One evening in spring 2016, David Mostafavi was scrolling through Zillow when he came across a charming cedar-shingle house in Princeton, New Jersey. He and his wife, Rachel, were living 20 miles northeast in a rental in Edison, where they had hoped to buy their first home. The location split the difference, commute-wise, between his job at a Staten Island, New York, ophthalmology practice and hers at a Princeton charter school, where she taught French. But nothing had stood out to them, David says. “In Edison, the houses are all the same size and feel. There really wasn’t anything aesthetically pleasing about living in that type of developer house.”

David says the “quirky” corner house in Princeton, however, struck him as one of a kind. Built from prefab parts in the 1950s, the dwelling had been expanded to approximately 1,500 square feet by local designer Kevin Wilkes in 1986. Scanning the online photos, David found himself drawn to its peculiarities: a mock-temple entry; what he calls a “very ’80s” color scheme inside; and a conspicuous, almost funereal scarlet chimney that seemed way too big for a house. Rachel, noting, among other things, the time that would be added to her husband’s commute by the move south, was skeptical. Plus, the house “was a little old-looking, and we wanted something new,” she says. “And there were only two bedrooms—but David had a vision for it.” They moved on the property that July.

Before: Much of the existing home dated to the 1980s, which explains postmodern flourishes like the arching entryway." layout="wide" credit="Add credit" photoUserId=""/>

“It was just the two of us and our dog, Reny, for the first couple years, and everything was cozy,” David says. “Then our daughter, Violet, was born in 2017, and we realized our bedroom was the same size as her nursery.” Rachel’s parents began visiting regularly after their granddaughter’s birth, sleeping on an air mattress beneath the looming chimney. With the house at capacity, and knowing they wanted to have a second child, the Mostafavis began contemplating an addition.

They didn’t have to look far for a designer. Owen Nichols, founder of the studio Chibbernoonie, was partly raised in Princeton, three blocks from the Mostafavis. He had built custom white-cedar fences for some of his parents’ neighbors, using the commissions to advertise his architectural services. David noticed the strange name on a sign at the Nicholses’ and inquired about a fence. After the fence was installed, he and Rachel asked Nichols to make them folded-metal shelves and a built-in to match the look of the existing kitchen, which lacked storage space. Their thoughts turned next toward the addition, and they asked Nichols if he could find a way to fit a larger bedroom and a flexible office space.

The designer played around with massing options before settling on a two-story cube connected to the main home by a transitional gabled volume containing an ample foyer, a play area, and a porch. Sensitive to both the house’s architectural patina—namely, the postmodern stylings Wilkes had gleaned from his former Princeton professor Michael Graves—and its “relentless geometry,” Nichols moved the front door off center while preserving the flamboyant portal that framed the erstwhile entry. “Originally, there was this long corridor that ran from the door to the basement, splitting the interior in two. It was like being in a tube.”

The upward lilt of the addition, which culminates in a roof terrace overlooking a dog park, offers relief from that obsessive linearity even as it nods to it. Framed by twin nooks and the bulging walls of the upstairs bedroom and bathroom (a change the Mostafavis made out of consideration for Rachel’s parents), the new staircase extends the sight line that is the house’s most indelible quality: From a few steps up, one can see straight down to the chimney. Track lighting along the treads creates a fun mood. “Violet has fashion shows on the stairs,” says Clara Syme, Nichols’s partner, who joined his design studio in 2019. The pair developed an intricate feature wall that separates the primary bedroom suite from the play den, as well asa vanity for Rachel on the obverse.

But even with the expanded living space, it was important to David that the house make an outward impression. Nichols had suggested cladding the addition in a green roof tile that he thought would play well with the weathered brown of the cedar shingles. The Mostafavis loved the novelty of the idea and asked the designers to wrap the ground floor in the tile, replacing the shingles altogether. (They went with flat, white terracotta tile for the addition above.) “We liked the thought of people’s heads turning when they’re driving past,” David says.

They did more than drive past. While the addition was nearing completion—just before the birth of the Mostafavis’ son, Ellis, in 2021—the couple would catch neighbors walking up to the property to touch the tile. “People are always curious about anything that’s really new,” says Rachel, who left her teaching job to help David launch his own practice in Princeton this year. “I don’t want to jinx it,” he adds, “but this is my forever house.I hope it keeps that uniqueness for a long time to come.”

Project Credits:

Designer: Owen Nichols, Chibbernoonie / @chibbernoonie

Architecture: Karen Nichols

Builder/General Contractor: Maleson Contracting

Landscape Design: Alan Goodheart

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