Wooden House does just the right balance between old and new.
The house is originally served as a hospital and is now the home of the interior designer of Pipkorn Kilpatrick Anna Smermer's sister Kate, who lives there with her two children Harry and Maggie.
To say that the building has a famous past would be an understatement: “Many people say that they were born in their earlier life as a Sunnyside Hospital in their house – a small country hospital that mainly takes care of maternity patients,” says Anna.
The hospital is said to have maintained the returned soldiers in the Second World War before it was bought by a nun in 1951.
“We are not quite sure when it was converted into a private place of residence, but many unsolved renovation work was quite confused as if Kate accepted it,” added Anna.
After Kate developed the original concept for the expansion with architect and friend Jane Williams with the architect and friend Jane Williams, she hired pipkorn kiln patrios to bring the renovation to life.
It was not negotiable to keep the existing facade and the original bedroom in front of the house.
In order to use the large 795 square meter block and honor the inheritance of the building, a glazed connection now leads to the new addition, where the open living rooms are waiting under a ceiling in the cathedral style.
“The new pavilion roof emulates the traditional pitch, but with modern doors, windows and details – complemented, but not competing,” says Anna.
“While you are expanding through the glazed Linkway, there is a clear shift in materials and pallets.”
The front of the house is kept relatively simple and reveals wood accents and creamy walls in harmony with its periodic character. In the meantime, the rear offers a similarly reserved but more modern aesthetics.
Concrete floors are combined with a sculptural concrete island in the kitchen together with black aluminum windows and doors, which frame the view of the hills and cherry blossoms in the garden. The new windows also improve the thermal performance and energy efficiency of the property, which for Kate had a priority after lived in the Draithty Country Home for years.
The renovation has transformed the former hospital into a functional and sentimental family home. There are many memories of the past of the building in the old fireplaces or wooden doors, which are still marked with rods, and locals who know that their history has commented on how great it looks from the street landscape.
“You are glad that we hold ourselves from the front with the original appearance of the building,” says Anna.