"Shall I build or remodel?" is a question with so many facets that it would be foolhardy to try to answer it categorically. Circumstances alter cases in all phases of life and particularly so when one is endeavoring to decide whether the country home is to be a new structure, or an old one remodeled to make the best use of its desirable features and suit the requirements of its new owner.

One of our acquaintances was hung on the horns of this dilemma for several months while he and his wife spent most of their waking hours arguing it pro and con. They had selected the vicinity in which they wanted to live, had the requisite cash in the bank to finance either undertaking, and there were two properties that pleased them. The latter constituted the snag. On the one hand, there was a sightly piece of land with some nice old shade trees but no existing structure; about a mile farther along the same road, lay another holding of about the same size with a house in fair condition. The price for this was naturally higher than for the undeveloped land, on the theory that it would not cost half as much to remodel the house as to build.

"I don't know what to do," this perplexed man remarked. "On one side I hear and read that new building is much the best investment. That it costs so much less to maintain a new house and if you want to sell, you can find a purchaser quicker and at a better price. But no sooner do I begin to believe that building is the only wise course, than I run smack into an article on remodeling or meet some one I know whose experience in remodeling shows by actual figures a big saving compared with a new house of the same kind and size. In my own case, though, the more I study what estimates I can get, the more I am convinced that in the end I'll spend just about as much whether I build or remodel."

These two people finally built a new house. There were good reasons for their decision. First, they could buy the land for so much money, and a general contractor of excellent reputation was ready to build just the house they wanted for so much more. The two figures, plus the architect's fee, added up to a definite amount. Having an accounting mind, the knowledge that there would be no unforeseen contingencies and that, ready for occupancy, the cost of the house would be so much, was the deciding factor. In addition, he and his wife both inclined towards something new. A house that had not been lived in by other people, had no scars and marks of age and use, that embodied all the newest materials and construction methods, was really what they wanted. Had remodeling offered them an assured saving of several thousand dollars, this couple would probably have suppressed their subconscious leanings to be builders, proceeded to remodel, and been only moderately pleased with the result.

The answer to the age-old question of whether to build or to remodel is found in the preference of the individual. Some people are temperamentally builders. They are happiest living in a home that was constructed for them. In their eyes it possesses far greater charm than anything that has been mellowed by years of use. There are others to whom nothing is more satisfying than to take an existing structure and alter it to their liking and needs. An elderly acquaintance, now a widow and living in a sleepy New England village, is taking keen pleasure in an old house of almost doll-like proportions. "All my life," she said, "I've wanted to live in a really old house but until now it has always been one new house or city apartment after another and I never got my roots down."

Granted that building or remodeling, like cheese, is a matter of personal preference, it is not improper at this point to set forth some of the merits of both. With a fine old building, there is that elusive something called charm. Time has mellowed it and the countless feet that have crossed its threshold have worn its floors. The blackened bricks or stones of its fireplaces bespeak the generations that basked in the heat of the huge logs that once glowed there. All these things have given it character.

ONCE HALF A HOUSE AND A HEN ROOST Photo by Whitney ONCE HALF A HOUSE AND A HEN ROOST
Photo by Whitney

WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH A BARN Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho. Robertson Ward, architect WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH A BARN
Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho. Robertson Ward, architect

Don't expect a new house, the day it is turned over to you by the contractor, to look as if it had been a family home for several generations. It can't. It has just been built. Everything is fresh and shiny; edges are sharp and even the bricks of the fireplace are untainted by flame and smoke. But if you have been even moderately articulate, the architect has been able to interpret your wishes and you have a house built as near as possible to your plans. You also have the satisfaction of knowing that, in the building, the workmanship has been honest and thorough, and that in materials used every advantage has been taken of the newest developments.

For instance, behind the plaster is the modern metal lath so superior to the old wooden variety. The exterior walls are as thoroughly insulated against heat and cold as any one of several highly efficient materials can make them; windows and doors are products of large wood-fabricating factories noted for superior work. All these are points of advantage with tangible merit, but time and your own efforts are the only means by which your new home can acquire personality and charm. This new structure is yours, made to your desires; and what you make of it is your own problem.

The house that you buy and remodel starts with certain attributes given by age, as already stated. Here we must offer one caution. It concerns houses built during the last quarter of the 19th century. The majority were badly designed and the quality of workmanship was none too good. Such houses are apt to be perched on high foundations, have exterior walls that offer the minimum resistance to winter winds, while architecturally, lines and proportions reflect an age when taste was either bad or lacking. We know of several attempts to remodel country homes of such vintage and are convinced that better results could have been achieved for less money if the operation had started with wrecking the structure and building anew.

On the contrary, except where decayed beyond salvage, we have yet to see a country home of the 18th or first half of the 19th century that did not respond admirably to remodeling. But it is well to be practical and compare its cost with that of a new building. Among architects, it is generally recognized that, save for a house with unusually expensive details or added equipment, definite figures per cubic foot of size may be computed that will cover the entire cost of construction. To get the cubical contents of a house, the architect takes the area in square feet of the ground floor and multiplies it by the height from the cellar floor to the eaves, plus half the distance from that point to the ridge of the roof.

For example, if the proposed house is thirty feet wide by twenty feet deep, its floor plan area is 600 square feet. Then, if the elevation dimensions are seven feet from cellar floor to living room floor; eight feet from living room floor to that of the bedroom floor; and seven feet from bedroom floor to the level of the eaves, which in turn measure eight feet below the ridge of the roof; the cubical contents would result from multiplying 600 square feet by the sum of seven, eight, seven, and four, or 15,600 cubic feet. With this figure established, it is simple to approximate costs as follows:

This tabulation, an average for the United States as a whole, is as accurate as any generalization can be and a safe one for forming a preliminary estimate, but local conditions may increase or decrease costs. The architect can readily determine which. This table, of course, does not include cost of land, construction of driveway, landscaping, or expenses incident to bringing electric service or telephone wires to the house.

From these calculations, it is an easy matter to take the outside dimensions of a house you are considering remodeling and compute its cubical content. Then you can ask your architect whether it can be remodeled as you wish for a price competitive with building a new house of like design and equal size. In order for this to mean anything, you should determine what proportion of the price paid for the property represents land value and what reflects the existence of the structure itself. As a simple example, we will concede that land in the neighborhood is held at $500 an acre and you can buy a five-acre tract with a house on it for $3,750. Here $2,500 represents land value, and $1,250 house value. The question resolves itself into comparing remodeling costs plus house value with those for a new house of like size and kind.

If so much must be replaced or rearranged that the figures for house and remodeling are in excess of those for a new structure, the wise course would be to abandon the idea and build instead. But the old house may have certain details that make you willing to bear the added expense. If so, you at least know the comparative costs and have definite standards by which to shape your course.

From personal observation, we believe that there are many instances where the total cost of house and rejuvenation is considerably below that of a new structure. Since confession stories are just as fascinating in home building as in the lurid fiction of the woodpulp magazines, we cite the experience of a family that bought a home nearly two years ago within the New York commuting zone. They were a larger family than the average and the house, of desired size, had once been a stagecoach halfway tavern. It contained twenty-two rooms and was in better than average condition. The exterior had been given two coats of white paint less than six months before.

The price for this old place, including twenty-two acres of land and a barn usable for garage and chicken house, was $8,200. According to actual record, only $2,798 was spent on remodeling. There were almost no structural changes required. Two minor partitions were removed and five new windows cut. Otherwise, this expenditure was largely devoted to the introduction of plumbing, heating, and lighting. By type of work, the costs for this remodeling were as follows:

These are the actual figures for a livable and attractive country home. There are, of course, some things that await a future time for their accomplishment, but what place would be really enjoyable if there were not certain corrections and additions over which the owners could daydream and plan. We admit the figures just quoted are so low as to seem hardly credible, but they demonstrate what could be accomplished within fifty miles of New York during the summer of 1935. The contributing causes for this happy result were that these people knew what they wanted, hunted in a section that had not been too thoroughly combed by others like themselves and, lastly, happened to be ready to buy at just the right moment when the man who owned the property was anxious to sell.

But old country residences, including structures built as taverns, private schools and the like, are not the only type of buildings that may be remodeled into acceptable homes. We have seen old barns or stables, disused sawmills, general stores, old stone buildings that once housed small industrial enterprises, and even a church of the Neo-Classic period remodeled with distinct success.

Again, in Massachusetts there is a former textile hamlet. The mill itself is now a community club and the workmen's cottages, built about 1815-20, are homes for a dozen or more families where, daily, the head of the house motors to his office in an industrial city about a half-hour away. These story-and-a-half cottages, executed along simple Federal lines, are owned by the families who occupy them. They look out on a street lined with fine old elms and at the end is the stone mill with its belfry where still hangs the bell that once ruled the lives of spinners and weavers with its clanking iron tongue, morning, noon and night.

For picturesqueness, if the unconventional has a greater appeal than the more standardized type of home, remodeling an old barn into a country home has its advantages. This is particularly so if one can find either a capacious one of roughly laid ledge stone, once popular in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and more rarely built in other sections, or a large hay barn with hand-hewn framework and side walls of weathered boarding. It takes only a little imagination to visualize such a building remodeled into a country home with a generous stone chimney and fireplace occupying one of the end walls of a former haymow. Invariably such remodeling includes construction of one or more wings to house dining room, kitchen, and servants' quarters as well as additional bedrooms and baths. The actual barn structure seldom lends itself to more than a living room and possibly two bedrooms.

In summer this type of country home has much to offer. It is light, airy, and spacious; but when fall begins to indicate its arrival, unless the structure has been made nearer weather tight than is the nature of barns, life in the haymow is chill and sour. For use the year around, the old barn must be completely rebuilt with a cellar beneath for a heating plant and side walls and undersides of roof well covered with insulating material to prevent cold from entering or heat escaping. One of the most successful methods of treating the front, where once the old barn doors swung wide to admit a fully loaded haywagon, is to substitute a many-paned window of almost cathedral proportions. This lets in adequate light for what might otherwise be a dark interior. In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and mosquitoes. Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces south or west, pours that most valuable attribute of country living, bright sunlight.

An old water-power sawmill makes an unusually attractive country home. We know of at least one so adapted. Here the space once given over to sawing logs into boards has been completely enclosed and is now the living room. On one side is a noble fireplace flanked by large casement windows that look out on the old mill pond. Bedrooms and service quarters are located in the end sections where lumber used to be seasoned and other special work done. This unique bit of remodeling, combined with the pond as a main feature of landscape development, is both rare and enviable. Yet there are a surprising number of old commercial structures that lend themselves to remodeling into present day homes and by their very unconventionality take on added charm.

In New England there is a substantial stone building of no architectural pretensions except that width, depth, and height are distinctly related to each other. It is now a country home but it began as a small textile mill in the early days of the 19th century when the industrial revolution was just getting under way. Later, when the factory era became thoroughly established, this lone little mill was left high and dry by the tide that swept toward the larger centers and it stood untenanted for years. Finally it was retrieved by some one with vision enough to see that, with proper partitions, both ground and second floors could be divided into satisfactory rooms. Here the new owner, or his architect, had the discretion to preserve as much as possible of the past. The old mill owner's counting room, on the lower floor, is now the library and, in almost untouched condition, is complete even to the cast-iron stove that once warmed it.

Converting buildings originally designed for other uses may take a still different course. A house, too small in itself for present day use, can form the nucleus of a country home. A most attractive place in Maine was so assembled. There were two or three other buildings on the property which were shifted from their original locations by jacks and rollers and skillfully joined to the little house to form wings. By clever rearrangement of rooms and shifting or removal of partitions, the assembled group became large enough for the new owner's uses.

Even a modern structure, designed originally for some branch of agriculture, can be converted into an excellent house if an architect is inclined to undertake the necessary contriving of plans and builders can be found who will follow his directions. Several years ago, a man was bitten with the urge to raise chickens according to the latest scientific methods of artificial lighting and forced feeding. For this he built a substantial structure with steam heat, electric lights, and other elaborate provisions. Being nurse maid to thousands of chicks ranging from a week old to the proper size for broiling was a strenuous job. Further, the creatures developed all sorts of maladies not provided for in the book and the mortality was so high that the project was finally abandoned.

The building stood vacant for some months until it came to the notice of a resourceful young architect. He measured, sketched, and drew plans. Now, what was once a factory for the raw material of broiled chicken is an attractive and compact Cape Cod cottage. Because of site and accessibility, the original building had to be dismembered and moved about two hundred feet. When re-erected according to the plans provided, the result bore little resemblance to the original box-like structure except that the floor space was the same.

Some country homes begin as week-end retreats. Then the habit of being in the country two or three days grows on the family until they see no reason for living in the city except for an occasional overnight ordeal with a stuffy hotel room. To make the average week-end shack a permanent home calls for material expansion. Double-deck bunks have been installed to provide adequate sleeping quarters; and for a limited time they find it fun to cook, eat, and live in one large room. But, when the house is used seven days a week, such condensation is anything but practical. So the establishment must be enlarged. This can be done with ease, especially if the original plans were drawn with such a change in mind. That is, the original structure now becomes the living room, while new wings and additions provide the much needed space for service quarters and conventional bedrooms and baths.

But the week-end place is not always built particularly for the purpose. Many times it is a very small farmhouse acquired cheaply and made usable at a minimum of time and money. When the decision is reached to convert it into a home of larger proportions, whether one realizes it or not, the plan of campaign follows the plan of no less a person than George Washington. Mount Vernon was not always a mansion but was the result of consistent enlargement. When Washington inherited it from his half-brother, Lawrence, it was a story-and-a-half hunting lodge of eight rooms. Then he married Martha Custis, richest widow in the Virginia colony; and, to have a home suitable for her, he had the roof raised and the house made full two stories.

Shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution, he planned two wings. The first was that at the south end with library on the ground floor and master bedroom for Colonel and Mrs. Washington on the second. As the revolt against the British crown progressed, the construction of the north wing lagged somewhat but was worked on intermittently. This, the banquet hall, when finished became one of the noblest private residence rooms in America.

Washington, however, did not leave these steps in the enlargement and renovation of his erstwhile hunting lodge entirely to professionals. Whether away fighting in the French and Indian Wars or directing the course of action of the Continental Army, he never forgot what was happening at his country seat. His correspondence is full of minute directions regarding the finishing of certain rooms or of such injunctions as, "I beg of you to hasten Lamphire about the addition to the north end of the house; otherwise you will have it open, I fear, in the cold and wet weather." When the Revolution was fought and won, the Washingtons returned, not to a Mount Vernon that was a stranger to them, but to the country home they had so carefully planned. This specific planning by the owner, now as then, has definite bearing on whether the house will be yours or just a beautiful structure, perfect in all its appointments but totally lacking the impress of the owner or his family.

Several years ago, a man and his wife acquired one of the early Dutch farmhouses of the New Jersey back country. They had long wanted just such a place and having taken possession, they summoned an architect, an interior decorator, and a landscape architect. A few days were spent with them inspecting house and grounds. Then the new owners left on a winter cruise around the world. Their final injunctions were to the effect that next May they would return and would expect everything done. They did and everything was complete. The old house was perfect. Its furnishings were all genuine antiques of the period. The grounds had been graded, trimmed, and polished. Gardens, shrubbery, and hedges were just right, but the final effect was as impersonal as a demonstration model.

In a year or two, this property was sold to a golf club and its former owner bought another place and moved right in. Nearly two years were spent consulting and working with an architect and workmen, supervising a garden or two, and in buying antiques, a piece at a time. His second attempt at country living was not as sophisticated nor did it approach the museum standards of the former; but, when completed, it had that prime essential of any home, it reflected the character and personality of its owners.