Blasting out the rear wall for light, views

Sunset, Dec, 1989

Blasting out the rear wall for light, views A modest addition to the first floor of this two-story house in Riverside, California, enlarged a family room and gave an upstairs bedroom a new outlook.

Homeowner Dorothy Hartley asked architect Sigrid Miller Pollin to open up a cramped, gloomy family room and give her 60-year-old Tudor-style house access to its rear garden.

"We had no view of the mountains or the golf course down in the arroyo," reports Ms. Hartley. "So we blasted out the rear wall to open the back of the house to light and views."

Miller Pollin designed a balcony atop the 5- by 16-foot addition. In the master bedroom, she replaced two small closets with a dormer that provides a graceful transition from indoors to the balcony. Wing walls on each side set the dormer apart from the bedroom; display niches cut in these walls are open to both sides.

Within the dormer, a glass-paneled door and slender windows flanking it capture light and views, and a geometric cutout into former attic space gives the entire room a stylish look.