Passionate About Repurposing
By Andi Axman
Photography by John W. Hession
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Thanks to one couple's dedication, a one-hundred year-old cabin from a boys' camp became the heart of a home that has given new life to old building materials and new functions for other items.
Unique doesn't begin to describe the design and décor of Austine and George Howard's Holderness home. Inside, state-of-the-art kitchen appliances are faced with old barn boards; none of the wood in the house is less than one hundred-years-old, as are all the bricks used for the fireplaces and a walkway. From the outside, the rambling two-story Colonial with cedar shakes, single-window dormers and lush gardens near the entry looks like it's been hugging the shore of Squam Lake for more than a century. But it hasn't. The Howards began building their home in 2006 and moved in to it in September 2009.
For its exterior design, they were inspired by a traditional seaside house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where they'd lived while awaiting the birth of their granddaughter, Annabelle. "That house was on the ocean and felt very cottage-y and inviting," says Austine. "There were small-paned windows, textured bricks and lots of shingles. I adore the charm and warmth of older homes, and wanted to incorporate the feel of that house with our new home in Holderness."
Land with a story to tell
One of the reasons the Howards were drawn to buy the Holderness property in 1995 was because of its history. The land was developed by professors from Harvard and Yale as the Camp Aloha Summer School in 1904; a 1927 ad says the camp provided "tutoring for boys for schools and colleges-a fine combination of work and play." The camp's structures included eight cottages, and one that had been the study hall was the Howards' summer cottage. A smaller, adjacent cabin was insulated and winterized by the Howards in 1998. "Every summer we found ourselves staying longer and longer-through September and October-because it was so beautiful here," says Austine.
After George retired from his law practice in Philadelphia, the Howards decided to make New Hampshire their year-round home and build a larger new house on the property. But during the site work, a tree was cut and fell through the cottage, crushing its roof, walls and porch. "It was heartbreaking," George says. "It was so badly damaged that we knew we couldn't put the building back together, so we decided to save all the materials we could and build our house around the cottage's footprint, using only old materials."
Rebuilding the original cottage
Today, the Howards call the area that was once the cottage their "summer living room," and it looks like "one of the historically accurate diorama rooms you see in the Smithsonian," says architect Paul Maggi of Paul Maggi Architects in Center Harbor, who worked with the Howards on the home. "It looks exactly like the cottage that had once been there."
That's because the Howards and their builder, Kevin McBournie of K-Mac Builders in Holderness, saved every stone from the fireplace, pieces of wood from the floors and walls, and the porch. "We labeled and numbered everything, and then took the old cottage apart, piece by piece, rock by rock," McBournie says. "We stored everything and the building went back together just as it was." Maggi adds that "however we did end up with a better flue in the fireplace because of this."
During this phase of the project, Austine says that George's mission was finding old wood to replace the ceiling in the living room and parts of the porch with the same patina as the wood they had salvaged from the cottage. "We didn't know anyone in the salvage business when we started but when we finished three years later, we knew everyone-and their wives and children," says George.
Two of the key restoration experts George worked with were David Ferm of Vermont Restoration Materials in Norwich, Vermont, which specializes in dismantling old homes and inns; and Tom Joyal of Old House Parts in Kennebunk, Maine who helped George find vintage wood and other pieces. "Tom is a talented carpenter who can do anything with old wood, right on site," George says. "He had many of the other carpenters spellbound." A third key person was Steve Sharps of Holderness, who provided some of the salvaged twenty-inch-wide hemlock and pine floor boards and old stone foundation pieces the Howards used for steps and patios.
Making the transition from the old cottage to the rest of the new house was a challenge, but inspiration struck when Austine saw a picture of a brick hallway in a book. "That looked like a walk
way that could have been outside of a building," she says and it worked as a way to link old construction to new in the house.
Maggi says that the brick walkway also answers the question one inevitably asks about an old house: How did it get to look this way? His answer regarding the Howard home is that "it appears as though it was added to over the years. The hallway was meant to make the cottage look like an historic structure with an exterior walkway to which rooms were added as they were needed, much like many New England farmhouses."
Designing the home
Maggi says that when designing the rooms throughout the house, "we were careful to have a good layout with proper adjacencies and flow." Yet each room has its own character. "A standard new home often has the same millwork and molding detailing throughout, where we were able to use salvaged materials to provide something unique in each room," Maggi adds.
The Howards' objective was to enjoy views of the lake from the kitchen, breakfast room and living room on the first floor, as well as all the bedrooms on the second floor. "And we wanted to keep the façade of the Marblehead house as a grounding point," Austine says.
While the house's footprint evolved, the Howards had great fun finding pieces to incorporate in the house. The Civil War mantel in the keeping room came from Nashville, Tennessee; the doors for Austine's closet came from California. Ann arched window in the living room was salvaged from a building once owned by Dartmouth College. Two transom windows came to New Hampshire from New Orleans. The Howards asked Maggi to incorporate all these elements into the home's design. "Paul was the right architect for us because he was so patient," George says. "He was always willing to see this project through our eyes."
Talented craftsmen were needed to give these found items a new life in the Howards' new home. "In addition to Kevin McBournie, we were blessed to have had some of the best talent I have ever seen," George says. "Our foreman, Kurt O'Connell of Campton worked with carpenters Jay Gonzalez of Hill, Harvey Stewart and Eric Murdock of Ashland and Joe Gagne of Holderness, to name a few, who can meet any challenge. Restoration mason Mike Irons of Saco, Maine, and stone mason David Green of Holderness also do great work."
During this time, Austine and her assistant Sandra Dunfey made books for each room in the house. "We'd organize magazine clippings and keep notes about the items we'd found for that room, along with information about paint, wallpaper, upholstery fabric and other décor," Austine says. "I couldn't have done this project without Sandra's help!"
Other salvaged elements in the house include the breakfast room ceiling, which came from an old Cape in Maine, and was discovered by John Russo's salvage company, Barnstormers!, in Portland, Maine. "It was fir from the 1800s and was in such good condition that all we had to do was wipe it off with a cloth," George says.
But the antique Southern yellow pine-George's favorite wood that he finally found for the second floor foyer and stairs-took a lot more elbow grease to get it looking as good as it does now. "This wood came from a 1790s inn that had been in a fire," he says. "We got the soot out with wire brushes but couldn't get the smell out. We even took the wood down to the lake and submerged it but that didn't work. Then one of the carpenters, Eddie Benton, who along with Dustin McKenzie led the floor crew, said to soak the wood in vinegar-a trick his father had used. So we got sprayers and fifty gallons of white vinegar, and that did the trick."
The Howards continued to collect pieces, and "we built the house around them," George says. When he heard in 2008 that Randall Hall at the New Hampton School was being dismantled to make room for a new math and science center, he got in touch with the school right away. While the building was constructed in the early 1800s, the bricks were brought to New Hampshire from London as ships' ballast in the late 1700s. "It's really hard to find old bricks in good condition," George says, so for three days he and a crew loaded more than 10,000 bricks on a trailer to bring to Holderness.
With so many items collected, George put up a circus tent in the front yard to protect everything from the rain. At that time there were more than thirty people working full-time on site.
Recycled items and energy-efficient design
Among the finishing touches, George says that "there are no new doors in the house. We found that ADMAC Salvage in Littleton had a great selection of old doors." All of the baseboard, panels and other molding are from old wood and McBournie's crew cut them to fit using on-site routers.
Other decorative items include the headboard in the guest room, which is a Civil War-era mantel from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. "Jay found some old wood to fill in, so now it looks like a headboard," says George. Gonzalez also crafted the headboard in the master bedroom from hardwood shutters. The four dark wood posts in the foyer stairway are from Austine's grandmother's four-poster bed and they're blended with the jatoba, or Brazilian cherry wood, handrail crafted by Steve Custance of Ashland.
In a guest room that the Howards call the "Old Camp Room" because its design is similar to the lines of the old cottage bedrooms, are walls from the old cottage-along with their 100-plus-year-old graffiti-and old bead board. The fireplace in this room, which is modeled on one the Howards saw in Nantucket, is built with bricks that came from an 1820s mausoleum that was being dismantled in Sanborton. In the Old Camp Room bathroom, a child's barber seat is now a towel holder.
In the other guest bathroom, Austine found weather-beaten window frames for the shower stall, which reminded her of one she had seen in Aix-en-Provence. "Jay, who is also a welder, used old lawnmower parts to transform the windows into a shower enclosure," George says. "Nobody has a better imagination than Austine."
But home isn't the only canvas for Austine's talents-she also does set design for Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Ernest Thompson, who wrote On Golden Pond. Last summer, Thompson directed the play at the Little Church Theater in Holderness, the former Catholic chapel that the Howards bought and renovated in 2003.
High-tech green
Don't be misled by all home's charming décor from days of yore, because all 7,000 square feet of the Howard home is firmly rooted in the twenty-first century when it comes to temperature control. Two geothermal wells take care of all the home's heat and air conditioning. "Usually we do about 75 percent of heating with geothermal with 25 percent expected to be augmented with auxiliary heating but the Howards chose to do 100 percent of their home with geothermal," Maggi says. He adds that geothermal provides radiant heat throughout the house in winter as well as air conditioning in summer at very little cost through traditional ductwork and air handlers. The house has state-of-the-art insulation and even custom windows with historic distressed glass that are designed to today's specifications for weather tightness.
"This house is a great example for people to see how to take advantage of the best that modern technology offers," Maggi continues, "and also to re-use salvaged products to provide character and richness that would more often than not be lost forever. In the end, the house has evolved into one of the most unique and interesting projects in the Lakes Region.
