Curb appeal is always a top priority, and after a lot of restoration work the house looked welcoming again. We removed old layers of siding and stripped the house of its old layers of paint. We restored the façade by replacing broken or missing decorative cedar shingles. Under the siding, we found the shingles, the beaded board and Tudor details, and the sculpted brackets. The original horse head gable decorations were fashioned to look like the maidenheads on a ship. They were badly rotted, so we recreated and reinstalled them. Other nautical touches inside the house, including the paint on the sunroom's ceiling brought us to choose colors worthy of a cottage by the sea. The garden is a work in progress.

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The entryway of this house transformed from three doors leading into each unit of the triplex to this single grand entryway. We created the design based on the house next door that unfortunately burned to the ground. We recycled some of the beams that were partially damaged from the rear of the house and took them from structural components to this gorgeous sculpted woodwork. The beveled glass door is a salvage piece from Ohio while the sidelights were salvaged from a house in upstate New York. The light fixture was an eBay find out of Virginia.

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This small front porch was completely rebuilt: the structure was rotted and the floorboards had been piecemealed together. We installed insect, fire, and water resistant cumaru, harvested responsibly from tree farms in South America. The Turkish style chandelier is from an old house in Virginia and has molded carnival glass inserts.

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The goal with restoring the foyer & living room was to create a bright welcoming space. To that end, we restored the original large window's sidelights and Florentine glass transom. We discovered a fireplace during demolition behind sheetrock, directly across from the front door, so we installed a salvaged mahogany mantel from a Pennsylvanian mansion, with local reclaimed tile and brass artful fire screen with a stag.

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The living room is filled with loads of architectural pieces from the backlit Ohio salvaged stained glass window, the tiger oak antique mantel with old tile salvaged out of a local house, and French doors leading to the sunroom. All of the trim throughout the house has been milled from reclaimed baseboards, roofing sheathing from demolished homes, or reclaimed antique 2x8s. Laughing Sun carpenters spent over 3 months milling the custom woodwork in the front yard. We went through a literal mountain of reclaimed wood to trim the house, saving many many trees and saving the landfill from a lot of old wood. Click here to see a close up of the interestingly designed crown molding.

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We began with this sunroom in very rough shape and serving as a kitchen to a one of the triplex's unit and housed a stove and refrigerator. The windows to the space were either missing or rotted, so we custom milled them all out of reclaimed heart of pine joists and installed stained glass in the upper mullions. We restored the beaded board ceiling, leaving it with remnants of the original paint, a seaside blue green (which inspired the exterior paint job). All the windows are casements, which open and swing outward. The walls and trim are all either original or salvaged heart of pine.

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The heart of the house, this dining room was meant by the builder to display his proficiency with wood working. The exquisitely carved 9 foot mantel is the focal point of the room. We removed the many layers of paint to expose the heart of pine wood beneath. The white fireplace tile is original and has also been stripped of its paint. The mantel and the trim in this room was stolen at one point in the home's renovation and as luck would have it, the mantel and some of the woodwork was discovered and retrieved from a neighbor's porch. Today, this room displays its elegance with the new custom crafted stained glass "Tree of Life" adorned with peaches, based on the Greene Brothers brilliant Gamble House design.

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This custom kitchen is actually part of the new addition to the house. Because of our use of recycled materials, it is difficult to identify this space as new since all the finishes are reclaimed. The floors are dumpster salvaged from the West End of Atlanta, with the picture frame border done in antique fir salvaged from an LSR job in VA Highlands. The tin ceiling hails from Muncie Indiana, where the tin lay in the basement of an old hardware store since the late 1800s. The rust is a testament to its age. The reclaimed wood for the cabinets was milled from oak floor joists from the West End and the island features a lead bullet that hailed from the Civil War era when the wood was just a tree.

The island is topped with Brazilian soapstone and the cabinets are graced with Italian venetino marble, 5 cm thick. We took a page from the Greene Brothers design while thinking through the cabinets. The drawers are made with walnut and oak and the walnut is mortised through the face of the drawer and the handles are carved oak. While the kitchen has a central cabinetry section, the auxiliary pieces are designed and built to look like furniture: a wine bar area, a breakfast bar area, and a third storage cabinet. The sconces were custom designed and crafted to match the cabinetry.

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The central hallway in the downstairs was an exercise in recycling. Restored gas light fixtures, chamfered oak paneling, and trim milled from old floor joists add warmth and a sense of permanence to the hall.

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The blue guest bedroom is colored in a restful and soothing blue palette. We found this room originally with floors that were filled with holes and rot, vines sprouting up through the planks. Restoring the room meant extensive structural work first, then lots of cosmetic repairs including the removal of the wet plaster and lathe.

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Technically this room is new construction-that is, it is part of the new addition. Fortunately, anyone would be hard pressed to know that this room wasn't always a part of the house. Reclaimed heart of pine flooring & trim help make the room look more like a restored space. We used new double insulated low-E windows custom made to mimic the original windows found in the front of the home. The door to the back porch was a reclaimed door from Ohio.

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This beautiful and tranquil blue bathroom harkens back to a simpler time, even though it is located in the downstairs new addition of the home. Marble black & white basket weave tile are set in a black marble border to mimic the look of a rug. White cararra marble wainscoting runs up the walls and is capped with a marble chair rail. The black granite sink is a countertop recycled from a client renovation (we got rid of the vanity), supported by hefty cast iron brackets. The focal point of the room, the restored claw foot tub, is original to the house and was moved from the upstairs. This bathroom was featured in Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine.

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This original stairwell was not moved during construction, but was structurally enhanced for stability. The stair case lacked handrails, so Laughing Sun milled rustic heart of pine wainscoting and handrails from the demolished roofing sheathing from another project we were working on in Virginia Highlands. The original windows have been painstakingly restored and reroped.

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This bedroom, like the rest of the house, had suffered tremendous water damage. Originally, during demolition, we discovered that the front eight feet of the bedroom had been a sleeping porch (there were exterior clapboards) that was later enclosed for a larger bedroom and to stop the water intrusion. Today it's a little girl's bedroom and has a niche for toys and two large walk-in closets. The central stained glass window is a salvaged piece from Ohio and suits the house, as well as the child.

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This bedroom, like the back bedroom, is part of the new addition and features reclaimed floors, trim, doors, and door hardware.

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A private retreat, this master bedroom is carved out of the new addition and is located in the rear dormer. Featuring four new windows that create a lovely bird's eye view of Kirkwood road and the tree filled backyard, this master was built using reclaimed finish details, including the beveled leaded glass windows from Ohio. The master also features two walk-in closets.

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This bathroom was created with the ideal space in mind. The shower features double shower heads, a large walk in stall, custom glass shower door, a bench, and white Italian statuary marble run to the ceiling. The vanity and medicine cabinet were both LSR designed custom pieces built from burled American black walnut. The vanity pays homage to early American built-in Craftsman cabinets and is topped in white venetino marble. To add to the architectural elements, luxuries such as radiant heated floors and a heated towel rack were added to the space.

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