Expert: Richard Taylor, AIA - 8/9/2011

Question
QUESTION: My house seems overly horizontal and out of proportion, a modified, ill conceived garrison colonial, I think, with an overhang, no window over the door and windows too close together to have appropriate shutters. I've decided to add a portico to break up the long (42 ft.) horizontal span and to remove the shutters and add more defined molding around the windows. I'm also putting in a new door with sidelights and new lights. Then I will paint it. My concern is the correct proportions of the roof slope, entablature, and columns. I've learned a lot from other answers I've read here from you on classical proportions and hope that you might help. The footers have already been set--they are 11 ft. wide by 5 ft. in depth. I may have gotten that wrong, but thought the portico should extend beyond the upper roof. (The overhang is 2 ft. wide, the upper roof is a foot and a half beyond that.)  The overhang is 8 1/2 ft. high. I probably should have hired an architect, but my contractor felts it was a pretty basic addition. But now I'm worried about getting the proportions correct. And I was thinking that dental molding on the entablature and extending across the face of the overhang would tie the portico back into the house. I can't put a window over the portico because it would be in my closet so I may put some kind of design/fake window up there too. I'd appreciate your suggestions. Thanks for your help.

ANSWER: Hi Susan - thanks for your question.

It's not such a bad house as builder-colonials go - a nice portico should give it just the spark it needs.

Ideally, it wouldn't have a covered portico at all - just a modest door surround would be historically appropriate.  But you want something more substantial, and I assume something to protect your guests from the weather.

It isn't necessary to put a gabled roof on this; the most visually appropriate roof is flat (an "extruded" version of the modest door surround).  That gets a little tricky in the detailing, as you need to collect rain runoff on three sides, and you need to hide downspouts.  Concealed gutters often work well in such a situation.

But if you want a gabled roof - common on colonials of all types - then the roof pitch should be around 5 in 12 (about 22.5 degrees).  If the columns are going to be about 8 1/2 feet tall, they should be about 12" in diameter.  Don't go too fancy on these columns, simple is going to be better on your house.

Same with the entablature and associated moulding; simple and clean is the right way to go.

A faux window above might look nice, but it's not necessary - be careful with this, a detail here might look too "applied" and be worse than nothing at all.

You should also take a look at Marianne Cusato's "Get Your House Right" book for more detailed info about this too - it's a "must have" book in my opinion!

Hope this helps,

Richard Taylor, AIA
President
Richard Taylor Architects, LLC
www.rtastudio.com
www.rtastudio.blogspot.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks so much for your quick answer. It helps a lot. I actually have the Cusato & Pentreath book and have been referring to it frequently. But being a novice at this, I sometimes find it hard to follow. Your straightforward answer about the size of the column and the roof slope helped me understand what the book was saying. I've looked at those diagrams repeatedly but just couldn't quite get them. Today, after your answer, though, it started to click. So thank you for that too.
  I knew that to be historically correct I should just have a more defined door surround, and I considered that option. But since my windows are so poorly spaced--and since there is no middle window--I finally decided on an actual portico to distract from the wide span of blank space in the middle. That's the reason I decided on a gabled roof as well. Although I worried about historical accuracy, I finally had to accept that my house isn't historically accurate in the least. What I hope to achieve is something more aesthetically pleasing and correctly proportioned.
  Looking back at "Get Your House Right" today, though, I realized that I may not have been asking the right question in inquiring about column size. Since I plan to have square columns for a simpler look (I guess what are technically piers rather than columns), I am now unsure if the proportions would be the same. Should the diameter of the pier still be 1/7-1/9 of the length? I'm thinking I'll just follow the diagram for a traditional post shown on p. 63. But that brings up yet another question: with post/piers should I still follow the same proportions for the entablature, likely using either tuscan or doric? Should I use all three components of the entablature?
  Thanks again for your help. You've really helped things become clearer. What a fabulous resource and how generous of you to provide your expertise!  Best, Susan

Answer
Susan - the proportions (which are based on Greek and Roman ruins) are guidelines; you don't have to be perfect.  Get it as reasonably close as you can and you'll be fine.  On the entablature, Garrison Colonials that I've seen keep the details pretty simple.  Marianne's diagrams are better suited for a straight-up box Colonial.

How cool that you already had that book!

Good luck with the project.

Rich