Home Addition + Interior Alterations

Lending order, Falls Church

Honest Bones, Compromised Order

What began as a modest architectural request of deJong Studio — enclose an open carport — became the catalyst for a comprehensive addition and reorganization of a one-story mid-century modern home in one of Falls Church’s most intact postwar neighborhoods, Holmes Run Acres. The original house had the honest bones typical of the neighborhood: exposed rafters and structural decking, a low-pitched shed roof, and a generous open plan. But its circulation lacked clarity. Entry to the house passed directly through what functioned as a dining room, leaving the public zone without a coherent arrival sequence — and without a well defined kitchen, dining room, or entry worthy of how the house was actually lived in. In this expanded footprint we saw the inviting possibility to lend the missing order and spatial logic.

The Generative Move

The original carport sat at the front of the house, attached but unenclosed. The new design called for demolition and proposed the construction a new garage shifted laterally — a move that allowed us to create precisely the amount of space needed for a new entry between the garage and the existing house. That five-foot translation became the generative decision of the whole project: without it, there is no entry sequence, no entry foyer, and none of the cascading reorganization of the public zone that follows.

In committing to the new garage, deJong Studio saw an opportunity to address what the new configuration made possible: a dedicated dining room converted from the original kitchen footprint, and a new kitchen addition adjacent to the garage. Together these changes would yield the functional, high-energy home for daily life as well as the generous, connected space for entertaining that our client craved.

Constructing Anew and Restoring Vitality

The addition was designed to read as an outgrowth of the original composition. Vertical board-and-batten siding in deep charcoal, white trim, and a scissor roof — sloping in one direction over the garage, then pivoting to slope in the opposite direction over the kitchen — animate the exterior and the interior volumes alike. A new covered entry with skylight provides a warm material moment between new and existing. The red front door anchors the arrival and announces the interior color sensibility from the street. The garage, designed with a dual brief: car storage and fitness space, provides a finished space complete with exposed ceiling, large windows and gallery lighting.

Arrival, Color, Kitchen

The spacious new entry vestibule, focused on organization, centers around red powder-coated metal mesh lockers — graphic, functional, and unapologetically bold. A dark wood barn door closes off the play room when needed, and track lighting on the exposed rafters and tongue and groove decking carries that same material language throughout. The former kitchen, now dining room, opens to the living area and is connected by sightline to the new kitchen beyond. The powder room – with floor-to-ceiling penny tile and bold red accent wall, delivers a burst of personality. From front door through entry, dining, and into the kitchen the spatial sequence now flows the way a well designed mid-century open plan was always meant to.

In the new kitchen addition the architectural design originates in the movement and play of the changing daylight. High transom windows bring rays of morning light to this west side of the house and a corner window at counter level anchors and frames a connection to the natural world beyond. Bold color here, as in the rest of the house, brings energy in the form of two-tone cabinetry — ink-blue lowers with integrated pulls, white uppers — is set against a graphically playful blue-and-white geometric triangle backsplash. White quartz countertops provide a clean counterpoint. Exposed rafters and tongue and groove decking, carried through from the original house, anchor the new kitchen to everything that came before it.

A House Fully Realized

One addition. One five-foot shift. A complete reimagining of how a mid-century modern home in Holmes Run Acres could work — with a real arrival sequence, a dining room that earns the name, and a kitchen designed for daily pleasure and easy entertaining. The exposed rafters, structural tongue and groove decking, and shed rooflines of the original are honored throughout. The interiors — bold in color, confident in material — reflect an owner who knows exactly who she is.