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Evaluating Every Detail
When Wendy Mills and Mark Habeeb decided to remodel the home they’d been living in for 17 years, they were searching for a way to maximize the space they had. They wanted to replace an addition that had been added before they bought the house, which was built in the early 1960s, and improve the flow.
“At a time when small homes like our red brick rambler are being torn down and houses two to three times as big are being put on the same lot, we all believed in the value of a small, functional, exceptional home that respects the history and ethic of the original neighborhood, while providing the comfort and modern conveniences that make life easier,” says Mills, who is the project information manager for The Nature Conservancy’s Campaign for a Sustainable Planet. Habeeb teaches at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and works as an independent consultant on government relations. Their son Noah is 14. “We really wanted to maintain the integrity of what the house was. It is not all about square footage,” Habeeb says.
The couple collaborated with Architect Matthew Ossolinski and Project Designer Michael Merschat, both of Ossolinski Architects PLLC; Whitney Stewart of Whitney Stewart Interior Design; and Stan Sluga of Recon Construction to create a wonderful, light-filled, environmentally responsible home. “Although it would have been easier to use standard materials as a matter of course, everyone we worked with was eager to go through the learning experience of weighing the benefits and costs of using green materials. We had to make some difficult decisions, but we were comfortable that we made those decisions based on the best analysis that is available,” Mills says.
In addition to saving the original house, which is in the Yorktown neighborhood of Arlington, VA, the family donated their old appliances, light fixtures, sinks, and a tub to ReStore, Habitat for Humanity’s store that sells used appliances and other goods at a discount, in Gaithersburg, MD. “We desperately tried to recycle all the appliances and furniture. It wasn’t easy. Nobody wanted our windows because they didn’t want wooden windows. They only took the vinyl ones. That made it a much bigger effort. When you care about not just putting things in the Dumpster, you have to go to greater lengths,” Mills says.
Eco-minded Alternatives
Ossolinski consulted with EMO Energy Solutions for an energy evaluation on the original house and the architectural plans, then Mills and Habeeb considered the different choices available. In the end, Ossolinski reconfigured the house, removing some walls, dramatically improving the flow, taking advantage of existing overhangs and adding others to control heat gain when he replaced the addition and added a foyer. Low VOC paints, formaldehyde-free insulation, Energy Star-rated appliances, and 100 percent flue-gas desulfurized drywall were eco-friendly elements used in this project.
“Most of them didn’t cost extra money,” Ossolinski says. “Wendy and Mark spent a little more money to get argon gas between the double panes, because that has a higher energy efficiency than just a vacuum, but the drywall is the same cost.”
By adding a family room with a 12.5-foot-by-10-foot wall of windows, Ossolinski fulfilled the family’s wishes by opening the house to the outside. Stewart, who wanted to integrate exteriors with interiors, suggested a soothing sage green as the neutral to run throughout the house. “The green helps pull the back garden through the house to the front garden,” Stewart says. Even the landscaping, now filled with native plants, was designed with sustainability in mind by Susan Abraham of Lush Life Landscapes.
“We only increased the footprint of our house by 400 square feet. We wanted to maximize space, not expand our footprint too much,” Mills says. The family strived to reduce clutter and get down to essentials, which ultimately made a huge difference. As Mills describes it, the house was formerly bulging at the seams.
“The side tables in the living room were stacked with magazines and books. It seemed that every surface was covered with stuff. Even the fig tree had grown so large that it was covering two-thirds of the driveway,” she says. The problem was exacerbated by the architecture of the house. “The addition that the previous owner had added on the back had two sets of windows that were so high up you couldn’t see out the windows when you sat at the table. What could have been a nice addition to the house, providing a greater sense of openness, ended up being very ordinary,” Mills says. For a few years, the couple considered simply changing the back wall to windows.
But as Mills describes it, that wouldn’t have been sufficient. “Over the years something happened to me. In the entire house, I couldn’t find one nook, not one spot where I felt truly comfortable, where I could look out the window at the sky and the trees, and read and think. Not one place where my mind wasn’t distracted by visual clutter. As soon as the fig tree was cleared from the driveway, and the walls started coming down, I felt an indescribable feeling of relief. I had had no idea the degree to which the house itself had been robbing me of energy and peace of mind.”
With the renovation, Mills feels entirely different. “There is an openness in the house that makes one want to take deep breaths. The colors are visually comforting. In being even more selective about what we have on our shelves, we appreciate those things more, and actually see them,” she says, adding that the space is highly functional. “Our desires were to stay true to a certain aesthetic, but everything had to be functional. We’ve proved that you can achieve both in a relatively small space.”
