By Kate Reynolds
Photos By Rimas Zailskas
With the daily deluge of new gadgets appearing on the market — each one fancier, faster, sleeker and smarter than the last — we tend to think of innovation as propelling us into tomorrow, leaving today in the dust. Planned obsolescence seems the name of the game.
At the same time, we’re also getting a clear message from the conservation sector that we need to be more discerning in our use of dwindling resources: reclaim, recycle and reuse. It appears, in some cases, that the most advanced approach to innovation is to respect a visionary legacy and adapt it.
Paul Adams’ Hendersonville home is an example of that theory. Planned and built in the early ‘90s by a free-spirited septuagenarian, the structure is at once simple and ingenious — blending creativity, forward thinking and plain old common sense. In retrospect, the approach was prescient, incorporating many of the hallmarks of today’s "green building" trend.
Low profile, with a steeply angled roofline, the house has elements of Arts & Crafts, a bit of bungalow and some suburban rancher thrown in for good measure. "I call it the Frank Lloyd Wrong house," jokes Paul. "It’s idiosyncratic and personal.
"I saw the house just after the owner passed away," he continues. The residence had, by that time, fallen into a state of disrepair. "Before I bought it, I consulted with an architect to find out if I could make it into something different from what it was. I had it in my mind to just gut it and redo it.
"But then I started to ‘feel’ the house — it started speaking to me in a way, and I started to realize all that Mildred had done," he says, gesturing around the sun-drenched living room. "So I ended up restoring it and keeping everything as original as I could, improving somewhat. But I chose materials that I thought would be sympathetic."
The "Mildred" he refers to was artist Mildred Roberts, a painter, stained-glass craftswoman and furniture builder. The 2,100-square-foot structure she designed and constructed, when she was already in her seventies, was conceived as a live-in studio — and her first priority was plenty of natural light. To maximize it, she sited the house with a southern orientation and lined the entire exposure with floor-to-ceiling windows. "The light is wonderful," says Paul. "There’s barely a need for electric lighting during the day."
The window configuration not only illuminates the interior, but also creates an efficient passive-solar heating environment. By installing a row of small windows at the base of the southern bank and clearstory windows at the 20-foot roofline of the opposing wall, Roberts took advantage of the cross breeze, allowing air to circulate naturally upwards through the space. The tall northern wall buffers the home from the blustery winds during colder weather, creating a comforting sense of shelter.
To keep the house cozy, Mildred put radiant heating in the floors — still a fairly new technology in the early ‘90s — and installed the terra cotta tiles herself. "Can you imagine? 78 years old, on her hands and knees laying tile," Paul says, laughing. "As you go through the house, you’ll see that things are crooked and twisted a bit. How could I rip that out? I absolutely love it, because that’s what makes it charming — these wonderful mistakes."
The heat and hot water systems were no mistake, however. Mildred didn’t skimp on equipment: she chose an Amtrol Therm-X-Trol water expansion absorber and radiant-heat system by Grundfos, a Danish company. The setup, which is tucked into a corner of the garage, features a series of levers to fine-tune the heat in each of the rooms. "I’ve had engineers just swoon over this," says Paul.
Insulation in the modified timber-frame home is provided by a brick exterior facing, 12-inch-thick Styrofoam panels in the roof which expand and contract with the changes in outdoor temperature, and double-pane glass in the windows. Rather than finish the interior with ordinary drywall, Mildred chose stressed-skin panels, highly efficient for both insulation and mildew resistance.
In keeping with this energy consciousness, when he decided to add air conditioning, Adams opted for self-contained, wall-mounted units, which would not require the addition of ductwork, leaving the home’s massive, exposed, central wood beam and planked wood ceiling unencumbered. The dividing walls in the home’s snug warren of sleeping quarters stop a foot short of the ceiling, providing continuous airflow throughout without compromising privacy.
The combination of passive solar, solid technology and energy-efficient materials has proved itself on the bottom line. "My highest energy bill last year was around $100," notes Paul. "In the winter, it’s less than $75."
But Mildred’s legacy goes beyond the practical aspects of the home. Her artistic touches are seen in a quirky "chimney" fashioned from a spiraled culvert pipe, the kitchen cabinets which she built by hand and painstakingly finished with perfectly matched birch veneer and the many stained-glass light fixtures that she fashioned for the home. Her blithe spirit is particularly evident in the brick-enclosed outdoor sanctuary off the master bedroom where, it’s rumored, she liked to garden au naturel.
But most of all, it’s there in the light that moves through the house, highlighting Mildred’s work, as well as Paul’s own collection of fine contemporary blown-glass pieces.
"I didn’t know her," says Paul. "I never met her. But to me this house had a story. It was her dream to create this — it was built to have that beauty. She passed away before she finished it."
Fortunately, Paul has picked up the thread of that story — trimmed the doorways, refinished the cabinetry, oiled the cypress woodwork, buffed, polished, repaired and fine-tuned. He has built on the strong foundation that Mildred laid, and in the process, he has learned that sometimes the best innovation is to leave well enough alone.
