New Digs

New Digs

4/1 Design & the whole family have just relocated across town to Old North, after at least a year and a half of searching for the perfect spot.  One of the major needs was a proper office space, and with a little tweaking (read: moving a door or two), we will soon have just that.  Along with the door will come a great meeting space for clients, good storage, and some physical separation between business and family that is crucial for really working at home.

At the moment, however, there’s mass chaos going on, including installation of a full HVAC system.  It replaces the multiple forms of heating that remain from when the house was a duplex, and will bring in air conditioning for the first time.  After that, the office door will happen, then a few more projects over the course of the year to make the house really ours (paint! light fixtures! getting rid of that horrible ceiling fan!).

Going through this process for myself is of course made easier by my familiarity with the world of renovation, but just like any of my clients there is a point where I have to trust that I’ve hired the right people, given the right direction, and that all of the dust and disruption is worth the effort.  It is, surely, but for the next few weeks I will need regular reminders of that fact.  Part of the way I’m doing that is to snap photos of parts of the house that I already love, like the morning light coming in our bedroom window, which can serve as inspiration for what’s ahead. Because it’s going to be wonderful.

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley Ave, Durham, NC, 27701
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

Fall Projects

Fall Projects

Autumn has been crazy for one specific reason here at 4/1 – we’ve moved!  More specifically, we packed up our sweet, tiny bungalow and schlepped across the neighborhood to a slightly roomier rental house.  The bungalow is getting brushed up and sold to a new couple and their two kids, while we’re looking for something bigger and better ourselves. In the meantime, we have ended up in a house with an actual office, that is a major step up from the dining room table that used to be where everything happened.  And of course it’s put the Fall into a tailspin, because, well, boxes.

Despite the moving chaos, work is still chugging along!  A good chunk of September, October, and November were spent helping HMW Preservation with a major survey of the Hillsborough historic district.  It’s always lovely to get out in the field and see different types of architecture, and the borough has some of the oldest stuff in the Piedmont.  They have also cornered the market on ‘quaint,’ complete with decrepit barns, boxwoods galore, and even a brick, octagonal ice house from the 1860s nestled into the woods behind the elementary school.  Who knew?

    Most of 4/1’s major projects from the summer are getting finishing touches right now and are not yet ready for their close-ups, but a wrap up of the screened porch addition on Monmouth is coming soon. A major rear kitchen/master suite remodel in Trinity Park is so close the owners are cooking already. And I’m waiting with bated breath to see the finished work over in the Mrs. Laura Duke Estate over on Roxboro – a big, colonial revival glory of a house where we did our level best to update with the lightest hand possible.  Finally, I’ve been watching the progress on the Bright House on Holloway as they paint the exterior and get through the mountain of projects they’ve decided to do themselves on the interior – all the while having a third child – via their blog.  Lord love ’em!

    Lastly, I will be linking to all the preservation award winner write-ups as they show up in the Herald-Sun via my twitter feed, but a quick list of winners where 4/1 provided either design or preservation consulting:

    • 813 Burch, Pyne Preservation Award
    • 508 Ottawa, Neighborhood Conservation Award
    • 2513 West Club, Pyne Preservation Award
    • 614 North Queen, Neighborhood Conservation Award

    Chicken Approved!

    Book a Consult

    hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
    Office Address: 1235 Berkeley Ave, Durham, NC, 27701
    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

    Done and To-Do

    Done and To-Do

    The time has been flying by recently, and it suddenly struck me how long it had been since a proper blog post.  Rather than try to focus on one thing today, I’ll whip through an overview of what’s on the drawing board these days.

    508 Ottawa is under construction, with permits pulled, demo over, and framing flying.  I’m staying out of the way for the most part, but just got back the tax credit acceptance letter with a few conditions to resolve – all stuff the homeowners are intending to do anyway, but the reminders will keep the preservation aspects fresh in the builder’s mind.

    The Hudson Farmhouse – belonging to one family since it was built in 1930

    I’ve got a slew of new projects, including the return to one I started almost two years ago.  The Hudson Farm is up over the border into Virginia, and I did some space planning for the homeowners a while ago as they tried to decide whether to sell or to renovate.  Convinced that renovation will work, they’re now back for some detailed drawings, so we headed up for a long morning of measuring and photography.  The house felt much more spacious than I’d originally imagined, although due for an update.  A rear wing to enlarge the kitchen space and provide a bath on the second floor might just take care of all sorts of problems.

    Yellow fixtures and maroon & grey Carerra glass – they don’t spec ’em like they used to.

    A bathroom renovation I designed is almost complete over in Forest Hills, where the 1950 plumbing finally failed.  It was a little tragic to have to remove the floor-to-ceiling Carerra glass, but unfortunately you can’t spot-repair those tiles.  Luckily, there’s still a half bath with the same treatment, in black with aqua fixtures.  Such crazy-great colors!

    Another bathroom renovation is in design right now, and is challenging because it’s the smallest space I’ve ever dealt with: a full bath in a whopping 65″x75″.  The phrase ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ really doesn’t begin to convey how small this is.  It’s going to end up as a wet room space, fit for aging-in-place and making use of every possible corner… which is all it has, honestly. 

    A Queen Anne over in Cleveland-Holloway

    Up and coming is a whole-house renovation on Holloway, lovingly documented here.  We’re really early on in the process, trying to work out a schematic plan for the old grande dame.  It has been apartments for many, many decades, and suffered from the standard ‘updates’ – so there’s lots of room for improvement.  Measuring the house was a trip, as it’s got the full range of refuse, graffiti, dark spaces, and dead birds.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what demolition reveals!

    Finally, and most personal, is the completion of my living room renovation.  After five years, we’ve finally got the plaster repaired, paint on the walls, and picture mold installed – I now have one room that actually lives up to the preservation mantra I preach… and that’s plenty for the time being.  We’re still unpacking and putting in the last bits, and I have renewed sympathy for anyone who tries to live through a renovation project – I don’t think I’ll ever do it again, myself.  (I say that now, but you know…)

    Possibly my new favorite corner of the entire house.

    Book a Consult

    hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
    Office Address: 1235 Berkeley Ave, Durham, NC, 27701
    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

    Fitting the Cobbler’s Kid for New Shoes

    Fitting the Cobbler’s Kid for New Shoes

    Our little house – courtesy of Googlemaps, as apparently I haven’t taken a photo of it since purchase.

    I suspect that many of my clients believe that I live in a beautiful, perfectly restored, historic palace, where every element is carefully planned and selected. Only the ‘historic’ part is true, as in reality I live in a wee little bungalow that has suffered through a number of enthusiastic home-improvement attempts that stalled out before completion. We have a living room with partially-repaired plaster: it’s needed paint and a picture molding put up for approximately three and a half years. Then the kitchen… you get the idea.

    Our bathroom is particularly bad, however. We successfully replaced the giant pedestal sink with a much more petite vanity, but in the process wreaked havoc with the drywall. In all honesty, the drywall was pretty rough to begin with, as I stripped the wallpaper off of the bathroom when we first moved in and did nothing to smooth out the glue before painting it, six plus years ago. I do my best with some happy-bright-saturated colors, but I know the truth behind the shower curtain.

    Honey onyx hex tiles – perfect combo of traditional and textural for my small space, and the eventual bath floor.

    But now, hope is on the horizon! We have decided to bite the bullet and fix up the bathroom, taking off the horrible vinyl bath surround, tiling up the walls, replacing the toilet, and generally making things right. The one budget compromise – we’ll leave the existing (miserable) tile on the floor, as it runs into the hallway and opens up another can of worms. I have my fantasy future bath floor in mind, however: the marble or onyx versions of the traditional patterns: hex, dogbone, basket weave, even octagon-and-dot.
    After some mad fantasizing about $42-a-piece glass tiles that had me all excited, I readjusted my expectations and headed off to the store, feeling like it should be simple: I know roughly what is available, what prices are reasonable, where to go, what would match with my existing floor, and what is appropriate for my house (both in terms of era and value). But then, confronted with a world of possibilities, my head kind of exploded… and my sympathy for my clients skyrocketed. This selection stuff is way harder when it’s for your own house!

    I came home, armed with an array of samples, and came to a conclusion of what would work best with my dream floor, the current floor, and the white subway wainscot that is a definite – and my husband doesn’t like it. He’ll live with it, he says… but who wants to just live with it? That’s what we have been doing since we moved in, after all.

    Clearly, it would have been too easy to end up with the first selection out there – so I’ll head back into the thick of it again soon, and keep posting about my project whenever there’s a development. After all, my clients should be right: I should live in a perfectly-restored, adorable historic home, where every element is well considered… better start somewhere.

    Book a Consult

    hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
    Office Address: 1235 Berkeley Ave, Durham, NC, 27701
    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702