French Country Home Designs - French Country Style

• High-end community 
• High-end house 
• It’s a French Country Home Design in a French Country Style 
  • In footprint, it’s a sort of chateau style in a relaxed French version of an English Manor House 
  • Americanesque, if you're asking this home designer - permitting a stylistic relaxation, mixing levels of sophistication 
  • Each of our French Country home design projects has come to us with insistence that it’s a “French cottage style feel" that the clients are after 
  • Well, this cottage will be selling in the mid-$4 millions by about Christmastime.  Some cottage

• Manor house designs tend to two shapes - L and H 
  • In all our days, we've not designed or even remodeled an L-shape 
  • In those same days, we have designed plenty of H-shapes 
• Cunning design boundaries to the H-shape –
  • The crossing element may be small or large, short or tall, thick or thin, forward or back
  • Same goes for the two ends 
  • The ends, themselves, may be symmetrical or not in facade
  • With the French, principally steeper hips with a smattering of similarly steeper gables and lower sheds plus round-tops - majorly segmental, sometimes Roman
  • Can often lend well to sacred geometry, especially the front façade

• It's the interiors of H-shapes that present a duality of design opportunity - both to value and to vex. They're naturally strung out, so that
  • The physical relationship of spaces can challenge convenient functionality
  • Something always gets separated some from that which we would prefer that  it didn't, almost always relating to the kitchen, the two most likely being 
    • Masters spaces and Kitchen
    • Dining and Kitchen
  • Stairs, if not at the perimeter or at least distanced from the joining of either end element to the crossing element, can become inconvenient, especially to main level traffic
  • With size, multiple stairs or the compliment of an elevator become necessary passages
• Presentation should be parsed and meted –
  • Articulation
  • Muzzled elaboration
  • Distinct parts by height and width and fenestration
  • A sense of aged structure (if you can – not always a top card in a client’s design deck)
• Resolution to these matters comes in phases, bits and pieces variously from
  • Design adaptations
  • Recognition of the H-shape's realities
  • Close consideration of functionality
• What’s more important gets challenged and challenged

• Majorly offsetting satisfaction in values gained all along the design path
  • Function tends to arrange smartly with structure
  • Central, or crossing element for entry and community spaces - either formal or informal or both, depending more often on depth
  • Flanking elements for masters spaces or family wing and less formal function, including but not limited to office, den, family room, guest beds, laundry, garage (attached or semi-so), recreation, etc.
  • Perimeters and massing can flex with design; articulations can enhance visual interest
  • Roofs most often naturally signal important spaces as they should
  • Levels can expectedly run up or down or both
  • 2nd levels over grade can be full or half-story
  • Deeper interiors in the crossing element can usually be daylighted in-style
  • Several opportunities can arise to let function to outside spaces - courtyard, veranda, or lanai, deck, patio, garden

• Let's look over a Front Of House facade of a high-end French Country to see what we can see of this custom home of about 105' frontage, 7800 SF habitable, 11300SF total
  • Note the wedding of a
    • Moderately laid-back presentation of lower roof slopes, wrought, low stone lines and walls, extensive outside spaces and
    • Symmetry lest one forget the visual importance both of and from regularity, especially with size of structure and the roots of the chateau-manor house style 

• Primary roof slope @ 14/12
• Secondary roof slopes @ 12/12
• Tertiary to approximately 7:12
• Multilevel eaves 
  • Overhangs tuned to job site locale's latitude)
  • Kept down to countrify
• Trim...to countrify
  • Modest facia, cornice, and frieze board
  • Simple head and apron to windows
  • Board-and-batten shutters
  • Exposed timbers for knee braces and posts
  • Classic gable-end treatment with closed returns, again, simply elaborated in trim
• Finish clads
  • Roof in (black) slate
  • Walls in
    • Sand finish
    • Hand-of-the-worker trowled masonry stucco over dry stack stone below watertable
    • Colors yet to be finally decided upon as of this presentation
• Characteristic features
  • Multiple chimneys
  • Chimney pots
  • Segmental-roof dormers (as clerestories to daylight a deep interior of the crossing element)
  • Pavilion (with window for light well and clerestory)
  • Windows either true French casements or with mullion (double-doors are solely illustrative, yet to be designed)
  • 2000SF driving courtyard of pavers (not illustrated, designed between the wings, with masonry stone wall consistent with the residence in height, method, and materials)
  • Porte-cochere, entering from the right between garage and residence

• The Back Of House is just as presentable at -

• Two levels 
• A curved, masonry stone-clad stair connecting grade at L0 to the L1 veranda with wrought rail, roll-up screening, Rumford fireplace, and outdoor grill
• 2 lanais - wrought-railed, 3 double-doors (true French)
• A site falling off to two-lane country roadbed some distance below and
• Opening directly across both levels to Southeastern mountain views
• Roof dormers to serve as at Front Of House 
• Note please that there are elements and features similar between Front and Back Of House; however, the Porte-Cochere entry to the grand Courtyard and wrapping, low stone wall, and the Pavillion cum wall dormer offer major surprise for any visitor

• Lay of interior
  • Masters wing on left
  • Gallery, Living, Dining, Lanai on center
  • Family, Breakfast, Veranda, Kitchen, Laundry, Butler's Pantry, Porte-cochere, Garage on right. 
  • Outside features include large Courtyard, Veranda, Lanai, and curved stone staircase between levels.
  • Interior stairs are set between Kitchen and Dining with L1 access from Family
  • Home elevator is set in the hall outside the Masters Bedroom

• As planned and drawn, L0 was to have
  • 2 beds with baths, den with fireplace – all three major spaces facing to the money view from the interior
  • Entertainment space, exercise space, wine cellar, and storage space below the left wing facing.
• Last minute, real estate broker-driven commentary changed the owner’s minds -
  • Enlarge the two bed by deleting the den
  • Site entertainment in lieu of wine cellar and exercise
  • Set a third bed and bath with view in lieu of entertainment
  • Leave the large storage below L1 Library/Den to storage and, possibly other function such as wine cellar at subsequent discretion 
• This was done in the name of resale value 
• Before The Architect did not draw those revised plans
  • The design objectives originally on L0 were to lay out two beds with baths and a relief third bed - the den and leave the entirety of the L0 space below the Masters suite area to subsequent owner-dependent uses, given that the builder/owner had been burned elsewhere in the US by getting too specific with leisure spaces to the detriment of sales, this project was in new territory with new demographics.  Apparently, buyers' preferences were patterning closely - an unknown going in for reasons out of the purview of Before The Architect.
  • The latter-day design objectives were to larger individual spaces, less choices to be made and subsequently built out. 

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