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designed the knee walls to a height of around five and a half feet, instead of a more standard eight. This helped him pull the pitched roofline down and compensate for the height of the great room, which might otherwise have bloated the scale of the house. “What you don’t want is the McMansion feel,’’ Scofield says. The careful design results in a 5,540-square-foot home that feels intimate. “It’s small, but it’s big,’’ Joe says.
Upstairs, torch-style lights lean out from the hallway walls, and each bedroom is unique, decorated with painted and hardwood pieces, botanical prints and exquisite baskets of nasturtium and eucalyptus. Each of the 4.5 bathrooms is different, too: one with white subway tile, another with blue-green iridescent tile, a claw-foot soaking tub here, a glassed-in steam shower there.
Downstairs, the walls are hand-plastered and tinted a warm yellow to harmonize with the rich hues of the old-growth pine flooring. Working with interior designers from the Burlington architectural firm Truex, Cullins & Partners, the couple reached for a feeling of craftsmanship and comfort. “I didn’t want anything too formal, where people couldn’t put their feet up on the furniture, couldn’t eat on the couch,’’ Jennifer says.
The cedar shingle–clad house has, as its owners hoped, become a popular destination for friends and family. The house has slept as many as 25, for a big family party. Guests filled the beds, daybeds and loft. The overflow slept in the basement’s home theater, which boasts a 105-inch high-definition TV and a row of theater style seats.
Old college friends have gathered, a dozen strong, to fly down the winding trails at Smuggs and reminisce afterward in the home’s outdoor hot tub about their host and hostess’s beginnings as a couple, back in the 1970s, at a Burlington pub’s 50-cent beer night.
The couple’s grown children are also regular visitors. Two sons attend their parent’s alma mater, St. Michael’s College, just outside of Burlington. On snowy Saturday mornings, they’ll stop by with their ski buddies for breakfast en route to the slopes. Sometimes they come for the weekend, bringing their dirty laundry and emptying the fridge.
Jennifer and Joe hope to spend more time themselves at their Vermont house as he steps back from his executive job in New York. Both, though, look too young to be retired, no doubt a result of their active lifestyle. Accordingly, the plan is not to sit around. They have season passes to Smugglers’, and occasionally drive an hour to Stowe, taking the long way because the 20-minute route over the pass is closed in the winter. Joe likes to go fast—but avoids the bumps. “Your knees don’t respond the way they did when you were 20,’’ he jokes. Jennifer likes the cruisers. “I’m not a speed demon. I like to take my time.’’ Then back home, they light the fire and admire the pinkish sunsets over their piece of paradise.
From the back veranda, the land runs down to a figure-eight of water—two ponds sealed now with ice. Beyond, evergreens and birches belt the meadow as it rises over broad, white-covered rolls of land and disappears into shadowy green-black forest at the edge of the craggy Green Mountains.
They found the property through a friend in town who said, “You have to come see it.’’ They’re very grateful they did. ◆ |
