Zero Regrets
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thing going with all of the kids being able
to spend summers with the grandparents
and we wanted to preserve that.” But
there’s close, and then there’s close.
“We were looking for something within
a one-block radius,” says Dana.
The inventory may have been small, but
their determination was steadfast. “We
ended up putting notes in everyone’s mail-
boxes to see if anyone wanted to sell, and
we got lucky,” Donald says.
The Powers got lucky with a 100-year-
old, 1,000-square-foot bungalow com-
plete with haphazard sheathing and aqua
asbestos shingles: It was perfect.
“We’re kind of serial renovators,” says
Dana. All told, the Powers renovated three
homes before they bought this one. “We
were looking for an extensive renovation
because we wanted it to feel like ours;
that’s what we do.”
As Don and Dana began to conceptual-
ize a plan, another idea took shape: The
house was positioned along the hard
northern edge of an unusually large
13,000-square-foot lot, conditions that
made a net-zero rehabilitation possible.
As a firm, Union Studio has done numer-
ous net-zero projects including whole
neighborhoods in Concord and Devons,
Massachusetts, although, says Don, “We
call them ‘net-zero possible’ because, really,
if the homeowner doesn’t participate, no
house is net-zero.”
So, while this wouldn’t be his “first
rodeo,” the house’s age made the project
challenging and it would also be the first
net-zero residence that Don had designed
for himself.
“To be able to do that for ourselves and
feel like we were walking the walk was
important,” says Dana. And for Don, this
was his opportunity to bring that action
plan he had developed years earlier to
fruition.
Sustainability was an objective, but
preserving the look and feel of the neigh-
borhood was equally important (recall
that tricky preservation-meets-progress
business discussed earlier).
“I wanted to prove to people that a
net-zero house didn’t have to look like a
net-zero house. People picture this weird,
modern-looking thing with solar panels
all over the roof, and I have always thought
there was a certain level of the market
102 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l
MARCH 2020
that likes that whole techie side of build-
ing, but there’s a much bigger part of the
market that would do high-tech stuff if it
didn’t have to look high-tech,” he says.
“Another objective was to take a very cot-
tage-scale bungalow, double it in size, and
have it still be a cottage-scale bungalow.
We wanted to show that you can make a
relatively large house and keep the whole
thing very much in the historical pattern
of the neighborhood.”
Coincidentally, this was about the time
that Jeff Sweenor of Sweenor Builders
called, which made the big picture a bit
more interesting. Sweenor Builders had
collaborated with Union Studio on a previ-
ous “This Old House” project in Narragan-
sett. Jeff was looking for a new renovation
project to bring to “This Old House,” and
he was wondering what Don had on
the boards.
“As a firm, we generally don’t do a lot
of renovations, so the only thing that we
had was our own house,” says Dana. This
project, while slightly atypical for the
“This Old House” brand due to the extent
of the planned rehab, still posed an
opportunity for all parties to demonstrate
the value of restoration over demolition.
It was game on.
After about eight months of construc-
tion, the Powers had their new old house.
While the home was virtually unrecogniz-
able from what it had been, the original
volume remained. The interior was recon-
figured and an addition (a basement plus
two floors) was added to its south side.
Still, it looked to scale: It was a traditional
Jamestown-style bungalow, albeit an
extremely efficient and astutely designed
one. Don’s design even draws inspiration
from another house on the island: the 1889
Governor Francis Cottage in Shoreby Hill.
Don says the columns on his front porch
reference the rambling, shingle-style,
quasi-mansion’s own swooping columns.
The reference, he says, is intended as both
homage and humor.
“To take those columns and quote them,
if you will, on a tiny little bungalow was
a way of saying this is architecture, too,”
he says. “It’s not just the big houses in
Shoreby that are architecture with a capi-
tal A. Even a little house can be every bit
as formal and intentional as that.”
In truth, every detail is intentional.
Outside, the blond shingles allow the black
trim to pop, and the black fence and newly
constructed barn make the whole property