AD - A PREFAB HOUSE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE
A PREFAB HOUSE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE
The reno of this family's weekend getaway was such a success that they moved there full-time
July 18, 2018 | architecturaldigest.com | by LINDSAY MATHER
A Bavarian-style prefab home?! It might not be a thing now, but it was in the 1960s, when knitwear designer Catherine Carnavale's Stone Ridge, New York, house was built. Back then, Lindal Cedar Homes was known for its ready-to-ship A-frame residences. But it was 2016 when Catherine and her husband Nick Carnevale, owner of Gasoline Alley Coffee, first laid eyes on the property, and it was unlike anything else they'd seen while house-hunting. It had been on the market awhile and it was clear it would need some TLC, but the couple couldn't stop oohing and ahing at the architecture. "I thought, Wow, I love these beams, I love this fireplace. When we walked to the top of the house, we saw the shape of the roof. It was like, Wow, could I have a bedroom like this?" says Catherine. The four acres of wooded land didn't hurt either.
Living amidst construction on their apartment building in Brooklyn, Catherine and Nick, who had recently had a baby (they now have two kids), were desperate for a place to escape. They walked through the house one more time the following weekend and they were sold. "It was pretty impulsive," Catherine admits, but there was no looking back. "We had such a gut feeling; the feeling of the place hooked us."
What with those great bones they fell for, Catherine and Nick didn't have to do too much to make the house livable; the big game changer was a coat of white paint on pretty much everything: the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the kitchen cabinets. However, there was one major project that Catherine insisted on: "We ripped off those massive Hansel and Gretel balconies. They were so heavy—it looked like the house was about to tip over," she says.