Project Description
The Alemany addition and renovation began with the clients’ desire to add on to and update their Carencro, LA home. To update the typical suburban façade, a great room and spare bedroom were added to the front of the house with a loggia to overlook the pond. A large, travertine-lined circle drive of permeable pavers evokes the country estate presence the owners were looking for. Travertine steps lead to a generous the wrap-around loggia, which opens to vistas of green on all sides. With a fresh coat of white paint and three updated façades, the house is completely transformed. On the interior, the foyer was widened to create a grand entry with views to the backyard pool. Off the foyer, a small dining area was redesigned to serve as an office for the owner; frosted double pocket doors provide privacy in a room with dark-stained wood built-ins, gun cabinets, and a painting of an ancestral plantation house. At the back of the house, a 25 foot, opening Nanawall system was installed to allow a seamless connection between the new formal dining room and a renovated outdoor kitchen with covered pergolas by the pool. The great room provides a new gathering place for friends and family, with a high, coffered ceiling which dictates a grid of painted brick pilasters. Large operable windows form a strong relationship between the living space and its pastoral surroundings. A grand hearth creates a visual and familial focal point in the great room, which also houses a built-in bar with a sink, mini-fridge, ice maker, and ample storage in hallway closets. The house no longer looks or acts like it was. It has been transformed into the country estate the owner desired and has taken full advantage of the gorgeous Louisiana landscape that surrounds. The owners can now enjoy coffee on their loggia while looking out to their 100-year-old cypress and pond. They can open up the house from front to back to let in the spring and fall breezes. The natural light (which the original house suppressed) now fills the social areas both morning and afternoon. Special Challenges The challenges of this project lay in meeting the existing physical conditions (low eave, steep drop off from slab on grade) and with how to get light and the exterior to have a presence in a dark, low ceiling, 80's tract home without rebuilding the entire house. Using the connection points of the new addition and the renovated exterior spaces, the creation of the loggia and installation of a Nanawall system linked the outside to the interior and transformed the home. The loggia also helped the addition meet the existing roof system and appears to seamlessly join the addition with the existing structure. Award Category This renovation, which started as a simple addition of a great room, completely transformed the home and ties it to its natural environment in a way it was not before. Not only did the owners feel as if they got a new home, but also a new yard. Many of their friends drove by the house when coming to visit for the first time post renovation because they did not recognize the property.