Nate Dalesio and his wife, Allison, had every intention of preserving the 1937 single-story house they’d bought in the hamlet of South Salem in New York’s Westchester County.

Sure, it had been unoccupied for years and came with a long list of challenges—from water damage to structural integrity—but the couple felt that a modestly expanded fixer-upper would give them more house on a limited budget.

$6,250 Permit	$12,500 Foundation & Excavation	$6,500 Demolition
$32,000 Framing	$17,728 Roofing	$5,734 Skylights
$46,805 Windows & Exterior Doors	$21,386 Siding	$22,640 Plumbing
$21,953 HVAC	$18,500 Electrical	$22,841 Insulation
$6,000 Sheetrock	$11,425 Plywood	$35,263 Wood Flooring
$9,153 Tile	$9,542 Interior Doors	$14,694 Kitchen Cabinets
$6,000 Painting	$18,865 Fixtures	$6,644 Appliances
$35,000 Labor & Construction Management
Grand Total: $381,173

“I knew we’d have to redo the roof,” recalls Nate, a junior architect at Norwalk, Connecticut’s Beinfield Architecture, which designed the home. “The existing exterior walls were concrete block all the way to the roof. We planned to keep those and reframe the floor. But as soon as the roof started getting deconstructed, the blocks started crumbling where they were connected to the roof.”

After the surveying the situation, Nate and Allison (the latter of whom was pregnant with their second child at the time) decided to flip the script. They would retain the existing foundation and build new from there, while still staying within their budget of approximately $150 per square foot.

Without the old walls and roof dictating terms, the couple could have added a second story. However sticking with one floor was slightly cheaper—and they were excited by the opportunity to create light-filled, wide-open spaces defined by a vaulted ceiling and skylights.

Once Nate showed Allison a digital model with the exposed ceiling, “There was kind of no going back,” he says with a laugh. “Because we weren’t building a huge house, I wanted to do something for the interior spaces that made them feel luxurious.”

The vaulted ceiling is clad in white oak plywood, a humble material that, if well detailed, Nate believed could look luxurious. “It’s very warm,” he adds. “It doesn’t look cheap, but it was a lower-cost way of achieving a really dramatic effect.” Nate calculated that the plywood would cost no more than a drywall ceiling, given it required less labor to install.

Though skylights do much to illuminate the space, the walls are interspersed with floor-to-ceiling glass, especially at the rear of the home. Deer and foxes even come right up to the windows, exciting the family cat, Dax, to run after them.

Entering home brings a hint of surprise: While passing through a small hallway (which doubles as pantry cabinetry for the kitchen on the other side), there is a small gap between the wall and the cabinets that gives a glimpse of the great room around the corner.

“I did struggle with whether you’d be able to directly walk into that great room when you first came in, but I liked that it was a bit more processional,” Nate explains. “You could see—but not walk into—the space that way. I think it worked better functionally for the house: that it wasn’t too open. Then you walk past the wall and everything opens up.”

To save money, the couple paired an IKEA kitchen with cabinet fronts and drawer faces from Reform. “It’s all reclaimed Doug fir flooring that they turn into cabinet fronts, with a white oil finish on it,” the architect says. “I was a little bit worried because the floors are white oak, but they blend together really well.”

Fitting three bedrooms and two and a half baths into a 2,500-square-foot home also meant using space wisely. The design retained the existing layout of bedrooms (slightly expanded in size), but made room for a large, skylit hallway that doubles as a playroom for the couple’s two young children, three-year-old Rowan and one-year-old Wells.

Seen from outside, the home is clearly contemporary with a clean-lined, minimal form, yet it retains a hint of tradition amidst this existing context of semirural homes and agrarian architecture.

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“The area around the house has probably 15 horse barns within 10 minutes of driving, and a lot of the houses are informed by that. I think the house next door was built in 1670,” the architect explains. “I wanted it to blend in. I didn’t want to build a big thing in the neighborhood that was going to stand out like a sore thumb.” The pitched roof helped, and its corrugated metal “relates back to those agrarian buildings—and is also very long lasting.”

Then there’s Cork Haven’s namesake—the home is clad with two-inch-thick expanded corkboard panels, which are made by drying cork bark and baking it.

It’s an uncommon cladding material (the panels were manufactured in Portugal) that is carbon neutral and surprisingly budget-friendly, because it double as insulation. The panels also provide an aesthetic advantage.

“We were thinking it was going to be some kind of wood siding. Then I saw photos of a project that had used this product in England, an agricultural building. From far away, you almost get a stone or travertine-like impression, just in the nooks and crags and the scale of the boards.” Like the metal roof, the cork panels became a contemporary nod to the local vernacular.

The house was finished just as the pandemic began, so the family moved in last summer, between pandemic waves, after spending several months living with Allison’s parents. Though a piano anchors the great room, the couple have been content in the home as is, and they’re holding off on selecting art and mementos to hang.

“It’s not like we’re in a rush to do that, because the house looks good without it,” Nate says. “It has been difficult, but you appreciate having the house to go to even more. It’s really pretty ideal.”

Related Reading:

An Award-Winning Cork House Rises on the Banks of the River Thames

A Crash Course on Cork

Here Are 19 Ways Cork Can Make Your Home Pop

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Beinfield Architecture / @beinfieldarchitecture

Structural Engineer: Jacobson Structures

Custom Doors: Fleming Woodworks LLC

Custom Millwork: Bear Mountain Woodworking

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