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Gothic romance

David and Maureen Hooper have been planning their country cottage almost since they met.

Despite the high-tech boom along the giant curve of pavement that is Interstate 495, many of the towns hugging the road retain their country charm. Industrial parks notwithstanding, communities like Harvard, Bolton, Boxborough, and Stow are largely rural enclaves. The highway may muscle its way along their borders, but country roads still meander past their orchards, farms, and town greens.

In this exurban setting, all manner of architecture - centuries-old Capes and saltboxes, rambling farmhouses, new assembly-line Colonials, and angular contemporaries - pleasantly coexist. Nestled into the trees or sitting at the edge of a meadow, these varied structures are quite right with their surroundings and with one another.

To this eclectic mix, David and Maureen Hopper have added their whimsical Gothic cottage. Despite its distinct, bold style, the house harmonizes with the environs. "This is definitely a country house," says David. It is as if the Hoppers found the perfect place, a wooded sloping lot in Harvard with spectacular sunset views, for the house they plan to live in for the rest of their lives.

The couple, who met in 1987 while architecture students at Syracuse University in New York, collaborated on the design. "We wanted to build a house even before we got married," says David. "So we began saving and thinking about what it would take." Married in 1993, they both found work in the design industry. He is a registered architect with Gorman Richardson Architects Inc. in Hopkinton, and she is a design coordinator at Gibson Associates in Sudbury.

David and Maureen, both 32, began to put pencil to paper in 1996, filling a shelf full of notebooks with sketches. "We would do our designs separately and then come together," says David. "Basically, we would keep the things we agreed on." Of which there were plenty. First and foremost, they concurred, they would think small. "We agreed that quality, not quantity, was what we wanted," says David. "We wanted to build the smallest house possible. Our house is 2,000 square feet vs. the 3,000 to 4,000 square feet most new homes are today."

"The basic concept came quickly," says Maureen: a center gable cottage organized around a staircase. Their goal was to design a compact house that would use as much of the space as possible. "We were always thinking about ways to make a small space seem large," says Maureen. They looked for design solutions that would stretch both their space and their budget.

While the center staircase was key to their design, the exact configuration at first eluded them. Then they came up with the open switchback stairs encased in a central tower. "We have a pet peeve with stairs that are right there when you enter a house, taking you immediatley to the most private spaces," says David.

So their stair opens not into the entry hall but into the kitchen. "You don't even know the stair is there when you first walk in," says Maureen; it is behind a wall of glass blocks. The low ceiling in the entry hall gives the space a protected, cozy feeling and plays into the illusion of spaciousness created by the adjacent one-and-a-half-story living room, with its tall, rectangular windows.

Still, the stair wasn't quite right. So, late in the design phase, they decided to continue the open stairwell right down to the basement. "That was a turning point," says Maureen, "because the whole space just seemed to open up."

As the well drew the eye down and up, the kitchen visually expanded. The open maple stairs were built single-handedly by Bob Lessier of Apotheosis, the Blackstone firm involved in the construction of the house. Fastened with industrial-looking brackets and bolts and with stainless-steel wire, the stairs became the sculptural element the Hoppers had envisioned.

The switchback design also allowed the vertical split-level configuration, which the Hoppers used as another device to get the most out of their space without adding much cost. One flight up is the bedroom level, where the Hoppers' 11-month-old son, William, has his nursery. There is also a guest bedroom and a small room tucked under the eaves of the front gable. It has a cathedral ceiling and a tall, skinny window that overlooks the front yard. The Hoppers are using it as an office now but foresee that use giving way to William's need for play space.

From the second-floor landing, which doubles as a hallway, it's just a half flight up to the master bedroom. Another half flight leads to the unfinished attic (a future studio, bedroom, or family room) and a roof deck.

"We wanted there to be something interesting at the top of the stairs," says Maureen of the deck, "something to make it worthwhile to make the trip."

"It feels like a treehouse in summer," says David, and, he notes, it is the perfect spot to watch those sunsets.

The stair tower is capped with an arched dome whose horizontal windows fill the well with both light and air. Inside, the tower is punctuated with cutouts, strategically placed to expand the visual horizons.

"The stair organizes the space both vertically and horizontally," says David.

"The usefulness of the space is enhanced by keeping traffic out of the main rooms," says Maureen, referring to the first-floor plan that has the living room and kitchen at the front and back of the stair tower, connected by hallways to the left and right of it.

"The vertical plan also keeps the envelope of the house compact," says David, "and that saves on building expenses."

The Hoppers kept within their budget by making trade-offs. For example, they installed maple flooring on the first floor but used less-expensive carpeting in the private spaces upstairs. "We decided it would be cheaper to install wood floors during construction than try to put them in later," says David. The stair risers are also maple, but the stringers are yellow pine.

For the first-floor bath, they bought an inexpensive pedestal sink but used high-end faucets, lights, and mirrors. In the kitchen, stock maple cabinets, laminate counters, and stylish but inexpensive pendant lights made it possible to buy double wall ovens and a Thermador cook top for the center island.

The island works to visually divide the room without closing off space - or isolating the cook. Continuing the cabinets into the dining area unified the room, but the wall units have glass fronts, which make them seem more like built-in china cabinets.

In another clever and inexpensive trick, the Hoppers set the base cabinets along the back of the kitchen/dining area an extra 6 inches from the wall and then topped them with laminate. On the dining side, this created utilitarian buffet space, and in the kitchen, it added space around the sink, which makes cleaning easier and leaves room for a potted plant or two. "The only extra cost was for the additional laminate for the counter," says David.

The Hoppers used color to define spaces. The well of the stairs is bright white, to reflect the light that pours in through the tower windows and cutouts. "But every exterior surface of the stairway needed to be the same color," says Maureen, "and green stuck with us." The green tower pops out of the roof, and the vertical windows on the south side of the house, which form a Gothic peak beneath the sharp gable of the master bedroom, are accentuated with the same color.

Inside, the sharp pitch of the Gothic roof, unlike the more common Cape, Craftsman, or Greek Revival gables, actually makes for more usable floor space, since there is headroom almost to the edge of the room.

"Rather than ordinary stairs and roofs," says David, "we used these in a different way to organize the house and give it character. That way we could get more out of them."

All their careful planning also included expansion possibilities. "We wanted this to be it. The house for the rest of our lives," says David. "We feel the home is an essential part of family life, so as the family grows we hope we can adapt and modify."