Holmgren/Sidell Residence

The Chapel Hill News, October 11-17, 2002

Lucky is the mouse that abides in the house on Ridge Road owned by Mark Sidell and Beth Holmgren. Sidell, who created the house with architect Georgia Bizios and builder Curt Hendrickson, thought to include an arched mouse hole in the foyer baseboard, complete with electric lights and a door identical to the front door of the Sidell/Holmgren house.

Details can be the bane of building a house for the homeowners, builder and architect alike. But with the Sidell/Holmgren house, the details made the project fun, according to Bizios.

“Mark and Curt were like two boys building a tree house,” Bizios said. During the design process, Sidell studied Fine Homebuilding magazine (its articles on design ideas, written by craftsmen and contractors, have a strong how-to slant), researched products and systems on the Internet, and watched home improvement shows on television.

“He'd call me up with a new idea,” Bizios said, “and I'd say, ‘Mark, have you been watching TV again?’”

The finished project could launch a show called This Old High-Tech House. The barely butter-yellow clapboard cottage with a red metal roof that sits on what was once a garden at the end of a winding path on the edge of campus is a showpiece of state-of-the-art materials and systems.

“Mark is very into technology,” Hendrickson said. “We did all kinds of innovative and creative things. He came up with ideas; Georgia came up with ideas; I came up with ideas, and we bounced them off the three of us.”

Bizios came up with a design that meshed Sidell's and Holmgren's vision of a garden cottage with living space requirements that totaled about 4,500 square feet. She layered that with her own challenge of designing a house that didn't look anachronistic.

“It should look like a house built in 2002,” she said. “It shouldn't look like it was 100 years old or that it landed from the moon.”

Sidell and Holmgren both spend a fair amount of time working at home—Sidell writes software programs and Holmgren heads the department of Slavic languages at UNC—and needed space to concentrate away from each other and their school-age daughter without feeling cut off from family life. Both were drawn to small, cozy rooms while acknowledging the need for open spaces in which to entertain guests and be together as a family.

The initial design they approved borrowed ideas from Sarah Susanka's “The Not So Big House” and Dale Mulfinger's “The Cabin: Classic American Getaways.” Bizios, who worked in the same architectural firm as Susanka and Mulfinger in Minneapolis years ago, also drew from “A Pattern Language,” a book that showed how patterns solved living space design problems, a concept Sidell was familiar with through using patterns to solve computer program design problems.

Sidell's fascination with technology became apparent from the beginning. As soon as construction started in July 2001, he set up a Web cam on site that took a digital photo every minute. Visitors to his Web site saw a time- lapsed progression of the construction process. Some days, the project seemed to change minute by minute.

“It makes life more complicated for the builder if the homeowner has a bunch of whacky ideas,” Sidell said.

Usually, plan changes during the construction phase are a headache for the builder and costly for the homeowner. But Sidell was a rare client who understood and could visualize construction techniques, Hendrickson said.

“He was easy to work with,” Hendrickson said. “He had no guile or arrogance.”

Hendrickson took on the project on a cost-plus basis, that is, the cost of construction plus a set percentage, allowing Sidell to make changes to the plan during the building phase without additional change order fees. Sidell did all of the technical wiring himself and pitched in on other projects, such as helping Hendrickson install the elevator from the terrace-level, handicap-accessible guest suite.

“Mark was at the site at least three or four hours every day,” Hendrickson said. “A lot of times a homeowner comes out a week after something is done and wants to change it. With Mark on site, we could change it as we went. He'd come up with ideas, and I'd implement them.”

Sidell's “what if” enthusiasm sometimes provoked an “oh no” response from subcontractors and inspectors. But he countered each objection with research and technology. Rather than insulate the floor of the attic, he proposed tacking the insulation to the rafters. Inspectors balked. Condensation would collect between the insulation and the plywood roof, they said, and without any air space, the shingles would overheat. Sidell answered their objections by putting sheets of material similar to an egg carton between the roof and the insulation for air space, then mounting computerized sensors to monitor the moisture level. Even so, he had to sign a letter accepting all responsibility before inspectors would stamp “approved.”

With fibrous cement board siding, a metal roof, and decking and porches of ipe (pronounced I-pay), a Brazilian wood that needs no preservatives, the house is built to last. Some new materials brought challenges of their own. Because Sidell used Icynene, a nontoxic foam insulation that swells to fill every crack, the house was in danger of being too airtight. He came up with an energy recovery ventilator that uses filtered air streams to bring in fresh air and cool the computer closet at the same time. The system turns on and off at the bidding of a computerized sensor that monitors pressure inside and outside the house.

By paying attention to what it would be like to live in the house moment-by- moment, Sidell, Bizios and Hendrickson took care of every detail. Before construction started, Bizios dragged a ladder out to the site to let Sidell and Holmgren see what the view would be from different windows in the house that was still on the drawing board. Sidell's complaint that he didn't want to hear the air-conditioning condensers turning on and off led to the installation of a geothermal heating and cooling system. Not only is the house comfortable and quiet, but Sidell and Holmgren spend only about $50 a month for heating and cooling.

Sidell's ideas made daily living easier inside the house by everything from a three-story laundry chute to a sensor-operated faucet in the kitchen, a detail appreciated by any cook with goopy hands who has ever tried to turn on the water with an elbow. He wired a door in a child's bedroom to slide gently open and shut, and installed a card-key system to open the front door. The room with the television in it is insulated for sound so as not to disturb those in adjacent rooms.

Sidell's ideas fueled the project so much, said Bizios, that “we worried what he would do when the house was finished.”

That may not be a problem. Sidell and Hendrickson have become friends and may collaborate on a spec house. In the meantime, Sidell is working out wiring for a doorbell in the mouse hole.