Spaces for Life

The ReTouch Home Improvement blog

POST CATEGORIES

PROJECT TYPES

House Style: Cape Cod

The Cape Cod​

Does your house have style? Of course it does! But which one?

I’ve asked Joel Perry with Indwell Architecture to talk about some of the common house styles around here. This week we are focusing on one of the most popular house styles in the Prairie Village area: the Cape Cod.

Influences:

The Cape Cod comes from 1600’s and 1700’s New England (no surprise). This means two things: First, since many of the settlers came from England, they built their homes very similar to the style of homes from England–square, sparce, with a simple roof.

However, the English houses were built of stone with small windows and doors (like in Cate Winslet’s The Holiday). The stone wasn’t easy for the settlers to get, but there was plenty of wood in the nearby forests. So the frame was wood, the siding was wood shingles or laps, and the roof was wood shingled.

The mentality of early New England was a very practical one. The weather was very harsh, and life was not easy, so the houses needed to be easy to build. The coastline would change over time requiring the houses to be moved. There were even times when the houses would be floated up inlets to get further from the shore. This sturdy house made that possible.

Defining Features:

  • Story-and-a-half *
  • Simple roofline with few ridges and valleys and maybe a couple doghouse dormers*
  • Double-hung windows…barely enough
  • Central fireplaces because of harsh winters
  • Small (and few) rooms
  • Bedrooms were upstairs so that the heat would rise at night to keep them warm
  • Tight-barge* roof because of the strong wind (to prevent uplift*)
  • Steep roofs to accomodate bedrooms above the first floor.

If it were a person:

If the Cape Cod were a person, it would be a salty new england fisherman. Think of the dad in the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (have you figured out that a lot of my movie references come from having three kids?) Cape Cod is simple and hardy. No time for fluff and frills. Very practical.

He would say, “the kitchen is for making food, why would I need seating in there?” or “why do you want a big closet? you can only where one outfit at a time.” or “porches are for lazy people, just give me a front door and be done with it”

He may not be the best company at a cocktail party, but if you want to want a place that will keep you warm and dry it is hard to beat.

*Words to know:

Story-and-a-half There is living space above the first floor, but the exterior walls are not two stories tall. The roofline usually starts right above the first floor ceiling.

Tight-barge There is no soffit, or overhang, on this roof. The roof ends right where the wall is.

Uplift One of nature’s weapons against a house is wind. Although most people imagine wind blowing a house over, the more dangerous risk is blowing it “up”. If the wind catches on overhangs, it can easily pull part of a house up and off its foundation. We prevent that in modern construction by using anchors.

Lateral bracing Wind not only pushes up, but pushes to the side (like the big bad wolf). Bracing is needed to prevent that from occuring. Usually this bracing is something running diagonally through the framing

Doghouse dormer This is just what it looks like–a small gabled dormer on the roof with usually a single window. It looks like a doghouse sticking out of the roof.

Hope that was helpful. If you have more questions, reach out to Joel at jperry@indwellarchitecture.com We will hit another style next month.

You can also view this column with our partner PVPost.com & Spaces for life: Cape Cod

Ready to Take the Next Step?