For most people, the home was a complete teardown. After all, the Eastover home was almost one-hundred years old, but, more than that, it had extensive foundation and structural damage from termites, and faulty work had been completed on it over the years. But when it comes to preserving older homes in Charlotte—not to mention much of the Southeast—architectural designer Frank Smith and builder Phil Goodwin often take a unique approach. “I have a love of old houses,” Goodwin says. “They have stories to tell. Homes with a history and wonderful character yet with all of the comforts of modern construction technology are what I love. Taking an old house with its history and restoring and preserving it for generations to come is immensely satisfying.”
Goodwin, along with Smith and interior designer Kathryn Dixon of Circa Interiors, were enamored with the circa-1930s Colonial home’s character and bones. The team could see so much potential in a renovation with fresh interiors versus building from the ground up that they put their heads together to create a seamless, modern design from the architectural details to the textiles that truly brought the old beauty back to life.
While the team saw serious potential in the home, they were not naive to the problems the old home presented for them. Among the massive renovations were removing the entire roof and entire rear exterior wall, adding a third floor with new dormers, replacing all millwork, flooring, wall, and ceiling surfaces, as well as completely replacing the circular staircase and salvaging the original Buckingham slate roof. “Frank did an excellent job enhancing and enlarging the house significantly to meet the needs of the new owners,” Goodwin says. “And yet he stayed true to the original Colonial Revival architecture of the home as well as the historical context of the neighborhood.”
Smith looked at the original design and instantly recognized proportion issues. “I felt like the height and width ratios were awkward,” he says. “The home looked so flat and wide. I saw the opportunity to adjust it and tweak it slightly but also save the whole house.” The addition of the third floor allowed Smith to add extra square footage without expanding the footprint, which resulted in a more proportionate look. “By doing that, I changed the proportion of the rooflines to be more in line with a ratio that works with everyone’s definition of beauty.”
The original footprint was common during the 1930s: a box with four rooms on the main living area. But Smith loves to create seamless, circular paths that allow people to move from room to room without ever dead-ending in one space. “I love to create interesting flow patterns, which not only give you a flexibility of flow between rooms but also delineates public and private spaces,” he explains of reworking the floorplan. “They’re these private spaces embedded in the structure in such a way that when you’re in the public spaces, you don’t notice them. It also provides interesting enclaves and makes the house feel bigger.” Rooms such as the scullery, home office, bar, and the area that accesses the basement are all transition spaces that are somewhat hidden from the main living areas but allow that free flow from room to room. It was Dixon who provided the finishing touches to the renovation. “The homeowners’ previous residence was very traditional, very dark,” Dixon explains.
“It was really important for them that this home feel lighter, fresher, softer, and prettier. They wanted it to be calming and pretty both in the architecture and the interiors.” To achieve this, Dixon opted for a serene color palette of creams and blues and grays. “And that really drove the furnishings,” she says. “The homeowner really responded to fabric, which I do as well. I’m really inspired by fabric and texture. She didn’t want a lot of pattern, but she did want interest, so texture and subtleties of tone were important. We used a lot of linen, velvet, and wool, but not a whole lot of silk.”
In an effort to let Smith’s architectural details shine throughout the home, the majority of the paint colors were by Farrow & Ball. “They’re such complex paint colors,” Dixon says. “They change depending on the light in the room, which helps warm or cool a room’s overall aesthetic.” Dixon kept the interiors transitional with a mix of old and new, including antiques she pulled from Circa’s showroom floor, stating that Circa owner Cindy Smith “taught me that in a home with stature and grace such as this, it’s important to have antiques layered in.” For example, the living room features a pair of early nineteenth-century Italian chests that Cindy Smith found during her scouting travels abroad.
In the end, the merging of Smith’s architectural details with Goodwin’s creativity as a builder and Dixon’s elegant interior- design touch breathed new life into the old Colonial. “We had the opportunity to save this old house, enhance the charm, and give it a new future,” Smith says. “It takes an extra special appreciation for a structure like that to do those things that will let it perform for another century.”