We guarantee you have never seen a house like this before!
On a quiet dirt road in Topsham there is a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom house on nearly 12 acres of land. It sits surrounded by maples, a couple apple trees mixed in too. The closest neighbors live in a bat box installed to keep mosquitoes at bay during the summertime. What you don’t notice right away when you’re looking at the two story house is the angle of the roof, which perfectly optimizes shade in the summer and sun in the winter to passively heat the home. It is one of countless thoughtful and sustainable features of the house Brent McDonnell built himself.
In 2022 McDonnell became the owner of 11.9 acres in Topsham VT and has spent the last three years building a custom home on the site. As a builder with a background in sustainability and a personal passion for tinkering, McDonnell has thoughtfully crafted a house that is just as efficient as it is inviting.
The property was a great piece of land as it came, but McDonnell had bigger ideas for it. After determining the land could host a leachfield and that the well was capable of producing 5x the amount of water that a single family home would use, he had the green light to build.
The building process began in June of 2022 with mother nature setting a hard deadline of needing to be waterproof before the winter. In this initial build stage, five main projects were on the to-do list: structure, electrical, plumbing, insulation, and waterproofing.
The position of the house and the slope of the roof were specifically designed to take advantage of a lower winter sun that could help warm the home without using extra energy and shade from a higher, harsher summer sun.
Electrics were installed to power the home which runs on three Tesla wall batteries and a twenty-one panel solar array. The Tesla wall batteries were a specific requirement in order to be able to primarily heat the home with radiant floor heat.
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McDonnell knows that a key to sustainable design is to be able to use energy efficiently, so he took no shortcuts insulating the home. The exterior is totally insulated in order to mitigate cold air breaching the studded walls of the home and requiring the use of more heat. The water-tight design keeps the home comfortably in temperature and dry during all of Vermont’s seasons.
Even the second-story deck is designed to withstand the elements. The decking itself is made of materials that will resist decay, but the truly unique part of the design lies just beneath that. Below the decking there is a slanted, waterproof roof that allows water to run off so that the deck doubles as a carport.
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With the house up and operating in time to take on Vermont winter weather, McDonnell could begin working on the customizations that would take the house from unique to truly one-of-a-kind.
Working with limited space, McDonnell had to get creative with how to arrange furniture. And by arrange, we really mean construct.
The kitchen table, one of the highlight features of the home, took over a month to even conceptualize. The goal was essentially to be able to make a table disappear when not in use in order to open up the space. The execution was McDonnell building a table that could fold down from a seamless hiding place along the ceiling’s rafters.
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McDonnell integrated a TV into the living space in a similar fashion. When not in use, the TV is contained in a shelving unit on the wall so the space can be visually tidier. When you’re ready to access it, the TV slides out to the slide.
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But that’s not the only creative use of shelving in the house. In the shelf beside the front door there are magnets seamlessly installed in the wood to hang metal items like keys magnetically, along with some more traditional hooks as well.
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In the kitchen, you’ll find adjustable backlighting for the cabinets. The space can be made brighter for cooking and dimmer for when the home is settling down for the night.
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Thoughtful lighting solutions continue as you make your way upstairs. Each step of the staircase is outfitted with motion activated lights that turn on to light the way as you approach them.
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And those hexagons at the curve of the stairs, which McDonnell 3D printed himself, are not just for decoration. They’re actually climbing holds you can use to open and close the high window above the steps.
Upstairs McDonnell has built a custom wood desk with live edges to fit perfectly into the corner of the space. It’s accompanied by live edge shelves to the left and sliding desk draws to the right, also custom built.
Beautifully sanded, raw wood accents the house throughout in the form of beams, railings, and posts. Each one is unique, the natural curves and notches of the wood preserved. But what they all have in common? They were each a dead maple tree that McDonnell repurposed.
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It’s fair to say Brent McDonnell put his heart, mind, and soul into creating this one-of-a-kind home. Though he is selling the property and moving to Tennessee for his next build, his thoughtful and sustainable craftsmanship will undoubtedly be recognized by the next owner of this home and all who visit it. “I hope that whoever gets to live in this house in the future will really capitalize on what I’ve done,” McDonnell says. “Be creative and even add more to the house if they want to… make projects on the property and be self-sustaining, I think that would be a perfect person to live in this house.”
If you want more information on this one-of-a-kind home listed by Green Light Real Estate, contact Kate Root at 802-522-7046 or email Kate@greenlight-realestate.com