Upstairs, downstairs Upside-down houses move living spaces to second floor

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I have fond memories of our apartment-living days.

After 15 years as a homeowner I can’t imagine going back to renting, but those memories are bathed in a golden light, and it’s more than nostalgia and the longing for being free of replacing failing hot water heaters or refrigerators.

My favorite places were a funky second-floor space over a museum in Stony Brook, N.Y., and the second floor of a 19th century post-and-beam house in Searsport. Ascending the stairs after a day’s work was like climbing into a nest far above the noise and stress of the world.

The space was cozy, the rooms flowed comfortably together, and in both, there were modest views. Not much storage, but then we didn’t have much stuff to store.

There is a way to marry the intimate qualities of apartment living with the grown-up realities of a house. It’s called an upside-down house, where the living space is on the second floor, and the bedrooms are on the first floor.

Roc Caivano, a Bar Harbor architect and Yale Architecture School graduate, has designed such houses in Maine and on Nantucket. He likes the concept of an upside-down house.

“There is a legitimate reason for bedrooms on the first floor,” he said.

For one, children sleeping on the first floor can more easily escape a fire. For another, in the summer, downstairs sleeping is cooler than upstairs.

On Mount Desert Island, Caivano was approached by John and Isabel Anthony, who summer on the island but live the rest of the year in Hot Springs, Ark.

The Anthonys purchased an older house on Route 3 with stellar cliff-side views of Bear Island. Wanting to replace it, and capitalize on the view while also dealing with the narrow, steep lot, they decided to put the living, dining and family rooms and kitchen on the second floor, and bedrooms and the full bathrooms on the lower level.

The result is a winner on many counts. Every room on the upper level has views of the sea and Cranberry Isles, and each room has its own distinct look and feel. And while the house would fetch a seven-figure price on the real estate market, it is by no means ostentatious, even though it takes up most of its coveted, commanding location.

Most attractive, perhaps, about the Anthonys’ house is an intangible: The second floor, nestled among the spruce, fir and white pine, yet with sweeping ocean views from some windows, is downright homey.

Though the house is grand enough to be featured in Architectural Digest, you can imagine yourself padding in socks from the living room at one end of the house into the kitchen at the other to grab something from the refrigerator, or calling a casual greeting from the family room to a loved one making her way upstairs from the lower level.

Rather than bend their house to fit a lifestyle, Isabel Anthony said the primary force in the couple’s thinking was their love of MDI’s beauty, and the opportunity to have a Loop Road-type view.

“It just makes complete sense to design it that way because of the lot,” she said, speaking from the couple’s winter home in Arkansas.

The views from the bedroom level are none too shabby, either. Though some of the lower level is built into the grade, the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms face the ocean, connected by a maze-like hall that parallels the road.

The layout of the hallways on the lower level, and the predominance of glass on the south, ocean side on both levels have the practical effect of eliminating almost all of the noise of cars and trucks on Route 3, just 50 feet from the front door, according to Anthony.

It was an Arkansas architect’s suggestion to put the bedrooms on the lower level.

Hot Springs, Anthony said, is in a valley surrounded by hills, “so the idea of multilevel living is very common here.”

Anthony thought it might feel odd to descend a staircase to go to bed at night, but has found that is not the case. And with some of the lower level built into the earth, there is even more sound insulation, which means the Anthonys are not awakened by delivery trucks making their way around the island.

On a tour of the house, Caivano explained that he resisted the temptation to have floor-to-ceiling glass on the ocean side, and instead built extra-thick walls there to lend a feeling of comfort to those looking down the steep cliff at the water below.

And though wall treatments vary from room to room, with board-and-batten in one and mahogany panels in another, the architect has tied the spaces together with a repeating 7-inch, 3-inch pattern in the walls.

The result is a cohesiveness that makes the space feel like a Maine cottage version of a Manhattan penthouse.

Meanwhile, in the Waldo County of Northport, Heather and Linden Frederick built their own house at the edge of the Camden Hills. She operates an audio book business, and he is a renowned landscape painter.

When it came time to design the house – a fairly straightforward, two-story affair, by the looks of it from the outside – the Fredericks remembered their apartment-living days in Toronto, and decided to create an open living space on the second floor.

Entering from the ground level on the flat lot, a visitor walks through a short hallway that opens up. To the right are two bedrooms, while continuing straight leads to the stairs. Heather Frederick says the entryway was planned so visitors can’t see into the bedrooms – even if the doors are open – as they walk to the stairs.

Arriving at the second floor, the Fredericks’ home is very much like an apartment, albeit one that is spacious. Entering into the living room, which runs nearly the length of the house, the kitchen and dining room are a few steps to the right. In the center is a large brick chimney, which draws the eye up to the exposed roof timbers.

Though the house is in a wooded area, there is enough clearing in all directions to qualify as views.

Like the Anthonys’ Northeast Harbor house, you are never far from a vista in the Fredericks’ home.

The couple even built a deck on top of their garage.

“It’s a glorious living space,” says Heather Frederick.

Whether it’s an in-town lot or a multimillion-dollar property, Caivano says an upside-down house can work equally well.

“You create instant magic when you put the living space on the second floor,” he says.

Tom Groening can be reached at 236-3575 or groening@midcoast.com.