A Tom Silva original

November 17th, 2009 | Category: This Old House

Remember the three-season porch with jalousie glass we demolished to produce way for the new, two-story addition? Well, it actually sat a little bit below the level of the rest of the house and below the grade of the rest of the property. We wanted the new addition to sit on the same level as the rest of the house. The problem came in trying to marry the second-floor addition and stairway with the old hallway to preserve abundant ceiling height on the first floor. The biggest problem area was in the first-floor hallway where the new stairs to the library landing would have to cut into the ceiling height across the new entry. that presented a big challenge in trying to build the basement stairs with sufficient ceiling height to meet cipher requirements, and it was additionally going to be an aesthetic issue in the entry corridor next to those stairs.

Tom’s ingenious solution was to match

an existing archway in the front hallway using a barrel ceiling to mask the disparity in ceiling height from front to back. We thought it was a great notion to take a problem and build it into a distinctive feature of the house using an existing architectural element. And now we’ll always know that we have a “Tom Silva Original” design in the house! Next we need to consider whether we’ll add any lighting inside or rely on the existing hallway lights on either side of the barrel to cast suitable light on the area. It might be pretty to have small sconces on either side to cast a glow on our distinctinve barrel ceiling. What do you think?

Original post by Gillian Pierce

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