Before & After: Old Beams Meet a New Metal Staircase in a 1700s Farmhouse in New Jersey
Fuller/Overby Architecture inserts treads and railing in perforated steel, a colorful bathroom, and sleek millwork that harmonizes with the original eccentricities in a family’s new home.
Fuller/Overby Architecture inserts treads and railing in perforated steel, a colorful bathroom, and sleek millwork that harmonizes with the original eccentricities in a family’s new home.
From the crooked wood floors, to the hand-hewn timber frame and two-foot-thick sandstone base walls, "Nothing is quite straight in this house," says Clément, of the farmhouse he and wife Eleonora bought in 2022. Perhaps that’s to be expected, since the original portion of the house, which consisted of two rooms and a loft, was built in 1734, while the rest of it was added in 1787. The home was one of a few then built along this portion of the Hackensack River in Teaneck, New Jersey, thanks to a group of Dutch colonists moving out of nearby Manhattan.
When Clément and Eleonora found the house, such timeworn irregularities held a certain appeal, as he is from Brussels, Belgium, and she Milan, Italy. "We both grew up around old historical buildings, so when we saw it, it reminded us of home right away," says Clément.
After living in a Manhattan apartment with their two Great Danes for too long—"When we were thinking about the next step, it included a garden for the dogs," says Clément, a software engineer—the couple limited their house hunt to those a certain distance from Eleonora’s work, as she’s a neurosurgeon who needs to be within 20 minutes of the hospital. While the old farmhouse fit their criteria in terms of character and location, they reached out to architects Emma Fuller and Michael Overby of Fuller/Overby Architecture before purchasing, to make sure it could be modernized.
Before: Stair Hall
After: Stair Hall
See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: Old Beams Meet a New Metal Staircase in a 1700s Farmhouse in New Jersey
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