Valley Drive House

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The house that we were presented with was a sturdily constructed and well maintained suburban brick two-story house from the 1950’s. There was nothing here to have strong opinions about either way. Nonetheless our client, when purchasing, saw potential. It’s on a close-in, quiet street nestled in a wooded ravine. Oblivious to the natural hillside rising quite steeply behind, the back of the house had a couple of small windows and a door. We were charged with opening up the opaque backwall to the landscape of full-size trees, fallen logs and scattered rock outcroppings. Our first pass at the design did not fully recognize the owner’s vision and we were sent back to be bolder. On entering, what was the living room is now a spacious open kitchen. The main door was shifted to be closer to the stair; maybe the only feature that did not change. The dining room became a bedroom with an adjacent bath and laundry in what was the kitchen. Upstairs what were two small awkward bedrooms with low ceilings and mean windows is now a generous, comfortable loft living space. The roof of the back three-fourths of the house was raised with a shed dormer with the wall below infilled with the largest fenestration arrangement that would fit. From the loft space this glass wall enframes a view of the immediate hillside. The double hung windows were switched out to single casements in the same openings. While a simple enough thing to do, the square shapes punching through the white walls make the house current by nearly a century. And with all of this work contained mostly within the original brick box the sense when visiting is that this has always been here. Of course, we want to say that the transformed house is surprising, spectacular and wonderful because we had a hand in realizing the vision but it is.