Add-ons keep adding up

By Marie Gullard | Special to The Baltimore Sun

September 27, 2008

To enter Brian and Raina Chambers' Oella home, visitors must cross a narrow bridge over a creek that runs through their front yard. (Baltimore Sun photo by Lloyd Fox / September 16, 2008)

Ask Raina and Brian Chambers the shape of their house in the old mill town of Oella, or even its style, and they look at each other and laugh.

Their little house situated in a hollow in southwest Baltimore County, just east of the Patapsco River and old Ellicott City, has been the recipient of so many add-ons over the years that an architectural period is barely discernible.

To enter the house, they first must cross a narrow bridge over a creek that runs through their rustically landscaped front yard. Then, because there is no entrance to the house from the front yard, they must go around to a side door.

So, where is the front of the home? Again, the two laugh.

"We consider the front of the house the side, and the side of the house the front - the front facing the road," said Raina Chambers, an attorney with her own title company. "And we have to park across the road."

Both view the 1,800-square-foot home on 0.85 of an acre as a peaceful refuge from the stress of their jobs. Purchased in December 2003 for $450,000, the couple put an additional $150,000 into - what else? - more add-ons, specifically a large, outdoor deck, its construction curved around an old ash tree.

With its many additions, the Chambers house resembles a stack of children's building blocks. The original, one-room house, 15 feet by 17 feet, dates to 1824 and was constructed of German lap wood. Three sides along the periphery of the original house have been added on to, carefully respecting the exterior structure. Wood and nails of an exterior wall dating from 1912 adorn a kitchen wall while an office and bathroom added in 1990 on the opposite side of the house display windows and door frames dating from 1824.

The original, one-room house is now the Chambers' living room and has retained the warmth of hearts of pine wood flooring, a large fireplace constructed of fieldstone, ceiling beams of American chestnut and a 3-foot-wide winding staircase to a second level that was built in the 1920s. On the second level above the original home is a hallway that leads to bedrooms added in the 1950s.

"We've never seen a house like this," Raina Chambers said. "And we don't ever want to leave until we get too old to walk across the bridge."

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making the house their own

•Raina Chambers is a great fan of whimsical touches manifested in accessories such as vintage French lithographs and paintings of animals on the walls.

•Time spent in New Orleans is recalled in a dining area with floors painted black, carved door moldings, ornate chandeliers and an ornate French provincial mirror.

•The couple had the entire wood exterior of the house painted a subdued shade of green, and Brian Chambers affixed fieldstone to outdoor cement pillars and cement stairs. He also built stone retaining walls in the front yard. All of this work is meant to fashion the property organically in its wooded, rugged environment just feet from the Patapsco River and Patapsco Valley State Park.