Some old houses are lucky.
Take a summer house built in 1901 near Lake Harriet, which Susan and Bill Kirkpatrick have owned since 1993. In the past over 30 years, the couple raised a few children, two golden retrievers and three cats in his small footprint and included the properties and limits of the house on the way.
“Sometimes we crawled on top of each other, but it kept us nearby,” said Susan Kirkpatrick.
Despite prise points, the house served well, including poor circulation and narrow entertainment rooms. When he realized that in 2021 they did not intend to leave their beloved quarter of Linden Hills and the house full of good memories, the couple decided to carry out a comprehensive renovation in order to tackle the shortcomings of the house.
The Kirkpatricks set the Tea2 architecture for help, a company in the same building as its favorite restaurant, the Harriet Brasserie, only a few blocks away.
The architect Leffert Tigelaar was familiar with the cottage of his lunch walks.
“It's charming, but a little dark and outside,” he said. “The front door opened in the living room and they had to go through the rooms to get to other rooms.”
To make the overload easier, Tigelaar put the gable roof 10 feet and added a small veranda on the front door, which he changed from the middle of the house to the north side. The living room moved into the sunnier south side, where there used to be a veranda with three seasons.