Horizontal Hardie panels clad the home’s rear façade. The addition created an L-shaped space that accommodates a pergola-covered bluestone patio, where an ipe ramp to the mother’s quarters makes aging in place easy.
When Ruben Santos returned with his wife and children to the house he grew up in, his mother was still living there—so he devised a plan that would allow them all to coexist under the same roof. “We decided to make it a two-family home,” he explains.
His plan—which doubled the size of the dwelling to 4,200 square feet—created a modern addition to the traditional center-hall Colonial. A two-story structure with a front bay contains the mother’s digs on the ground floor with Santos’ home office above. A connective volume features separate entrances. Shifting the front door to the addition “makes the original house look secondary,” the architect notes. “This way, the addition isn’t just an add-on. It’s cohesive.”
Renovation Architecture, Contracting & Landscape Design: Ruben Santos, AIA, principal, Convene Architecture, Alexandria, Virginia.