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In Wyoming, an updated version of
an olf farmhouse adds up to an affordable home for a young family.
Fine
Home Building Annual Houses Issue• June 2002
The following article appeared in 147 Fine Homebuilding magazine,
Spring/Summer 2002 Annual Issue on Houses, pp. 106-10. Reprinted
with permission. Copyright © 2002 by The Taunton Press, Inc.
Article by: Paul Duncker
If you want to work in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming, you might end up living in Idaho. That's because
houses are a lot more affordable just over the pass in Victor, 24
miles away. But that can be a harrowing 24 miles, especially on
a winter night. My wife, Peggy, and I made the drive one day to
go house-hunting, and on the way back to our rental house in Jackson,
she said she'd rather move back to New York City than make that
drive every day.
So we concentrated on finding
the nearly impossible: an affordable building site in Wilson, a
little town a few miles west of Jackson Hole. Wilson is a quirky
mix of old-time ranchers, former hippies turned business- people
and every variety of mountain junkies from well-heeled trust-funders
to dishwashers with three jobs and six roommates. It's the kind
of place I've always wanted to call home.
Our dream of a sloping site on
a wooded hill with streams and wildflowers turned out to be just
that: a dream. After a quick reality check, we set our sights on
the valley floor, where a new subdivision was being carved out of
an old hay field. There were lots more buyers than lots, so we put
our name in the lottery hat and were lucky enough to draw a good
number. To be honest, we would have been happy with any patch of
dirt that the bank would underwrite, but we ended up with a great
corner lot that others had passed over because it was on a corner.
Some saw it as a drawback because of the extra exposure to the street.
We saw it as an asset that would let us put the house up front and
set the garage to the side.
A new
angle on an old house
We started with a tight budget and a rough image: a simple farmhouse
like the ones that used to be common in this valley. We want- ed
the house to have a metal roof, a deep porch to escape the summer
sun and a crackling fireplace to combat the winter chill. This image
led us to a two-story gabled structure with bedrooms and bathrooms
upstairs; and below. A shed-roofed living/ dining room abuts the
rear of the house.
Our public living /dining room
is wide open to the outdoors and to the neighborhood. We can drink
in the last rays of the setting sun through the large west-facing
windows, and our friends can wave to us while we sit at the table
as they cross-country ski along the adjacent bike path.
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