Making It Their Own
D.C. couple gave their 1799 Lewes home some distinctive updates
By Lynn R. Parks | Photographs by Carolyn Watson
From the August 2023 issue
In the summer of 2020, Jim Harden and Rich Gottwald were visiting friends in Lewes. Jim had recently had knee surgery and was taking frequent walks as part of his rehabilitation.
“I was walking down Kings Highway, and I spotted two big trees in a yard at the corner with Devries Circle,” he recalls. “Then I saw the ‘for sale’ sign in front of the house.” He was smitten.
The couple, residents of Washington, D.C., arranged to tour the house that day. And “we bought it immediately,” Jim says.
Jim and Rich knew that they wanted their new home to have a pool and an outdoor eating area with a see-through fireplace. They also wanted the two trees that had caught Jim’s eye — an oak in the backyard and a sycamore in the front — to be protected as much as possible, and for any addition to have the same cedar-shingle siding as the rest of the house. Other than that, they pretty much left decisions up to their architect, Brennon Bickel, with the Element Design Group in Lewes.
Bickel started working on plans for an addition and renovations in early 2021 and construction began that September. The contractor was One Call Services, near Lewes.
The oldest part of the house, its front section, dates to 1799, Rich notes, and remains pretty much as it was when they bought it. A cement-floor porch stretches the width of the house, and the front door, storm door and mailbox are all painted orange, Jim’s favorite color.
The front room, with a large round wooden table in one corner and a brick fireplace in another, serves as the library. The sofa and two chairs, which the men had reupholstered in salt-and-pepper fabric, are mid-century modern.
Behind the library is the dining room. There, the back wall is painted a rich blue to match the blue in a large oil painting of a flower arrangement that the couple found at an antiques shop in Lewes.
The renovation project combined a galley kitchen and several other small rooms into a large, spacious kitchen. The counters are quartz; one wall is covered in honeycomb tile in varying shades of teal, some shiny and others matte. The cabinets are painted light gray and a row of Charles Ghost stools (made of a transparent polycarbonate), designed by Philippe Starck, sit alongside the island.
Next to the kitchen is the only room that Jim and Rich added. The living room, which has a cathedral ceiling, has two sets of French doors that open onto a screened porch, where the woodburning, see-through fireplace is located. And behind that is the pool, lined with dark blue quartz plaster.
“We wanted the pool to have a close feeling,” Jim says. “We can walk out of our bedroom and jump into the pool, or out of the screened porch. It has a cozy feel, even though we’re outside.”
Jim and Rich’s bedroom is in what was the garage. The floor is polished cement, and a large piece of driftwood, so white that it looks like bone, hangs over the bed. Along one wall are three vintage metal signs advertising McCulloch chainsaws.
On the second floor are three guest suites. In the front bedroom, part of the oldest section of the house, one of the variable-width heart-pine floor boards measures 16 inches across. In the back bedroom, a door opens onto a small deck that looks out over the pool and backyard.
A fourth guest bedroom is on the third floor, the original attic. The walls are lined with built-in drawers and closets that were installed by a previous owner. They were dark blue when the couple bought the house and were later painted white.
Jim and Rich don’t feel that they will ever retire to live in Lewes full time. “We both are city people, and it’s hard to give up the city,” Rich says.
But, he adds, “we love it here. We feel that we can relax here.”