4 Kitchens Before and After Renovation(Updated)

A new kitchen can be one of the most dramatic changes to a home and a homeowner’s lifestyle.  When my wife and I renovated our kitchen, we went from wincing every time we cooked a meal to really loving to spend time there.  The new kitchen is the heart of our home.  It is where our family eats breakfast, does homework, gathers with friends and of course cooks. The layout of a kitchen is critical to [...]

3 Breakfast Bays

I have always loved sitting in a bright alcove eating breakfast and reading the paper.  These days the object in front of me is often an ipad or other electronics, but the wonderful feeling of a breakfast nook is always the same.  Of course bays which have windows on three sides are going to be the brightest.  Depending on the orientation of the house, the sunlight streaming in can be dramatic. If there are some interesting views, that [...]

Adding On (Revisited)

About half of the work in our office is new construction and half renovations and additions. When designing a home from scratch some of the most important elements to study(besides the clients wishes) are views, site features, sun and wind direction, and the approach to the site. The most important single element in an addition/renovation is the existing building. Sometimes the portion you save and restore is key to the rest of the project. Although it is almost [...]

The Reluctant Authors(Revisited)

OnThePorch It's hard for me to believe it has been almost twenty years since the publication of 'On the Porch'. Sandee Mahoney and I wrote this coffee-table book at the request of Taunton Press, and I have to say we are as proud of it today as we were in 2006. What follows is the text of an article written just before the book's release but after we had seen the authors' copies. It begins with a description [...]

5 Master Suites

The most elaborate and beautiful bedroom and bathroom in the home is usually part of  the master suite.  Often it has the best views and sometimes other rooms connected within the suite.  That makes sense considering the people who sleep there own the home.  We have designed wet bars, home offices, as well as terraces and screened porches off the master bedroom. In my house the master bedroom is a place where kids congregate first thing [...]

In the Kitchen (Revisited)

One of my favorite times in the kitchen is Saturday afternoon, all by myself, making a big mess preparing Creole and Cajun dishes. Whether I’m trying to cook my roux(flour and oil) to the perfect nutty brown for Gumbo, or making a simple pot of Red Beans and Rice, it is my place to unwind and anticipate the good food to come. At our home like most of the homes we design, the kitchen is the [...]

5 Formal Dining Rooms

In an age where family time has been shortened by screen time, and we eat most our meals on the go, a formal dining room can bring us together.  A dedicated dining room can change the atmosphere of a meal and provide a special grace to dinner time. I have a large dining room in my own old farm house, and we do enjoy more formal meals there.  In our house, the dining room is so much more [...]

6 Wood Burning Fireplaces(Revisited)

Every autumn as leaves and temperatures fall, I anticipate the first fire in the fireplace. I continue to build fires well through the cool spring nights. Each new fire is a personal test of my log selection and arranging skills-some of which I fail; my father-in-law and I have a running contest to see who’s fire will smoke and go out the fastest. When my home (and his) was built in the late eighteenth century, building fires was [...]

Crisp Architects goes a little greener

Since we are involved more and more with our clients' choices of efficient mechanical systems, energy conserving designs, and green architectural solutions, we decided to be a little more energy conscious while visiting all of their job sites. Even though we have kept our four wheel drive vehicles for those deep mud and deep snow days, now we all drive the low emissions, high gas mileage, Honda Fit to most of our construction sites. To date the record is 41 [...]

By |2021-03-26T18:53:36-04:00October 18th, 2008|Categories: About Us, James Crisp, Miscellaneous|Tags: , , |0 Comments