Flexing New Design Muscles on a Vermont Lake | Pound Ridge Homes
Kristen L’Esperance never imagined she would move back in with her parents at age 30. But after graduating from the Pratt Institute with an architecture degree in 2009 and facing a tanking economy, she had no choice but to leave New York City for her parents’ home in Vermont, where she spent a year looking for work.
Then something crazy happened that every budding architect dreams of: She was handed $500,000 and told to design and build a home of her choice — no questions asked.
Photography by Carolyn Bates
The money was from an insurance adjustment after her family’s lakeside vacation property in Charlotte, Vermont, burned down. (High winds, common in the area, are suspected of dislodging part of the chimney, which severed some electrical wiring and incinerated the home within hours.) L’Esperance father tried to sell the property to no avail. Not knowing what else to do, he asked his architecture-school-grad daughter to come up with an idea.
L’Esperance (seen here with her friend, Bill) initially didn’t want anything to do with the project, because she didn’t want to take her father on as her very first client and potentially sour their relationship. But then she proposed a few conditions. “I said, ‘If this is going to work, I will design the house and be the project manager, but you will not be my client. You will literally give me the insurance adjustment from the fire and say nothing as long as it’s within that budget,’” she says. “My father said, ‘So I don’t have to do anything? Great.’ I was like, ‘Wait, really?’”
L’Esperance (seen here with her friend, Bill) initially didn’t want anything to do with the project, because she didn’t want to take her father on as her very first client and potentially sour their relationship. But then she proposed a few conditions. “I said, ‘If this is going to work, I will design the house and be the project manager, but you will not be my client. You will literally give me the insurance adjustment from the fire and say nothing as long as it’s within that budget,’” she says. “My father said, ‘So I don’t have to do anything? Great.’ I was like, ‘Wait, really?’”
Though the original home was kaput, L’Esperance had to work within the existing footprint. She played with the volumes and forms within those two squares to come up with two structures.
The main one contains the living spaces and three bedrooms. The other, connected by an elevated walkway, contains a one-car garage/woodshop with L’Esperance’s artist studio and “nap shack” on top.
Local white cedar stained slate gray forms the exterior siding.
The main one contains the living spaces and three bedrooms. The other, connected by an elevated walkway, contains a one-car garage/woodshop with L’Esperance’s artist studio and “nap shack” on top.
Local white cedar stained slate gray forms the exterior siding.
The ipe deck, which wraps around the house from front to back, is the one thing her father insisted on. He chose the hardwood for its natural durability and rot resistance. “He said, ‘I’m not going to put on a big, beautiful deck and have it rot off the house,’” L’Esperance says.
L’Esperance wanted the new home, which is now her residence, to be something that could accommodate multiple vacationing families and couples in summer. So she arranged the rooms with privacy and multiple function in mind. “I wanted people to be able to spend a week there and still have break-out spaces so they didn’t feel like they were up in each other’s business the whole time,” she says.
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