On a busy corner in Newburyport is a 1730 Georgian home that its owner calls “a strange, old house that sits right on the sidewalk.” It strangeness comes only from its historic nature, which made a recent renovation project to enlarge its kitchen and add a bathroom an unusual challenge.
There were the typical issues with old homes, such as floor drastically out of level, but there was also the question of how to incorporate the priorities and tastes of a modern-day homeowner while staying true to an 18th-century aesthetic.
Two factors worked in favor of the project: The existence of a relatively modern addition that could be replaced to create the new kitchen and bathroom, and the preference of the homeowner, Eve Lee, for linear design.
For the new addition, “It was really important that the massing of the exterior was compatible with the existing home, while also being subservient to it,” notes Juli MacDonald of Olson Lewis + Architects, who designed the addition. “We wanted it to be clean and simple, fitting well without distracting from or detracting from the existing home, which we love so much.”
Lee took the lead on the interior design, with MacDonald consulting.
“The Georgian style, at its core, is really quite simple,” Lee says. “It’s not ornate, which I appreciate as it aligns with my style. I prefer things that are very clean with straight lines and not a lot of flourishes.”
Because of the style’s simplicity, “you can really introduce contemporary pieces without them clashing,” says MacDonald. “This home has such a clean, simple existing look that it’s relatively easy to add those elements, and it works well.”
For example, the design of the new bathroom is assertively contemporary, with matte-black fixtures in a glassed-in shower stall and schoolhouse pendant lights. But these features look at home amidst the room’s period-accurate wall paneling and window shutters.
The kitchen in the lower level of the new addition features top-of-the-line contemporary appliances, matte-black modern pendant lights and drawer pulls, and a large island typical of today’s homes. Yet the room maintains a distinctly Old-World feel due to the cabinet doors that echo the home’s wall paneling, reclaimed wood beams in the ceiling similar to those in the living room, and wide pumpkin-pine flooring that matches the home’s original floors. The new flooring is made with pine reclaimed from the American Writing Paper Company, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which opened in 1851.
Color is also particularly important to ensure the house remains true to its Georgian roots. The exterior is Benjamin Moore’s “Newburyport Blue”—a historically accurate dark gray-blue—and the kitchen and dining room wall panels are a slightly lighter shade, Benjamin Moore’s “Hale Navy.”
“The blue in the kitchen feels very real to me,” says Lee. “While a completely blue kitchen might be overwhelming, this shade truly feels like a neutral.”
The brownish-red color of the living room’s paneling, shutters, and beams is also true to the time period.
In other places, however, Lee asserted her modern-day aesthetic with prominent accents of bright red, such as on the cabinets in the mudroom, on some bathroom cabinets in conjunction with lobster-themed wallpaper, and in furnishings and decorations throughout the home.
“Red is my favorite color,” she says. “The red cabinets in the mudroom entryway mimic the red of the knobs on the Wolf range. By placing that at the front door, you’re already introduced to the fact that there will be some red in this house.”
Matching the trim throughout the house was also an important consideration for retaining historical accuracy. Considering the home’s age, however, this was a somewhat muddled process.
“We were trying to match the trim as closely as possible, but within the older part of the house, there are many different types of trim due to various renovations over time by different people,” says Lee.
It was this attention to historical detail that ensured a foundation on which to build a comfortable contemporary dwelling that remains true to the house’s place in history.
“I believe it strikes a lovely balance between incorporating older details, like the trim and reclaimed flooring, and at the same time including great contemporary elements and splashes of color that are very much appreciated,” says MacDonald.