Book Hill · Essex, Connecticut

Book Hill

We rebuilt this house to another architect's drawings in 2015. Ten years later we were asked back, and this time the drawings were ours.

A mid-century modern house on a wooded hillside — fieldstone walls, glass on every side, and a folded mahogany ceiling that runs out past the glass and becomes the soffit. The 2015 job took it back to that ceiling and rebuilt everything under it, working to Schappacher White's drawings. Blasting for weeks in the woods below to make room for what came next.

Since 2024 we have designed and built a garage, a new stone-and-glass building down the slope, the pool, and the finished guest house. Those drawings came out of our own office — foundations, elevations, cabinet elevations, details.

The guest house belongs to both campaigns. We poured its foundation and set its steel in December 2015, and we finished the building ten years later.

Both are on the same hillside: at the top, another architect's design; fifty yards downhill, buildings drawn in our own office.

Everything under the ceiling

The main house stripped to bare floor and glass, with the original folded mahogany ceiling intact overhead — Stripped out. Everything below the ceiling went; the ceiling stayed exactly where it was.

Four bays of mahogany boards running diagonally into hips, meeting at a painted cross, carried out through the glass wall to become the soffit under a roof that cantilevers well past its posts.

The renovation was done under it without touching it. Every new partition had to die into a ceiling plane that slopes four ways at once. Every light, every duct, every sprinkler head had to find a route that did not cross it. Protection went up before demolition started and stayed up until the floors were finished.

The original kitchen before work began, with dated wood cabinetry and laminate counters — Before. The kitchen as we found it.

New kitchen cabinetry being set beneath the original mahogany ceiling — New casework going in, under the same ceiling.

II.

Ledge

A red danger blasting sign nailed to a tree at the edge of the site — Blasting sign at the edge of the site.

The hillside is rock. Making room for a lower building meant drilling and shooting it, a few feet at a time, with a finished house standing directly above the work and its glass walls facing it.

III.

Marble

The pieces were laid out in tape on the slab before cutting, to set which part of the vein lands on the island and which runs up the splash.

The finished kitchen with backlit panels above the counter under the mahogany ceiling — Finished. Lit from behind the panel above the counter.

Looking through the finished house from room to room, glass on both sides — Looking through the house, glass on both sides.

IV.

The guest house, December 2015

A telehandler lifting a steel beam onto a poured concrete wall in winter woods, a man on the deck above receiving it — One man on the machine, one spotting, one on the deck taking it.

Below the house, on the ground the blasting made, the guest house went in: a concrete lower level cut into the slope, then steel columns and beams through the last two weeks of December, with the floor decked in timber between them.

It was finished ten years later, by the same company. The frame in these photographs is the frame in the building at the top of the next chapter.

Timber deck framing running between steel beams over the concrete structure — Deck framing between the beams.

A steel beam being set against bare winter trees — A beam being set, December 2015.

Ten years later, our drawings

A new fieldstone and glass pavilion with a flat roof and metal fascia, set into the wooded slope — New building, down the slope. Fieldstone, a metal fascia running the whole edge, glass to the floor.

The guest house is the join between the two campaigns. Its foundation and frame are ours from 2015; its glass, its stone end wall, its cantilevered stair and everything inside it are ours from the last two years.

The garage and the pool were also drawn in our own office and built by our own crew.

The finished guest house — concrete lower level with garaging, a continuous glass upper story under a flat roof with a metal fascia — The guest house, finished. The steel in chapter IV is inside this.

A finished interior in the new work, oak floor and glass wall to the woods — Oak floor and a glass wall to the woods.

The pool under its winter cover, terraces and woods beyond — The pool, covered for the winter.

Looking straight up at the folded mahogany ceiling — four bays of diagonal boards meeting at a painted white cross

The ceiling, straight up

Four bays of mahogany, each one's boards running diagonally into its hip, meeting at a painted cross at the center of the room.

It stayed in place, untouched, through the 2015 renovation.

Recognition

Best Residential Remodel2015 HOBI Awards
Best Remodeled Kitchen2015 HOBI Awards

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