Author: katherine-ludwig

Visualize yourself at home in your senior years. What do you picture? Probably you see a place of comfort and vitality, with views of some golden pond or spaces for beloved hobbies. What you likely don’t imagine (or want to) are lonely or cramped quarters, orthopedic beds and strangers snoring next to you. Assisted living facilities and nursing homes might become necessities for those suffering deteriorating health, but good design can help prevent or at least delay the institutionalizing step. We found three local homes thoughtfully created or adapted to give seniors a chance to age in place—in their very own places—for as long as possible.

Downsizing to a dream house

When associate UVA architecture professor Bill Sherman began designing a home for his octogenarian parents—Jean and Bill Sr.—in 2007, his goals were “self-sufficiency” and “low maintenance.” The elderly couple wanted to downsize from their prior residence on Nantucket, address the likelihood of future physical debilitation with more level living, and be closer to their children and grandchildren. Most importantly, they wanted to immerse themselves in the kind of natural beauty to which they’d grown accustomed, living on an island. 

The ability to commune with nature drove the home’s site selection at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Free Union. Nestled next to the shade of an old oak tree, the house sits on 24 acres with a pond and a dock.  Landscape architect Julie Bargmann of D.I.R.T. Studio designed simple planting beds and a small grassy area around the home, giving Bill Sr. a manageable area to mow and mend, but much of the property was left wooded and wild. A lifelong outdoor lover, Bill Sr.’s favorite place at the new home is a concrete outdoor shower with a bench and planter designed by Alexander Kitchin of Pretty Hard. He rinses off there after his daily nature walks on the property.

Harnessing the energy of that surrounding nature also was of primary importance to the home’s overall concept. A proponent of modern and sustainable building—Sherman designed the progressive South Addition to UVA’s Campbell Hall —he employed advanced energy strategies, including a geothermal heat pump, radiant floor heat and soy-based spray foam insulation. The design also includes high-minded, passive design choices—an overhanging, inverted roof that captures energy and water (in a cistern) and numerous energy-efficient casement windows situated to disperse valley breezes for cross-ventilation. These strategies not only keep energy consumption down, they also help to maintain a consistent ambient temperature for his parents, who with age are growing increasingly sensitive to weather changes and extremes. 

Sherman says, “It’s not about precise units of energy saved. It’s about a way of living connected to nature and natural cycles.”

The older Shermans definitely are tied into the natural world, but living so rurally and remotely might seem counterintuitive for the aging population. That’s where conventional thinking and design for the elderly is often wrong, however. Sherman, who was active with UVA’s Institute on Aging while he was Associate Dean for Academics, says overly convenient dwellings can be detrimental to the well-being of the elderly, making them deteriorate more quickly: “You can make a house too safe where it becomes a sort of prison and you’re too scared to leave it.”

The home’s main level includes kitchen, dining and living spaces in one room; a master bedroom and bathroom; a small loft office; and an expansive deck overlooking the pond, valley and ridges beyond. Though the Shermans needn’t leave this floor, the 2,700-square-foot home also includes a small flight of stairs down to a walk-out basement with laundry facilities, a guest bedroom, a second bath (which Bill Sr. has adopted as his primary) and a large living area. (Sherman designed the lower level for the possibility of future subdivision into three bedrooms.)

“I like the idea that they are going up and down the stairs. I made them as safe as I could,” says Sherman, referencing their extra width and more moderate steepness than what’s typical.

For now, though, continued mobility is the idea. His parents love to garden, so Sherman constructed beds and a shed several hundred yards away from the house. 

“It would have been too easy if [the garden] was right next to the house.  This gives them a destination,” he says. Should maneuvering outside truly become more difficult, however, Sherman also included elevated window boxes accessible from the kitchen for continued herb gardening. 

“[Downsizing] is always hard, but we were ready,” says Jean. Gesturing to the open expanse of beauty out her windows, she adds, “We don’t feel isolated in the middle of nowhere here.”

Her husband describes the subtle, lovely views the house affords. “With such episodes of beauty,” he says, “I lose any inclination to feel the full weight of years.”

A universal design renovation

Lynne and Don Gardner needed to move into a smaller space where they could age in place and accommodate Don’s declining health. Because of the firm’s interest in universal design—the concept of creating spaces for people of all ages and abilities with a strong emphasis on aesthetics (i.e., making a home not look like a hospital room)—Lynne chose architect Burt Pinnock of BAM Architects in Richmond and the builders at Abrahamse & Company to renovate a tiny brick rancher on Lexington Avenue for her and her husband. 

“This was our honeymoon home,” says Gardner of the Lexington Avenue house she and Don purchased as newlyweds in 1962. They lived in it for only a few years, then held onto it as a rental after moving to a larger, three-level home a few blocks away, where they raised their now-grown children. 

When a one-level home with easy access from the street became necessary for Don’s safety, however, Gardner says the small Lexington house with its carved-up, warren-like rooms initially didn’t come to mind: “I never gave it a thought.”

Instead, she scoured town for newer, more age-friendly places that might fit their special needs, but pickings were slim and prices high. Then about a year ago, her son, David, who personally knew of Pinnock and his universal design experience, pointed out the potential of the Lexington pad. 

What Pinnock designed and Abrahamse built for the adapted home was an open kitchen/living area as well as a wrap-around porch and screened-in back porch. They also reconfigured the two bedrooms, added an easy-access laundry area and created two universally designed bathrooms. Both have raised pedestal sinks and elevated toilets and numerous grab bars, cleverly concealed as towel rods. The team widened hallways and doorways and eliminated all thresholds between rooms and from bathroom to shower, to prevent tripping and for easy navigation of a wheelchair, should one become necessary. 

One of the most creatively designed features keeps Don’s in-home dialysis machine and accoutrements easily accessible but out of sight. Before the move and renovation, Don’s medical equipment sat around as an obstruction in their living room.

“We wanted…a special cabinet to house the machine so that when Don’s treatment is finished, we can tuck it into the cabinet and go about our daily life without having to think about dialysis on a constant basis,” says Gardner. “In our other house…the thought of dialysis was always staring us in the face.”

Creating a family compound

Sarah Sargent selected the live-in option when her aging parents needed assistance. Instead of simply moving in with them or vice versa, however, she and her sister, who were both living in Somerset, Virginia, at the time, discovered a new dwelling in town that would work for all of them. In the fall of 2007, they found a mostly level home in the Meadowbrook Heights area, with extra bedrooms for family caretakers and grandchildren staying over and a basement apartment with separate entrance for Sarah to reside in full time.  

The main, ranch-style house, built in 1961, already had the stamp of an architect: a well-designed open floor plan that happens to suit the elderly with physical and other ailments, large windows for garden-gazing and bird watching, and enough space for frequent guests. A few minor renovations were needed, but one of the most important issues was adjusting Sarah’s new living arrangement to suit her needs. 

“When you care for someone, it trammels you in ways. You have to find a way to carve out an existence that’s fulfilling. It’s very important to have your own personal space,” says Sargent. 

Though moving to the 700-square-foot lower apartment was a downsize for her, Sargent, who grew up in New York, says it wasn’t a hardship: “I’ve always liked small. It’s all I know.”

Plus, with her artistic background and design sensibilities—she’s a freelance art critic and former director of the Second Street Gallery—Sargent knew how to maximize the space. She hung almost her entire art collection on the walls of the main living/sleeping area, tiny galley kitchen, sleeper train-like bathroom and former utility/storage closet, which she’d converted to another sitting room. 

She expanded the perception of the apartment’s footprint with lively orange walls and new low-pile, dark brown carpeting, and instead of going Spartan, opted for bold upholstered furniture. That includes a queen-sized pull-out couch flanked by robust table lamps, to anchor the room and mimic the scale of the apartment’s one large window that bathes the main room with natural light. 

Sargent actually has the best of both worlds: a separate, Paris-salon-like sanctuary plus the benefits of a fenced backyard where her boxer roams freely. And she has the peace of mind that comes with living with family in need.

 Here’s the myth: Once you’re pregnant, your sex life tanks, you can’t take any medication for your headaches and you can forget about dancing the night away or any other rigorous exercise. 

Here’s the truth: Your sex life actually can be fantastic during pregnancy, because pregnancy hormones make your sensitive parts super sensitive (read: The big “O” can be huge). Ibuprofen is out, but there are many over-the-counter and even prescription drugs that are safe to use during pregnancy. And regular exercise that doesn’t risk injury to your abdomen (e.g., kick-boxing) or require the kind of balance you just won’t have while housing a basketball in your belly (e.g., downhill skiing) not only is permitted, it’s recommended. It helps curb the discomfort caused by the stretching of muscles and ligaments necessary to grow a another human inside your body. Plus, regular exercise keeps your weight in check and will help develop the endurance needed for labor. 

All that being said, the quantity and character of your sexual activities, prescription and over-the-counter drug intake and exercise will have to change during pregnancy, and the tougher reality is, you may need to make some adjustments prior to getting pregnant. 

The lowdown on getting down and low

You might think that upping your intercourse schedule to a three-times-a-day habit will help your chances of getting pregnant, but there can be too much of a good thing.  

“The research shows that the likelihood of getting pregnant is the same if you have sex every night or every other night,” says local obstetrician Dr. Edward T. Wolanski. 

Plus, according to Wolanski, giving the guy a chance to refill his sperm tank is important. 

“Your best bet is to time intercourse during the fertile days of your cycle—a day or two before ovulation. The sperm has to be there waiting for the egg.”

Pill popping

It’s a no-brainer that you have to stop taking oral contraceptives if you’re trying to conceive, but what you might not know is that doctors recommend stopping three months before trying to conceive and using a back-up form of contraceptive during that time. Though you could get pregnant immediately after stopping the pill, the presence of oral contraceptives in your system might be harmful. 

There are also other prescription drugs, such as those for high blood pressure, seizures, allergies and depression, that might affect fertility or present a risk of miscarriage. You should consult your physician about all of your meds and make adjustments in advance of getting pregnant. 

What you should start taking in advance of conceiving is a prenatal vitamin or, at the very least, 400 micrograms of folic acid. The folic acid supplement has been proven to reduce the risks of birth defects to the brain and spinal chord of the growing fetus. Because these types of defects occur during the first 28 days after conception (when you likely won’t even know you’re pregnant), it’s crucial to have the nutrient in your system when conception occurs. Other vital nutrients contained in pre-natal vit-amins are (1) calcium, which helps maintain your bone density during pregnancy as well as provides necessary minerals for fetal bone growth and (2) iron, which helps keep mom’s and baby’s blood rich with oxygen.

Postpone the Ironman

Regular exercise is great for your overall health and well-being and therefore, your fertility, but the kind of exces-sive, strenuous exercise that affects your ovulation cycle may decrease your chances of conceiving.  It also can affect sperm count in men, so both of you should start tapering off from your co-ed biathlon train-ing regimen if you’re trying to get pregnant any time soon. 

Katherine Ludwig is a lawyer turned freelance writer and mother of two who thinks passing the Bar was cake next to breastfeeding and potty training.

Problem: Designing a bug-free, fresh air play space

“We feel really strongly about our kids being outside as much as possible,” says Whitney Morrill, mom of two and architect, owner and founder of design firm Woollerton Edifice PLLC. “But we needed to give them a sanctuary from Charlottesville’s heat and mosquito mafia.”

Particularly between 9am and 10am, and 3pm and 4:30pm, which Morrill and her husband, Joe, have recognized as mosquito mealtimes, the children—Sasha, 7, and Evan, 5—retreat from the garden. They resume their outdoor play on a screened porch addition to the family’s late 1940s, Locust Avenue-area pad, even dragging up their kiddie pool or occasionally throwing up the bouncy house. 

“A rock fountain adjacent to the porch provides a cooling soundtrack during porch meals and quiet reading times,” says Morrill. 

The boxy, contemporary addition with big beams cantilevers out from the home and original patio and sits up off the yard enough to require guardrails. Morrill framed the screens with FSC-certified cedar and painted the metal guardrails (fashioned vertically because horizontal rails could become ladders for creative climbers!) the exact shade of blackish-gray that disappears into the screens with the sunlight, creating an almost unobstructed, transparent view to the backyard. 

The kids now have a blast watching the insects dance from the other side of the screens and lying down on the cedar floorboards to come eye to eye with the bumblebees in the plantings surrounding the porch, says Morrill. “Evan sees the mosquitoes swarming and says, ‘Suckers.’” 

Though the design is fresh and modern, Morrill was careful to respect the existing architecture of the vintage home by bringing the expanded porch to the same eaves as the original overhanging patio and maintaining some of the patio’s old bones. A beam from the original footprint now stands prominently in the middle of the new porch, sporting sassy lime-green paint for contrast. The colorful pier anchors the kids’ snack and craft table and has become the source of plenty of hide-and-seek games.

The kids also have found inspiration from the new v-groove wood floors: They shoot and race marbles down them, proving that if you give a kid a screened porch, she’ll likely make it into her own open air, cootie-free wonderland.—Katherine Ludwig 

Natural wonders

Chances are your kids are collecting lots of beloved seashells, river rocks, pinecones and twigs this season. These treasures should be gathered and admired, not stuffed in pockets and inadvertently assaulted in the washing machine. Organize and display them in glass jars like these. Assorted sizes, $2.99-5.99, at Michaels.—K.L.

As its name suggests, the utility knife is very, well, useful. Sometimes called a “box cutter” because of its superiority to a pair of scissors for splitting thick packaging tape and cutting open boxes, the utility knife has multiple purposes. The razor blade—most often retractable—can be used for cutting drywall, laminate flooring or carpeting; scraping away old caulk from around the toilet; or cleaning gunk from your putty knife (very carefully). 

Personally, I have two utility knives—one in the kitchen for opening packages and cutting heavier paper and materials for crafts, and another in my garage toolbox for more dangerous house projects that may require safety goggles. Having two in different locations mostly is for convenience, but this also increases the longevity of the blades. 

For serious cutting projects, you’re likely going to need several blades to finish anyway, in which case you should find a knife with a storage compartment on the side or at the bottom for extra blades. Or you could find one of those fancy, newfangled utility knifes that comes with segmented, snap-off blades. In these models, when the edge gets dull, you can snap it off with a pair of pliers and then extend a fresh blade edge. More expensive versions even come with their own attachments for doing the snapping off. 

Whichever kind you use or however many you hoard, treat your utility knife with respect. The sucker is sharp for a reason, so always retract the blade as soon as you’re done cutting, even if you’re going to cut again soon, and use short, slow strokes, pulling the blade toward you, when you cut.—Katherine Ludwig

Terracotta pots can be a medium for creative house numbers; or paint unfinished numbers and attach to dowel rods, then stick directly into the ground. 

Kids on kitchen duty

Problem: Getting the kids to help themselves

Transferring from more cramped quarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few years ago, Kate Bennis and her husband, Hal Movius, were thrilled to find an old farmhouse in downtown Charlottesville with great bones and a backyard unusually large and level for its location near Martha Jefferson Hospital. The place had been wrecked and converted into a duplex, but the couple immediately saw its potential as a great family compound. They just needed to knock down and realign a few walls for more modern mobility.  

Centering the renovation around a larger kitchen, they designed adjoining spaces for dining, play and office work to be openly visible and easily accessible to their two preschoolers, Luke (6) and Anya (4), and created a free-flowing floor plan that enables mom and dad to get their own professional and domestic chores done while keeping eyes and ears near the little ones.

“The most useful thing we did was to use two Ikea units back to back to make a kitchen island,” says Bennis. “The end facing the play area has many small drawers, and we put all the kids’ plates, utensils, glasses, etc. there so they can set their own table and help themselves. They also each have a ‘Treasure Drawer’ for all the wonderful Valentine’s Day cards, pebbles, glitter, plumes and ephemera that [they] collect.”

Bennis says the Montessori teaching philosophies of her children’s preschool inspired her organizational design choices: “Certainly, Montessori has influenced all of our toy storage ideas. The kids can see, find and lift everything themselves. I don’t really have to do anything!”  

Bennis jokes that designing systems for kid self-reliance might make her

a lazy mom, but we think it makes her one of the smartest and most industrious moms we know.

Snack traps

Three tofu nuggets; five peeled apple slices; a tablespoon of peas—tonight’s leftover dinner could be your preschooler’s next lunch if you can spot the small stashes in the back of the fridge. One- and two-cup, lidded glass bowls make great see-through storage and are safe to reheat (no toxic plastics!). Blue Ridge Eco Shop; $4.50-5.25.—K.L.

 “Our kids have left. Why are we doing this now?” That’s what local architect Giovanna Galfione says she and her husband, Maurice Cox, asked themselves repeatedly before embarking on a two-year, two-phase project to renovate their 100-year-old home in the Ridge Street Historic District. In phase one, they opened up the kitchen and added a bathroom on the first floor; in phase two, they reopened the first floor back porch and replaced an awkward second floor sunroom addition with a master bedroom, porch and bathroom. Aside from the obvious factors—time and money—the simple answer was this: “The house deserved to be preserved,” says Galfione. 

And for Galfione and Cox, living in the home at its best would be the ultimate luxury. They’d already completed a lot of restoration work to floors, walls and moldings—the house had operated as a funeral parlor for years before the couple purchased it in 1994—and resided there for 15 years.

The couple has a design pedigree as impressive as their home’s broad brick facade. Cox is a UVA architecture professor and former Charlottesville mayor who just finished a two-year stint as Design Director at the National Endowment for the Arts; he and Galfione have partnered on many design and planning efforts, including a community planning project that earned national recognition.

Return to roots

For this close-to-home project, Galfione took the lead on the design plan. Her contractor was Sugar Hollow Builders, a firm that specializes in sustainable and energy-efficient construction and one of Galifione’s preferred contractors for her professional work. Galfione says she and the builders paid special attention to improving the home’s overall thermal performance by increasing insulation, replacing windows and doors and upgrading heating and cooling systems. They also utilized FSC-certified lumber and local and recycled materials as much as possible, plus low- or no-VOC paints and adhesives.

“The renovation’s overall purpose was to improve functionality, natural light and aesthetics of the spaces in the rear volume—in some ways restoring them to their original status,” says Galfione.

Over the century, earlier renovations had carved up the rear of the home, separating the kitchen from several windows now lost behind walls making up a laundry room, bathroom and pantry. By removing those partitions, they made the kitchen the large nerve center of the more modern home. They also incorporated the functional aspects of the home’s original open floor plan. Back then, a wide span of windows would have been necessary for light and ventilation.

Laundry facilities moved to a detached garage and a tiny replacement bathroom was added underneath the main staircase. Historically high ceilings allowed for extra tall kitchen cabinetry to replace pantry space, but custom cabinets were too expensive. Galfione instead chose Kraftmaid plywood box cabinets with solid cherry doors. Marmoleum with radiant heat was an economical, sustainable and energy-efficient choice for flooring. 

Though original foundation problems revealed during demo led to other budget compromises, Galfione and Cox did not skimp on windows. They chose Pella Architect Series, aluminum clad, exterior windows with low-E insulated glass for both upstairs and down. Energy efficiency was a main consideration as was the historic integrity of the house. Particularly with historic homes, the quality of the replacement windows is the most obvious detail, says Galfione.

Taking it higher

The couple also didn’t add much square footage to the second floor renovation. It would have been rational, from a design perspective, to match the rectangular footprint up and down, but in putting on her homeowner hat, Galfione says, “We didn’t need the space.”

What they needed (well, wanted) was a view. With Monticello and Montalto directly visible from the back side, Cox says, “We knew there were gorgeous views up there. The novelty was in taking advantage of them.” 

When the house was built, Cox says that an upper level terrace on the back side would have served utilitarian purposes—clothes-drying and ventilation—almost exclusively. By adding the porch off the master bedroom as a space for relaxation and aesthetic pleasure, Cox says they infused their modern sensibilities into a renovation that otherwise responded very carefully to tradition: “You want to do right by a house like this.” 

Galfiones adds, “Although we are modernists, we like to show the home’s honesty.”

Whether you own your own home or rent an apartment, the putty knife is up there with the screwdriver as a must-have tool. That’s true even if you’re the type who calls a handyman just to hang a picture for you. With its flat blade and sturdy handle, the putty knife is like an industrial-strength kitchen spatula.

They come in two different types—flexible blade and stiff blade—and you should have both. The latter is best for scraping things like paint and wallpaper, while the former is good for spreading things like spackle. Hardware stores carry putty knives in a range of sizes and prices, though all are fairly inexpensive.

There are even so-called “disposable” ones where both blade and handle are made of plastic, but I suggest you get yourself putty knives of decent quality with a metal blades and wooden handles. They’ll last a lifetime, and the soft wooden handle will feel so much more comfortable in your hand when you’re, say, scraping away layers of moldy contact paper from a vintage linen closet. Or patching the nail holes in your walls from all those pictures, so you can get your security deposit back.