When the lot next door to Jim Rounsevell’s Belmont home became available for purchase in 2007, he had no choice but to snatch it up. An architect by trade, Rounsevell didn’t buy the property for its aged structure, a late 1920s general store. What he really needed was its lawn.
“Our own house has little to no yard to speak of,” says Rounsevell, whose two young boys play in the neighboring lot’s lawn. “We needed to control what happened next door to protect our own property. Besides, it’s a cool, funky building.”
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The original front windows keep the Belmont store’s character intact, but the building abounds with modern touches. |
Rounsevell figured he’d just do a little window dressing before trying to rent out the place, since his designer hands and the bulk of his cash flow were already tied up in two other projects he was working on at the time.
“The plan was to just do surface work,” he says. But one thing led to another—Rounsevell off-loaded the Elliott Avenue property he was finishing up—and soon he was stripping the old store (previously used as a painting studio by former UVA art professor Ted Turner) down to its bones. Among other things, including a crawl space brimming with empty wine bottles and dead animals, he found mold creeping right on up to the second floor. Surface work wouldn’t be enough.
“Strip it to the framing” when renovating, he says. In other words, tear out interior partitions, sloping floors—anything that isn’t just the way you want it—when you have the chance.
“Moving walls around is no big deal,” he says. “You need it to be energy efficient, and you also need to bring the floor plan up to how we live these days.”
Seven and a half months into the transition, he’s got an ample yard for his kids to roam and a sleek, modernized three-bedroom house for rent in the ever-trendier Belmont neighborhood.
The modernization and greenification of middle class homes, often by resident architects like Rounsevell, is a common occurrence nowadays in once undesirable Belmont. In that the old store is a neighborhood landmark, its renovation is also a feat of preservation. The original exterior and storefront have been restored in the process of making this historical structure up-to-date and energy efficient.
Rounsevell himself combines the pragmatic yet forward-thinking attitude of the new Belmont. Rather than paying through the nose for flashy eco-bling and expensive materials shipped from who-knows-where, Rounsevell says he relies on good design and “fundamentals” to make sustainability affordable.
“It’s a bigger picture of energy efficiency. In Belmont, they don’t want to hear about wheat board panels, but if you can lower their energy bills and put money in their pocket, then you have something.”
History made modern
Rounsevell’s Monticello Road rental backs up to the Clark Elementary playground, where in the 1930s chickens and pigs were raised to sell in the country store.
Today, the tall, imposing structure still makes clear its commercial past and stands out on a street of traditional residences. Sitting just a few feet from the curb, the original storefront forms the bottom half of a narrow two-story façade with an upper-level porch.
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In a city where preservation is a hot topic, and a neighborhood that’s seen widespread updates in the last few years, the store is a landmark that now has a new life. |
“The front gives it charm,” says Rounsevell, who opted to preserve and restore the glass from the original storefront. Just inside the front door, the former-sales-floor-turned-living-room bears original, restored hardwood on its floor and 11-foot ceiling.
But that’s pretty much where the nostalgia ends. Clean lines and contemporary touches take over, including an LED lighting panel on the stairway and a makeshift acrylic guardrail constructed from leftover materials on the second floor.
Rounsevell’s pragmatism includes a penchant for Ikea, whose customizable cabinets appear in almost every room. There are a few luxurious features to the house, notably heated tile floors in the bathrooms, an extra-long bathtub, and “bomb-proof” Silestone, made from recycled mirror and glass, on the kitchen countertops.
But Rounsevell’s main concerns seem to be ease of use and aesthetic appeal. The first floor of the 1,700-square-foot house comprises the living room and a combined kitchen and dining area in the rear. Rounsevell removed a chimney that was dividing the space so the kitchen would flow seamlessly with the rest of the house. “We live in the kitchen,” he says. “Cooking is theatre.”
Vista program
Though Rounsevell espouses energy efficiency, that didn’t keep him from installing the largest residential window available on the market—49.99 square feet—in the living room. “You have to balance aesthetics against performance,” he says.
Window placement is one of the most distinct features of the renovated structure. From the storefront windows to several strategically placed mountain vistas, Rounsevell carved out glass spaces by looking for architectural clues “in the original language of the house.”
For instance, the giant first-floor window faces the lawn separating Rounsevell’s residence from his rental, so it brings “calm, green space” into the living area, not to mention additional seating with its extra wide windowsill.
On the opposite wall, which borders the street, Rounsevell uses a different technique: a long, high window to capture trees, mountains, and sky rather than traffic and to let additional light into the room.
Several times he converted multiple windows into a single, large window, which meant less detail work and a larger, uninterrupted view. The window above the kitchen sink, with its focal point a distant ridgeline to the west, frames some “pretty groovy” sunsets, he says, that fill the entire first floor.
When it comes to unnatural lighting, Rounsevell prefers the warm glow of low-voltage incandescent fixtures to halogen lighting.
“If you dim an incandescent bulb even slightly, you extend the life by about 10 percent,” he says.
Smart thinking
“My house leaks like a sieve,” says Rounsevell, pointing to his own home through the living room window.
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Rounsevell removed a chimney between the kitchen and dining areas to improve openness and flow. “We live in the kitchen,” he says. “Cooking is theatre.” |
As in other projects he’s designed, both renovations and new construction, he believes it’s important to “get the house closed.” To seal this building shut, he used both foam and cellulose spray-in insulation rather than toxic, leaky fiberglass. He also bricked up vents in the crawlspace and sprayed the foundation with two-pound waterproof foam (defying the conventional wisdom that crawlspaces must be ventilated) and insulated the attic.
“In any house, the biggest loss is that way” he says, pointing skyward. “Get the roof insulated.”
Finally, he sprayed the interior walls with wet-blown cellulose, otherwise known as recycled newspaper, to smooth surfaces and fill in any holes.
Although fiberglass is cheaper, Rounsevell says the new technology “pays for itself” in the long run. Now that the property has high-efficiency walls from the cellulose spray, its variable speed heat pump is much more effective.
Beyond modern energy-efficiency strategies like these, the Belmont store project symbolizes a basic sustainability tenet: that saving an existing structure is nearly always greener than building new. The building is one of those landmarks that anyone driving or walking past would notice. It’s a good example of what’s possible when both a neighborhood’s character, and the larger health of the planet, are respected.
