Taking off in two directions
The sale of Ned Freed and Tamara McDonald-Freed’s software company in the ‘90s gave them the means to expand their Claremont home twice.
First they went up, adding a loft office under a vast barrel ceiling overlooking the dining room, living room and a library addition.
Last year they went down, creating a basement library for the remainder of Freed’s 7,000 books, housed in finely crafted shelves.
He bought the two-bedroom house in the late ‘80s and decided it had potential. With architectural details considered avant-garde for 1953, the home had a flat roof with wide overhangs and post-and-beam construction, which allowed large expanses of glass.
Freed grew up in a contemporary home and saw beyond gothic details imposed by a previous owner, the poorly remodeled kitchen without one apparent true right angle and an aviary stretching across the back of the house.
With the birth of a son, Thomas, in 1990, the family lived in the house as it was for the first few years. Freed, who works at home, set up an office in a corner of the living room until “the house started getting on our nerves.”
The goal of the first remodel in 1995 was to create a proper office and a place for Freed’s large book collection. Plus, there was another problem. “The kitchen was a huge mess” and needed to be redone, McDonald-Freed said.
Because the couple had more money than tolerance for shoddy work, they sought out a high-quality contractor. Over the years, they’d heard their share of remodeling horror stories.
“Ned and I didn’t want that to happen to us,” McDonald-Freed said.
Friends had used HartmanBaldwin Design/Build, a Claremont company known for upscale remodels and historic preservation. Freed liked that HartmanBaldwin is a design-build firm, which means that the architect and builder work for the same company. The relationship minimizes the potential for an adversarial situation between an architect and a contractor should something go wrong.
The biggest dilemma was where to put Freed’s office. He didn’t want to be cut off from his son. “He likes Thomas to be able to wander in and wander out,” said Devon Hartman, co-owner of the company.
Tucking Freed’s office into the corner of a room seemed the only answer until one of the company’s designers came up with an idea to pop up the ceiling to create an office on a bridge, accessed by a spiral staircase, overlooking both an enlarged dining room and the new library, which would be added to the front of the house. The new ceiling would have a dramatic arch on curved beams held up by massive iron posts sunk into the ground.
“As soon as I heard about it, I wanted it,” Freed said.
To get approval from Claremont’s picky Architectural Commission, HartmanBaldwin’s presentation stressed that the new arched roof would mesh with the house’s modern style.
To assuage neighbors’ fears, the company hosted several teas at the house to show drawings of the proposed additions. The commission approved the project without objection.
Planning for the second phase began when it became evident that the library addition wasn’t large enough. Freed reads half a book a day -- mysteries, science fiction, literature -- and enjoys rereading them. He also has an extensive collection of dictionaries, his late father’s medical books and a collection of plays.
But McDonald-Freed is sensitive to dust, and the six ceiling-high bookcases that had taken over a wall in their bedroom were too much for her. Plus, she told her husband, what they really needed was another bathroom for Thomas.
The library basement was Freed’s idea to create square footage on the 9,081-square-foot lot. During his childhood in Oklahoma, tornadoes regularly drove his family to the basement.
The couple went back to HartmanBaldwin for the second phase. The 10-month remodel last year called for tearing down the entire bedroom wing of the house and replacing it with a bedroom and bathroom for Thomas, a new bedroom and bath for the couple, the basement and another bathroom.
When construction began, the builders boarded up the doorway where the wing connected to the house and didn’t open it until 30 days before the project was done, protecting the family from most of the dust and noise created by the job. The previous library addition became the couple’s temporary bedroom.
Excavating the site for the basement was a major undertaking, but Dave Robertson, one of two job foremen, had experience with basements. The tricky part was getting earth-moving equipment into a narrow area with the neighbor’s rock wall only a few feet away.
After four days of machine excavation, it took two and a half more weeks of hand digging and hauling rocks and soil up a ramp with a wheelbarrow to be loaded into bins and hauled away.
The footings were set with concrete and steel reinforcement. A shell of concrete masonry block followed, with a sophisticated waterproofing system of emulsion, matting, foam board, perforated drain pipes and backfill of gravel.
Inside, the basement has radiant floor heating, double-depth shelving and a workroom for Freed outfitted with his dad’s worn workbench. “I’m a tinkerer,” Freed said.
There is access to the whole-house stereo and the home’s heating and cooling systems, including a new solar-powered system tied into the electrical grid so the meter runs backward on sunny days.
Among the project’s few setbacks: The wrong tile was delivered for Thomas’ bathroom, and it would take six to eight weeks to get the right tile.
“I went berserk when I found out they sent us the wrong tile,” said Allen Suckley, the other foreman on the job, who also built the first phase. At that point, McDonald-Freed was tired of camping in the library and wanted to take shortcuts to get the job done. But Suckley talked her into waiting to do it right.
Throughout the house, everything is precision-made, from the maple and cherry cabinets to the stained-glass window in the stairwell.
To McDonald-Freed, the clutter-free, finely crafted house “is really a piece of art.”
“This is it,” said McDonald-Freed, running her hand across the marble counter in her newly opulent bathroom. “This is the dream house. Ned and I want to leave this house feet first.”
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Source book
Project: Two-phase remodel adding two libraries, a remodeled kitchen, enlarged dining room and new bedroom wing.
Original size: 1,781 square feet
After first remodel: 1,981 square feet
After second remodel: 3,305 square feet
Duration: (Phase 2) 10 months
Cost: (Phase 2) $714,000
Design and construction: HartmanBaldwin Design/Build, Claremont, www.hartmanbaldwin.com (909) 621-6296
Art-glass window: Kirk Delman, Claremont, kdelman@scrippscol.edu, (909) 624-0153
Interior design: Martha Higgins, Crafting Environments, (323) 257-8592
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Kathy Price-Robinson is a freelance writer who has written about remodeling for 13 years. She is the recipient of the first Bivins Fellowship awarded by the National Assn. of Real Estate Editors. Price-Robinson will use the stipend to become certified as an expert in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system, which is being developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. She can be reached at www.kathyprice.com.
