Harmon Ridge

Harmon Ridge was designed around a question the family could not answer yet: who else will live here?

So the plan does not pick one. The main floor carries the primary suite, an office and the rooms everyone shares. Two more suites sit upstairs. And above the three-car garage there is a full apartment, with its own kitchen, bedroom, bath and closet, reached on its own stair.

A grown child, a parent, a guest who stays the season, or nobody at all. The house works the same either way.

Steep gables in grey board and batten, light brick at the base, and a dark roof holding them together. From the street it reads as a familiar house. Then the details start to argue with that: black frames everywhere, a glass panel garage door, and a corner of the rear elevation given over entirely to glass.

That corner is where the design got tested. The first drawings had the stair window so large that the manufacturer said it would have to be built the way a storefront is built, not the way a house is. We kept the opening and redesigned the frame behind it, so the wall of glass at the stair is still a wall of glass.

The back of the house is where it relaxes. A covered patio under a flat roof, a fire on the gravel just past the edge of it, and the living rooms opening onto both.

The great room runs the full two storeys. Windows are stacked to the roofline on the garden side, and the stair climbs across them on a thin iron rail, so the light coming through reaches the front door as well.

Herringbone oak runs from the entry through every room on this floor. One material, laid one way, so the plan reads as a single space instead of a sequence of rooms.

The fireplace is the one place on this floor where the palette raises its voice. A heavily veined marble surround, oak panelling carried up the full height above it, and the television set into that panel rather than hung on it.

Everything around it stays quiet. Cream paneled walls with wainscoting and crown run through every room on this level. They are the background the rest of the house is measured against.

The kitchen was designed as a system before it was designed as a room. A wide range on one wall, tall cabinetry that hides the refrigeration, and a walk-in pantry behind it with its own fridge and freezer, so the kitchen you stand in stays clear.

Light oak cabinetry, one veined marble on the counters and up the wall behind the range, brass at the hardware and the stools. The wine fridge is built in beside the coffee run, not in the way of it. Dining sits between the kitchen and the terrace doors under a pair of drum pendants and a lit cove in the ceiling.

The primary bedroom is built around one wall. A hand-painted landscape sits inside a tall arch, lit from behind its edge so the mural holds light after dark, with a brass globe hung on each side of the bed.

The rest of the room stays soft. A taupe upholstered bed, oak nightstands, sheer curtains, a pale rug. The arch does the work, so nothing else has to compete with it.

The bath continues the arch. The tub sits in its own alcove under a tall window with two black pendants dropped low over it, and a checkerboard of stone on the floor keeps the room from turning precious. Two arched brass mirrors over a long oak vanity, and the same veined marble on the counter and up the splash.

The closet is treated as a room, not a corridor. Open shelving lit from inside, an arched mirrored end, a dressing table under the window and a chair to sit in while deciding. The design does not stop where the photography usually does: upstairs, two guest suites each have a bath and a closet with the laundry between them, and the apartment over the garage gets the same finishes as the main house.