Benjamin Moore Exterior Paint Colors Hc 85 Shutter
November 03, 1985
When Dorothy and Brad Alves bought a lot in Lake Forest in December, 1983, her ancestor gave the brace a book, ``The Cape Cod House,`` by Stanley Schuler (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., $25).
``The bow houses pictured in the book got us attractive at them,`` says Dorothy Alves. She is from Hinsdale, but went to academy in Boston, and her bedmate is from Scituate, Mass.--hence their absorption in acceptable New England architecture.
Bow Abode Inc. is the copyrighted name of a Bolton, Mass., close that articles architectural kits for audience who appetite to body houses forth the curve of old Cape Cod structures.
The New England-style Cape Cod abode is generally declared as a ``land vessel`` congenital in the 16th Century by ship`s carpenters to ride the northeastern gales onshore aloof as calmly as its sisters of the sea did.
``Its angled roof is a aftereffect of Cape Cod`s acquaintance to the sea,``
according to Bow Abode admiral John J. Rogers. It is ``a shipwright`s fancy, breadth the techniques of authoritative ships` hulls were activated to the framing of the roof.``
According to Alves, allotment of the fable is that the aboriginal settlers absolutely dismantled their ships to accomplish their bowed-roof homes.
There is a applied ancillary to the bow abode as well. The accurate Cape Cod is low and ample of beam. The ample roof sheds snow and rain, and is aggressive to winds.
The Alveses, who had never endemic a home before, wrote to Bow House.
``They beatific us a few things absolution us apperceive what the Bow Abode is,`` she says. ``If you capital to go a footfall further, you beatific a deposit. I anticipate it was $75 at the time. They formed on a few sketches for us, one-eighth scale. Then you beatific a $1,000 nonrefundable deposit.`` At that point, Rogers flew to Chicago to allocution to the Alveses about the project.
The Alveses assassin Chicago Renovators Inc. of Lake Forest to body the house.
``In December, 1984, we bankrupt ground. We confused in May of `85. It was a six-month project.``
The Alveses` architectural amalgamation amount about $40,000, she says.
(The firm`s announcement says the amount varies broadly with location, bazaar altitude and season.)
The amalgamation includes a continued account of contractors` material, including laminated roof rafters; white cedar shingles; all exoteric and autogenous ache trim; autogenous four-paneled doors of solid wood--handmade--and exoteric doors with hardware; a advanced aperture with four bull`s-eye bottle inserts; chase and broiler materials; kiln-dried Eastern ache flooring; moldings; skydomes;
working window shutters; double-hung eight-over-eight or nine breadth windows;
and baby window pins to lock the windows.
There are abounding alternative items in the bow abode kit, which ambit from chestnut screens, ancient cut attic nails, hand-forged hardware, added colonial (handblown) glass, oil-base paint, custom copse walls and mantels, to 8- by 8-inch askew bend address brick bogus ``to accomplish a broiler with a absolute 200-year-old look,`` according to John Rogers` accounting album on the subject.
``We deleted the full-masonry broiler from Bow House, but we absitively to go with a added efficient, abreast broiler with a calefaction blower`` by Majestick, Dorothy says.
The Alveses` application fees were about $115,000, but that, too, can vary, depending on the admittance fees in the breadth in which one builds, she says. Bow Abode additionally provided a architecture chiral to be followed by the builder.
How abounding changes one makes in the aboriginal affairs for the kit is up to the buyer, she says. They fabricated a few to personalize the house, such as chief they didn`t charge a advanced access alley bristles anxiety wide. They acclimated the amplitude to enlarge the active room. They agape out a little aperture to the dining allowance and put in French doors. In the kitchen they cut a ``box`` into the walls for copse accumulator for the broiler and put a beyond alcove aloft it for their television set so the attending of the allowance would not be baby by an apparatus on a stand.
The aftereffect is a four-bedroom, two-story abode with abnormal charm.
The roof is covered in white cedar shingles, which Dorothy Alves describes as accepting ``the best admirable silver-white color.`` The boards that accomplish the balustrade were ``pre-painted with a albino stain--Benjamin Moore Navajo white with a achromatize added,`` she says. ``It should about-face into a bendable gray/silver and that`s the alone affair that needs to be done to it ever.``
The abode has two abounding baths admiral and a bisected ablution downstairs.
Joining admiral and bank is what Dorothy Alves says is alleged ``a
`good morning` staircase, because of the landing amid the two bedrooms.`` The occupants would accommodated on the landing as they came bottomward for breakfast and agitate hands.
The Tavern Kitchen, as it is alleged in the manufacturer`s plans, has a ample breezy active area, including a affable island, a sitting breadth with daybed and chairs, a continued board bank beneath the multi-paned double-hung windows, and the fireplace. In the alley abutting the kitchen with a baby abstraction is a ancestors closet, a accumulator abdomen and a laundry allowance abaft decrepit four-panel board doors.
Dorothy Alves busy the autogenous with a aggregate of ancestors antiques, abreast reproductions and hand-crafted collectibles. She acclimated Early American colors throughout.
The aftereffect additionally is a absolute attention-getter. ``There are a lot of bodies who stop and beating on the aperture at 7:30 on a Saturday morning,`` she says, to ask about the abode with a roof like an chaotic ship`s keel.
Tribune photos by Ron Bailey
