New Home with Timeless Charm

Whether you're building, remodeling, or just dreaming, these ideas are sure to inspire you.

Make your home look as though it has enjoyed decades of family life by including some of these ideas in your plans. For more than 25 years, architect Russell Versaci has designed traditional homes that are beautifully adapted to contemporary living.

As a three-time winner of our Southern Home Awards, he clearly knows how to create dwellings that people love: newly built houses rich in authentic architectural detail. The home of Doris and Steve Moses in South Charleston, West Virginia, shows us how he does just that.

Finding the Right Location

When Doris and Steve decided to move their family to a more spacious and up-to-date home, they began looking for a place to remodel. However, the family's love of horses and riding soon came into play. They wanted to find enough acreage to establish a small Thoroughbred breeding farm, complete with plenty of pastureland and room to build horse barns. Doris and Steve purchased a farm on the outskirts of South Charleston, and then enlisted Russell's aid in creating a wonderful home that looks and feels as if it's been around for generations.

Settling on the Style

The owners and architect chose a building site on a wooded hilltop. Russell wanted to make the house appear to have grown over time, so he designed it to resemble a series of additions. He used a variety of long-lasting exterior materials, including wood, stone, and stucco, giving the illusion of expansion. Tennessee fieldstone clads most of the home. The door casing features a deep pediment, dentils, arched fanlight, and pilasters designed to recall Georgian structures in Doris's home state of Virginia.

Stepping Indoors

Just inside the front door, a tall elliptical arch frames the curving staircase that sweeps up to the second floor. To add character to any new house, Russell often utilizes reclaimed architectural elements and salvaged building materials. Doris obtained some old wormy chestnut from unused outbuildings on her family's property in Virginia. She and Steve used that wood for the floors of the home.

Carpenters also crafted the library paneling and kitchen cabinets from the same chestnut. In the kitchen, Russell hid some of the appliances behind wood panels. He concealed many other modern features within the structure of the house. The two-story home offers plenty of space for Doris, Steve, and their childrenLauren, Meghan, and John Steven.

A breezeway connects the house to the copper-roofed garage. At the rear of the threebay space, Russell designed a wide porch that provides a shady seating area next to the sunny backyard. Today at Wolf Pen Farm, the family's horse farm, foals romp in the pastures, the stone-and-wood horse barns are complete, and black four-board fences line the road that winds up to the splendid stone house.

Copyright Southern Progress Corporation Sep 2006
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved