Space Odysseys

Street Smart

The location was right, so a onetime truck garage is gutted, expanded, and tastefully appointed for a family of four.

Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Jack Thomas

Globe Staff / September 7, 2003

We begin today with a pop quiz for architects. Imagine an urban neighborhood that is a mix of industrial and residential buildings where your client presents you with a one-story structure, 36 feet wide, 66 feet deep, and so close to the property line there's no room for doors or windows on either side nor in the rear. The building has a flat roof and slab floor. Made of dull, gray cinder block, it was designed as a garage for commercial trucks.

Now, as an architect, you see the building as:

(a) Urban-ugly and worthless.

(b) Convertible to industrial use, but worth little more than the value of the land.

If you are Mark Boyes-Watson of Somerville, who designed a three-story, four-bedroom home from what was once a gritty garage, the answer is c. If you have the imagination of his clients, Tom Lapsley and Marjolein Brugman, you buy the building for $300,000, then invest $700,000 over 26 months.

In the course of the renovation, you hire Jeffrey Sladen of Boston to design the lighting and Io Oakes of Boston, an interior designer, to blend bold colors until -- voila! -- you have one of the most functional and eye-catching homes in East Cambridge.

Standing on Lopez Avenue in front of the building, even Lapsley seems surprised at the transformation. "It was built in the '60s for oil trucks," he says, "then converted to a sound studio with a facade that was a blank wall with one steel door. So, we just tore everything out and started over."

With daughter Skye, 15, and son Louis, 3, Lapsley and Brugman knew they would need a home larger than the two-bedroom East Cambridge condominium they had owned since 1998. Unable to find a house in the neighborhood, they were prepared to buy two Somerville lofts and merge them. "We hated to leave," says Lapsley. "This is not the old East Cambridge you remember with Lechmere Sales. It has everything now, the Galleria mall, great restaurants. We can walk to the Green Line and the Red Line and be in Back Bay in 10 minutes, sooner than if we lived in Kenmore Square. Yes, there's industry here, but they're respectful of the neighborhood."

Brugman is even more intimately attached to East Cambridge. "My parents are European, and there are very few American cities that retain the feeling of neighborhood we have in East Cambridge," she says. "My neighbors are important to me. Our car is repaired across the street. The hair salon is around the corner. Our dentist is a block away."

One day, Lapsley dropped Skye at school and returned home to see a For Sale sign being unfurled on the garage, which was adjacent to their town house. "Maybe we could do something with it," he said to Brugman, "maybe build a loft."

They canceled the Somerville deal and made an offer on the garage contingent on their ability to come up with a design. After interviewing architects, they chose Boyes-Watson, whose concept assuaged the concern of neighbors and won the support of city agencies.

They needed two variances, one because there are no setbacks and another because, at 4,500 square feet, the new house exceeds restrictions on how much living space is allowed in proportion to the size of the lot. "One challenge was to get light to three sides of the building other than the front," says Lapsley, "and to position bedrooms so that everybody got light and air. We solved that with skylights in the kitchen and living room."

From the street, one enters a foyer that steps down to a hall with slate floor. To the left is a guest room with full bath. At the end of the hall is a colorful playroom with a 14-foot ceiling, a television, bubbling fish tank, and a stainless-steel kitchenette inherited from the sound studio. Light comes from skylights that open to the deck area on the second floor.

The first floor also includes a laundry room, half bath, and a garage that accommodates three cars, a valuable feature in East Cambridge.

As typical in an ambitious redesign, there were surprises. "One disaster was the discovery that the building was sinking," says Lapsley. "So we dug down and drilled till we hit solid ground, then put in 40 piers."

That allowed the house to benefit from mystic investment.

"I'm interested in feng shui," says Brugman, "and when we had to redo the foundation, I was thrilled because it gave us the opportunity to incorporate feng shui energetics into the foundation." She had crystals encased in the concrete in the southeast corner. "Red discs for prosperity," she explains.

The second floor is a loftlike open space that runs the length and width of the house and includes a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room brightened by a red wall that matches the sofa. A gas fireplace is sufficient to heat the entire level.

"This was a linen closet," says Lapsley, opening a door and flicking a light. "But we converted it to a bathroom the kids like because the walls are made of a waxy substance that permits graffiti, which can be washed off easily."

Adding to the color are framed works of art, many from Santa Fe, where Brugman and Lapsley once lived. The sense of openness is enhanced by double sliding doors in back that lead to a 12-by-20-foot terrace. Standing on the deck, Lapsley points to a town house across the way. "We lived in that unit right there," he says. "In fact, the ivy on the wall of this house was planted by us when we lived in that house."

Also on the second floor is a small study, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, where Lapsley studies for his law degree. He worked 27 years in the restaurant business, including stints in Santa Fe and at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. Brugman designs and sells exercise equipment.

"We love to entertain, love to cook, and we have 300 cookbooks," says Lapsley. So theirs is a chef's kitchen, with convection microwave, convection oven, and a Fisher & Paykel five-burner range with griddle. Over the stove is a handy second faucet. Countertops, including that on the 6-by-4-foot island, are granite.

Also on the second floor, at the front, are children's rooms that overlook a playground across the street. The doors to these bedrooms, salvaged from the sound studio, were handmade of birch and cherry, with glass portals.

In the living room is a totem pole that Lapsley, Brugman, and the architect engraved one night in a celebration livened by bottles of Veuve Clicquot and Sancerre.

When viewed from the street, the new third floor, just 14 feet wide, creates the illusion of a cupola.

The top-floor study also overlooks the playground. At the opposite end of the upper level, off the master bedroom, are a balcony and stairs to a wooden deck where a clematis climbs a trellis.

The bedroom suite has a walk-in closet and a bath with steam shower. There is also a so-called rainfall shower head, which the couple first saw in Amsterdam. A foot in diameter, it emits water in a volume that makes it seem like rain.

"And that cactus over there comes from New Mexico, and look how it's growing," says Lapsley, pointing to a plant with a dozen sprouts. "Even the cactus likes this house."

Jack Thomas is a member of the Globe staff.