Old timber barns and a simple aesthetic define private residence
Not many people have the chance to design the home that they’re going to live in from the ground up. For Steve Rick, AIA, LEED AP, owner and principal at Street Dixon Rick architecture firm in Nashville, Tenn., it took many years for the dream and vision that he had to come to fruition. Rick designed his family’s one-story residence in Nashville, with good intentions of energy efficiency, minimal environmental impact and low maintenance. Completed in December 2015, the residence includes a 3,160-square-foot main house and 1,700-square-foot detached garage.
“My wife and I had specific wants and needs for a home,” Rick says. Those included a single-floor living that is designed to accommodate life stages, while being minimal or low maintenance.
Siting
Before starting to look for land for the new house, the Ricks put together a program for what they were looking for. “You’ve got to know what you want to put on the site before you can figure out if the site is going to work for you,” he says. “It was important to know what you want, how much space you need, what sort of orientation you want, how the different pieces are going to sit on the site, and this land seemed to work well.”
Rick says they were pretty specific about what they were looking for in a site, including wanting good south-facing exposure. It also was important that the house could sit properly for the energy, solar and sustainable goals they had. “We wanted something very simple and straightforward that would sit in the landscape very nicely with a minimal impact on the landscape,” Rick explains.
“We didn’t want to go in and reshape Mother Nature. We wanted something that would fit with the natural surroundings. We wanted one story for simplicity of living and as we age make it easier for us to move around in and just live in.”
The Ricks bought the 41 acres in 2007, before the economy turned. Since there was no rush to move, they decided to sit and wait out the Great Recession. Once things began to turn around, they began to move forward on the project, which took just over two years from plans to completion.
While waiting out the economy, Rick built a shed on the property, removed from where the house is located. Since the shed has better sunlight, the solar panels for the property are on the shed. “It had been fun to go out there and build it instead of watching the land just sit there,” Rick says. “We built the shed and put the gardens in-we were out there all the time gardening and raising vegetables. We were on the land, using the land even before the house was started.”
Design
Coming up with the actual design for the residence was an ongoing process. “There were certain things I knew we wanted,” Rick says, “but the process itself-we did a program and discussed what we wanted in a house and what we didn’t; what we liked and didn’t like.”
The three bedroom, three-and-a-half bath residence has an open floor plan, with the kitchen, dining and living spaces as the heart of the home. A set of guest bedrooms are on one side of the main living area, while the master suite is on the other.
Rick says he has a very stripped down aesthetic and didn’t want a lot of applied decoration to the house. This is shown inside, where reclaimed longleaf pine wood from a nearby distillery warehouse in Kentucky is used for most of the floors and some of the walls, along with the trim for the doors and windows. Exposed open-webbed joists and 2-inch by 6-inch tongue-and-groove decking make up the ceiling system. “All of that is exposed,” he notes. “There’s no real applied finish to that, it’s all just the actual decking and the structure that’s exposed on the inside.”
The detached garage houses a workshop and half bath, allowing Rick to paint and work on projects away from the main house. “The carport is designed so that it can be easily enclosed,” he adds. “We use it daily but designed it with the next owner in mind, it can easily become an additional bedroom or den.”
In the back, a wooden deck extends out from the house with a pool and screened-in porch. The deck and porch is built up off of the hillside, and is approximately 18 feet off the ground so it remains level with the house. A staircase leads down into the woods.
Inspiration
Rick loves old barns and used them as inspiration for his home. At one point, he even tried to find an old timber barn to see if he could turn it into what he wanted, but ultimately decided he didn’t want to have to heat and cool the barn’s large volume.
Vertical steel panels on the outside of the residence gave Rick the look that he was looking for. The panels mimic a lot of the old, vertical wood barns found throughout Middle Tennessee.
Western States Metal Roofing, Phoenix, supplied 3,350 square feet of 1-foot-wide, 22-gauge RustWall Corten steel siding panels. “I considered other materials such as reclaimed wood, copper and other metals, but none I liked as much as Corten,” explains Rick. And, “Aside from what we expect to be a nearly maintenance-free feature, we are drawn to the patina and patterning that changes and grows with time.”
While looking at different barn structures, Rick saw many old barns that had fallen into decay and the roofs had collapsed. “So I did a collapsed roof,” he says. “It’s sort of a weird way to get there, but that’s just one of those moments that hit me and I said, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to fold that roof down instead of fold it up like a normal roof might be.”
Around the entrance and connecting the two wings, black brick offsets the Corten siding and ties together the black edge trim around the roof and black aluminum around all of the windows. Additionally, sunscreens made from stock aluminum bar grating are bolted to custom-made steel outriggers, which provide shade from the summer sun while allowing the winter sun to penetrate the house.
The Ricks’ personal commitment to sustainability and resource efficiency led them to include solar, high-efficiency HVAC with geothermal, high efficiency equipment, good insulation, good envelope, rainwater collection for irrigation and native plants, all resulting in an expected LEED Gold certification for the residence.
Now that the house is completed, the Ricks can sit back and relax in the wooded residence. “It was a long process obviously from the time we bought the land until it was finished,” he says. “Even once we decided to go, it took a long time to get the construction completed.”
Private Residence, Nashville, Tenn.
Architect: Street Dixon Rick, Nashville, www.sdrarch.com
General contractor/installer: Innovative Building Specialties Inc., Nashville, www.buildnashville.co
Metal wall panels: Western States Metal Roofing, Phoenix, www.cortenroofing.com