Architect N. Lee Ligo, AIA, has worked on many large high-end projects over the years, but when it came to his own remodeling project, he preferred to stay small. Lee and his wife, Linda, purchased a modest beach house in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where some homes are the size of ocean liners. Their house was originally a 1,550-square-foot bungalow, sheathed in dirty asbestos shingles and lost amid a tangle of tropical plants and trees. The Ligos were familiar with the property—they lived right across the street in a much grander house—but Lee insisted that “there was something about the place I liked.” For years, he had walked past the open garage door, which revealed a rusty hulk of a car. “The day the title was transferred to us, the first thing I did was try to close the garage door, which immediately fell to the ground,” he recalled.
Lee was intent on maintaining the diminutive scale and unpretentious feel of the Florida house, yet he also felt the need to perform a gut renovation. “The place hadn’t been touched since it was built in 1949,” he explained, “and interior walls were covered in nubby plywood that looked like cordovan shoe leather.” By the time Lee was done, not one original interior wall was left standing. The living space was expanded without significantly altering the footprint of the house by building a bay window extension and enclosing a screened porch.
The original street elevation of the house, with overgrown greenery and worn asbestos shingles, can only be described as plain and dowdy.
What was once a screened-in porch became a comfortable enclosed winter garden.
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