen renovation.

“We really needed a place to have meals with the kids and family,” Chris said.

“Our only place to have dinner was at the kitchen island. It wasn’t ideal.”

To create more bedroom space, the homeowners looked at adding an upper story, but the staircase to reach this level would have taken up too much space in the small living room next to the kitchen.

The resulting wing centres on a dining room off the kitchen. After a wide opening was created to connect the two spaces, the Sicuranzas added a tile splashback and a built-in desk in the kitchen.

The dining room features handblown glass pendant lights and a niche for displaying family photos. French doors on one side open to the screened porch to increase the flow between the two spaces.

At the opposite end of the house, the existing master bedroom lacked an adjoining bathroom and closets large enough to store clothes and belongings.

By building a new bedroom as part of the addition, the Sicuranzas gained more space and his-and-hers walk-in closets. The original master bedroom was turned into a master bathroom, a linen cupboard and a hallway leading to the new bedroom.

Cupboards in the girls’ bedrooms were remodelled to take advantage of changes in the master suite and maximise space. The hall bathroom was refreshed with new fixtures and finishes and a solar tube inserted into the ceiling to provide daylight.

Of all the spaces in the home, the new screened porch next to the dining room has come to be the most used.

More than a bug-free perch to admire the back yard, the multifunctional retreat serves as a recreation space, a play room, a second living room, an entertaining area and a place to enjoy meals and conversation.

An audio system and a wallmounted TV turn the porch into a media room. A modular sofa and seating allow the furniture to be reconfigured according to the room’s use. A large fan mounted on the 2.7m ceiling circulates the air to cool the room in warm weather.

“It’s my favourite space in the house,” Gabriela said. “We like to eat dinner and lunch here and listen to music.” – The Washington Post