DREAMING OF A White Christmas
This custom home in the Vermont countryside is built for snow.
When building in areas with harsh winters, taking the weather into consideration is a must. “Vermont is a harsh environment for buildings,” says Maura Wygmans, AIA architect at Classic Home. She and her husband form a design-build team that takes a building from conception to reality, and she always takes snow into account when designing the architecture. “We have to get water and snow away from the building as quickly as possible,” she says.
Architecturally, they do that with simple rooflines and snow-friendly materials. “We use standing seam metal roofs so snow can easily slide off the building,” Maura says. For this project, the 2,000-square-foot home sits on a 30-acre farm in rural Vermont, so it needed to be selfsufficient. In addition to the simple sloped roof, Maura added a screened-in porch on the left and a farmer’s porch on the right. “It’s a deep porch that can store wood and has functionality,” she says. The result is a winterready home that’s a cozy place to be when snow falls.