An Urban Coastal Themed Retreat
This hybrid Craftsman bungalow sports lots of restored Victorian detailing and unusual architectural elements. Sadly, the house had fallen into terrible disrepair from years of sitting vacant. Before renovation, it was a home to squirrels, birds, bugs and the floor system had vines growing up between the joists and the rotted floorboards. Adding to the wildlife, the home was chopped up into three apartments; its grand rooms bisected by makeshift walls.
Built as a spec home in 1911 by design/builder/carpenter Frank Ruggles, who hailed from Boston, the house was light-filled and featured original wavy glass windows with interesting mullion patterns, heart of pine floors, an original but deteriorated sunroom, and a magnificent original dining room mantel. We took clues from the few treasures from the original house, other local Ruggles’ homes, and the framing behind the walls. We got further design help from Brent Drone, a talented architect with Antiquity Architectural.
We took the house from 1500 square feet to nearly 3200 square feet by raising the roofline 10 feet in the air. This way, we were able to maintain the existing façade of the house, as well as duplicate the rear elevation while still making the house significantly larger.
Green Building
We’ve been restoring and renovating in a more unorthodox manner since the founding of our company. We’ve always reclaimed and recycled old house parts including windows, plumbing, trim, tile, mantels, door, hardware, and heart pine beams and old floors but we took this house to a whole new level. We used all reclaimed heart of pine flooring in the addition as well as rooms where the original floors were rotted. We milled every stick of trim in the house from reclaimed baseboards, roof sheathing, and flooring joists that were landfill bound. The ornate entryway was milled from cedar and heart pine beams that we removed to expand the house. The kitchen cabinets were milled from century old oak floor joists, a rare find. We used soy-based foam insulation to insulate the walls, ceiling, floors, and roof. We installed a tankless hot water heater (very energy efficient), restored and installed all reclaimed doors, door hardware, tile, mantels, chandeliers and used some century old plumbing fixtures like a restored claw-foot tub and restored sinks. We tried to create a large beautiful historic home with the smallest carbon footprint possible.
This house has been featured in the press:
Atlanta Journal Constitution, February 2007
Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine, December 2007 (bathroom)
Intown Magazine, June 2008
This Old House Magazine, November 2008 (stairwell)
This Old House Magazine, June 2009 (powder room)
If you are interested in the renovation process of this home, check out the pdf photojournal.
The Horsehead House Virtual Tour
(click on the photos to view the tour)
Curb appeal is always a top priority, and after a lot of restoration work the house looked welcoming again. We removed old layers of siding and stripped the house of its old layers of paint. We restored the façade by replacing broken or missing decorative cedar shingles. Under the siding, we found the shingles, the beaded board and Tudor details, and the sculpted brackets.
The original horse head gable decorations were fashioned to look like the maidenheads on a ship. They were badly rotted, so we recreated and reinstalled them. Other nautical touches inside the house, including the paint on the sunroom's ceiling brought us to choose colors worthy of a cottage by the sea. The garden is a work in progress.
The entryway of this house transformed from three doors leading into each unit of the triplex to this single grand entryway. We created the design based on the house next door that unfortunately burned to the ground. We recycled some of the beams that were partially damaged from the rear of the house and took them from structural components to this gorgeous sculpted woodwork. The beveled glass door is a salvage piece from Ohio while the sidelights were salvaged from a house in upstate New York.
The light fixture was an eBay find out of Virginia.
This small front porch was completely rebuilt: the structure was rotted and the floorboards had been piecemealed together. We installed insect, fire, and water resistant cumaru, harvested responsibly from tree farms in South America. The Turkish style chandelier is from an old house in Virginia and has molded carnival glass inserts.
The goal with restoring the foyer & living room was to create a bright welcoming space.
o that end, we restored the original large window's sidelights and Florentine glass transom.
We discovered a fireplace during demolition behind sheetrock, directly across from the front door, so we installed a salvaged mahogany mantel from a Pennsylvanian mansion, with local reclaimed tile and brass artful fire screen with a stag.
The living room is filled with loads of architectural pieces from the backlit Ohio salvaged stained glass window.
The tiger oak antique mantel with old tile was salvaged out of a local house, and French doors leading to the sunroom.
All of the trim throughout the house has been milled from reclaimed baseboards, roofing sheathing from demolished homes, or reclaimed antique 2x8s. Laughing Sun carpenters spent over 3 months milling the custom woodwork in the front yard. We went through a literal mountain of reclaimed wood to trim the house, saving many many trees and saving the landfill from a lot of old wood. Click here to see a close up of the interestingly designed crown molding.
We began with this sunroom in very rough shape and serving as a kitchen to a one of the triplex's unit and housed a stove and refrigerator. The windows to the space were either missing or rotted, so we custom milled them all out of reclaimed heart of pine joists and installed stained glass in the upper mullions.
We restored the beaded board ceiling, leaving it with remnants of the original paint, a seaside blue green (which inspired the exterior paint job). All the windows are casements, which open and swing outward. The walls and trim are all either original or salvaged heart of pine.
The heart of the house, this dining room was meant by the builder to display his proficiency with wood working.
The Horsehead House dining room, alternate view.
The exquisitely carved 9 foot mantel is the focal point of the room. We removed the many layers of paint to expose the heart of pine wood beneath. The white fireplace tile is original and has also been stripped of its paint. The mantel and the trim in this room was stolen at one point in the home's renovation and as luck would have it, the mantel and some of the woodwork was discovered and retrieved from a neighbor's porch.
Today, this room displays its elegance with the new custom crafted stained glass "Tree of Life" adorned with peaches, based on the Greene Brothers brilliant Gamble House design.
This custom kitchen is actually part of the new addition to the house. Because of our use of recycled materials, it is difficult to identify this space as new since all the finishes are reclaimed. The floors are dumpster salvaged from the West End of Atlanta, with the picture frame border done in antique fir salvaged from an LSR job in VA Highlands.
The tin ceiling hails from Muncie Indiana, where the tin lay in the basement of an old hardware store since the late 1800s. The rust is a testament to its age.
The reclaimed wood for the cabinets was milled from oak floor joists from the West End and the island features a lead bullet that hailed from the Civil War era when the wood was just a tree.
