LouLife

America, proclaims the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is in the midst of a “longevity revolution.” People are now living an average of 30 years longer than they did a century ago, says the 2004 CDC report “The State of Aging and Health in America.” Within the next two decades, Americans 65 and older will account for 20 percent of the total population.

While the graying of America’s effect on Social Security and health care has been highly publicized, the dilemma families face when aging parents turn to them for help is often ignored. Some experts cont/files/storyimages/that American women can expect to sp/files/storyimages/more years caring for elderly family members than for their own children.

The main home’s new old kitchen. The  super-comfy sitting porch.

“My parents are now in their late 70s and early 80s and they’re both very independent,” she says, “but everything can change overnight. They were still living in their family home that had a pool and required a lot of maintenance. But they didn’t really want to move to a retirement community. Then a fri/files/storyimages/told me how she’d built an addition on her house for her aging mother. We had the space — we’re on 2.8 acres — so my husband Brad and I talked it over and we threw the idea out to my parents.”    

Kenneth and Nell Graham took awhile to mull it over but did decide that downsizing while they were still healthy made sense. “The time to do it,” Kenneth asserts, “is when you’re still able to make your own decisions!”

The plan called for adding a one-story addition to the Palmers’ house. “What my parents wanted was their own attached patio home,” Pat explains.

Theory of relativity (left to right): the Palmers’ extensively remodeled combination kitchen/family/breakfast room; the Grahams’ living room with reclaimed and remilled heart pine floor; the Grahams and their 1,460-square-foot patio home, which closely matches the historic main home (right in photo); the homespun view from the Palmers’ antique English dresser base  to a sitting area.

Keeping the addition from “looking like an afterthought” was Jackson’s goal. “It’s always difficult to add a one-story addition to a two-story house because you have to dodge windows and preserve views,” she says. “The rooflines were a nightmare because the original roof was very complicated already. Getting the water off is a no-brainer. Making it look nice is what’s hard.”

The Grahams also were armed with a list of imperatives for their new residence. Things they absolutely couldn’t live without, says Nell, included a fireplace in the living room, a bath and a half, a sun porch for enjoying the outdoors and lots of storage. Rooms also had to be designed to accommodate the furnishings they planned to move with them, so Jacksonplaced each piece on her drawings to make sure it would fit. 

Attached to the side of the Palmer house, the 1,460-square-foot addition matches the original structure, from the lap siding and porch trim to the baseboards, wooden mantel and floors. It also incorporates many features that will allow the Grahams to age in place, such as a wheelchair-friendly shower, 36-inch doors and grab bars in the baths. Although steps lead to the entrance, a simple ramp is all that would be required to make their new home completely handicap-accessible.

Building the addition also presented the Palmers with a golden opportunity to update the original house. On their wish list was a second full bath upstairs — there was only one full bath for all four upstairs bedrooms — along with a larger closet in the master bedroom and a combination kitchen/family/breakfast room to replace the isolated “one-cook” kitchen and dark, boxy little den.

To create the latter, Jacksonsuggested adding about 200 square feet across the rear of the house, removing the wall between the sitting room and kitchen, and flipping their locations. The resulting open area allows the cook to join in the activities rather than being off by her lonesome.

Stain combined with barn red and black paint lends the simple wood-knobbed kitchen cabinetry country flair. For the countertops, the Palmers selected a Corian pattern that mimics soapstone. Rather than a built-in island, they opted for an antique English dresser base, adding a wooden shelf below for extra height and storage and a primitive wooden dowel for dishtowels on one end. The final effect is consistent with the rest of the home’s period furnishings — a look that Pat refers to as “American and English High Country.”

Adding more windows was also a priority, since the Palmers are avid gardeners and have spent years restoring the yard to its former floral glory. “We have information from the home’s second owners that William Alexander Smith was an amateur horticulturist and planted many different varieties of trees on the property,” says Pat. A new window above the kitchen sink, as well as the new window bay and matching door in the breakfast area, allows them to enjoy his and their own green-thumbing at last.

Another concern was making the addition flow with the existing interior. Floors were a major issue, says Pat. “We never were able to determine what type of wood was used in the original house, poplar or pine. We ended up having heart pine ceiling beams from an 1870 warehouse near the Universityof Louisvillemilled into floorboards for the new area. It’s a pretty good match.”

The old kitchen and sitting room flooring, along with interior trim, doors and wainscoting salvaged from the first level, was reused in other areas of the downstairs and in the new second-story master bath, where an oval-shaped freestanding tub takes center stage. Though thoroughly modern, the bath has a vintage feel in keeping with the home’s history.

Dust-factor-wise, the decision to renovate the original house while making room for mom and dad was probably for the best. Start to finish, the project took their builder, Fred Bennett, just nine months. However, when the Grahams sold their old home in two weeks, conditions at the Palmer house got a bit crowded, with all four adults sharing the single hall bath and doing without a kitchen for almost six months.

Since the Grahams moved into the addition and the Palmers finished their renovation last November, the situation is exactly what both couples wanted. They visit back and forth, but retain their privacy. “I’m from Nashvilleoriginally and I couldn’t be there for my own mother because I was too far away,” Nell says. “This is much better. It’s so comfortable being right next door to my daughter.”