A full Cape is a classic American design with some good traffic flow downstairs, but it has drawbacks on the second floor, where rooms can feel cramped by low ceilings and be too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Our house was no exception, something we hope we’ve rectified.
In maxing the ceiling heights by following the new roofline, we gained both headroom and air circulation. That move also adds character to each of the resulting rooms, making them something more than rectangular boxes with holes punched in them for windows and doors. (See the ongoing argument in previous posts.)
The sprayed insulation also enhances year-‘round comfort by reducing radiant summer sun impact as well as invasive winter cold.
In addition, the setting of the windows in all four bedrooms provides cross-ventilation, as needed, and the casement windows in the two smaller rooms reduces any draft entry. Each bedroom has windows on two walls, not just one.
We’re especially happy with the resulting four bedrooms, what I was tempted to call “staterooms,” as they are on a ship. There, the chambers follow the contours of the hull and deck overhead, and ours do something similar.
The front two also have a commanding view of Friar Roads, the channel between us and Campobello Island, Canada, while another looks out on a street of a distinctly New England fishing village nature. The fourth looks into trees and the village, giving it a sense of being a treehouse. Rather heavenly, as I’m finding.
For now, I’ll turn your attention to the front two, which overlook Eastport’s principal north-south street, not that it has heavy traffic. Remember, our fair city doesn’t even have a stoplight. Not one.
The front two bedrooms have the quirk of a panel that follows the original roofline before the dustpan dormer kicks in. This results in a small cubby space that creates a small storage cabinet in one bedroom but is left free to run to the floor in the second.
The main differences between the two bedrooms springs from working around the existing stairwell. Our historic stairwell, definitely pre-1830, from the hand-cut oak lathing.
If you divide those two rooms apart by drawing a line halfway between the north and south exterior walls, you’d see that the north bedroom would have been smaller than the south room because it had to accommodate the stairwell. What it gained in the renovation, though, was a charming nook between the stairwell and the outside wall. The space between the stairwell and wall had been a mystery, a wasted space where we thought we might find any buried skeletons in the house. Alas, only dust and spiders.
The nook, as we discovered, had to stretch a bit beyond that halfway line north-south, because the room’s window was centered there (above the front entry door). Our solution was to have that extension be matched by a closet running along the stairwell in the south bedroom.
The nook does make for a nice, slightly secluded study with that stunning view, especially around dawn and sunset.
Let me remind you that all of that distance to the exterior wall was space added during the renovation.
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As we approached the time for priming and painting the upstairs, we had to admit we had more than 3,000 square feet of drywall to cover with primer and paint, even before considering the flooring. More decisions! As well as delays.
There, I settled on a brilliant white for my walls and ceiling and what Sherwin-Williams called Smoky Blue for the floor.
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The cathedral ceilings not only enhanced our celebration of the natural light in our house, they also gave us something we didn’t anticipate: loud rain on the now metal roof, something we usually find comforting, so far. Not that everyone would.
But these rooms are also free of any rolling you’d endure on a ship.
Everybody’s mostly happy with the resulting twists. Remember, nothing in life is perfect, no matter how hard we try.
Jnana's Red Barn 