Ranch dressing

Curves make the perfect addition (about 640 square feet worth) to a 1957 home in St. Petersburg.

ST. PETERSBURG - From the street, it's a classic, predictable 1950s ranch: low slung, horizontal, garage on one end, tiny porch, tile roof. There are thousands of them, up and down virtually every street.

But step inside this one, in the Granada Terrace neighborhood, and there's nothing predictable about the addition that architect-homeowner Patrick Green designed for his house.

A curving wall of windows pulls visitors to the back of the house, overlooking a deeply shaded garden where orange and camphor trees are strung with tiny white lights for nighttime sparkle.

That strong curve encompasses a play area for daughter Zoe, 9, and a sitting area with a niche for audio/video equipment, and it leads to a master suite with a new bath and big closets. In all, the addition increased the house's space by 640 square feet.

"It looked nice on the plan, but it's really nice in reality," said Green, 40, who runs a recently launched solo architectural business out of the former master bedroom. "I'm pleased with how it came out."

The curved window wall "frames the back yard," and the combination of windows that start at floor level and the vivid citrus-green wall color "brings the outside in and the inside out," Green said. (It's Laura Ashley Home Colour Collection #1004 Apple 4.) He credits his wife, Theresa, 40, with the color selection. "We wanted to do something not conservative," he said. The wall color "really punched that curve out."

The ranch house, often underappreciated as an architectural style, "is clean and functional," Green said. Because its shape is essentially a rectangle and the rooflines are simple, "it's easy to add on at any angle or at the end or middle. I love the original wood floors" - they are quarter-sawn oak - "and the crawl space vs. slab-on grade."

The original house had about 1,000 square feet, too small for a family of three and Zephyr, a 13-year-old whippet. Its original flat-back wall, with jalousie windows, closed off the garden and limited the view from inside. But a rectangular addition at the back didn't feel right, and it ate up too much of the yard.

The final version, with the strong curve to embrace the garden, was "the fourth or fifth design," Green said.

While the space was under construction, the Greens remodeled their kitchen. What was once a window looking out on the back yard is now an interior opening to the family room/TV area so whoever's in the kitchen, now in the center of the house, isn't cut off from the rest of the family. New appliances, maple cabinets and white laminate countertops lighten and brighten the room. The wall color throughout, except on the window wall, is a soft yellow, Laura Ashley #802 Cowslip 2.

Green economized by using stock windows, framed by standard 8-inch masonry block. Outside, a wide shelflike deck repeats the curve, and pillars supporting the roof align with the interior blocks. Theresa Green originally opposed that deck, "but now she loves it," her husband said, and it has become a place to feed birds and squirrels and to sit while they enjoy the back yard.

The work cost about $95,000, Green estimated, of which $15,000 covered the cost of the kitchen and replacing all the home's windows. He acted as the general contractor. He has 18 years' experience as an architect and formerly worked at two St. Petersburg firms: Wannemacher Russell, where he worked on the Childs Park pool, and Harvard Jolly Clees Toppe, where he worked on the Pinellas Park Public Library. He designed homes in Washington state for himself and for his parents.

"Most of my career I've done additions and renovations, and it's nice to do new," which is how he thinks of the work on his home. "It changed it dramatically: It is a new house," Green said. "You can see it all the way from the front door. Typically, additions are not memorable. I like them to be seamless but memorable. That curve, when you walk in, it's a memory piece. It really makes the house."

- Patrick Green can be reached at pgarchitect@msn.com or (727) 430-7906.

Architect Patrick Green offers these tips:

The TV niche in the new family room backs up on a niche in the master bedroom that holds two dressers. Green installed a half-height door in the wall between the rooms so he has access to cables for audio-visual equipment.

Pedestal sinks and little white bathroom tiles in the new master bath fit in with the house's original character.

Four-inch baseboards in the new area match those in the original home, built in 1957, and are in good proportion to the 8-foot ceilings.

The first sketches for the new space positioned it at the back of the old master bedroom, until Theresa Green pointed out that it blocked the windows of that room. She suggested moving it to the garage side of the house. Lesson learned: Don't get hung up on preconceived ideas.