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FeedSurgeon Tom Dougherty renovates a Centreville home into a comfortable country retreat
A surgeon turns an old brick home into a comfortable country retreat.
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Original Thoughts
To seamlessly match the original facade, the exterior of the addition is done in Flemish bond style, a meticulous and exacting process requiring a top-notch mason. Achieving that level of authenticity on a project of such scope is an intensive, hands-on process. If you want the details to be just right, Dougherty suggests rolling up your sleeves and wading in.
“When you are restoring a house, you need to be there every day, at every phase, working with many contractors,” he says.
To bring the house into the 21st century, he also focused on infrastructure, remediating an asbestos problem and bringing systems up to date. “We took out every pipe and every electrical conduit in the house,” he says.
For efficient heating and cooling, he installed an environmentally friendly geothermal system, which converts heat from the Earth into energy. “It’s quiet, a fraction of the cost of gas or electric, and the comfort level is fantastic,” he says.
Dougherty also made the most efficient use of space. Workers dug out the basement to carve out room for a small home gym. A jot of roofline off the second-floor master suite was claimed for a deck with a view of countryside. A second story over the detached garage holds the potential for a pied-a-terre for his parents.
Throughout the house are rustic accents, some fashioned from salvaged architectural elements. Dougherty repurposed a vintage chest of drawers to make a vanity in the powder room. The mirror is framed in the remnants of an old copper gutter.
A picturesque ruin of fieldstone, the remnants of an old barn, now define a garden Dougherty tends with his son, Mike.
“Our biggest challenge is keeping the deer away,” he says. “They nibbled our azaleas down to the nub.”
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