With its white clapboard siding and black shutters, their Cape Cod-style house on a small suburban plot in Fairfield, Conn., evokes the houses William J. Levitt squeezed by the thousands into the potato fields on Long Island after World War II.
Robert and Taylor Veidenheimer bought the three-bedroom, one-bathroom
”starter” house three years ago.
When it was built, in 1938, it was considered ideal for raising a family, but the Veidenheimers soon found themselves with a need that the planners of that era did not anticipate in so modest a house: a private room for a live-in nanny.
With two children under 3 and both parents working and struggling with unpredictable schedules, the couple found they no longer could rely just on the local day-care center and daily help for their youngsters.
They reasoned that by giving a nanny a relatively low salary, but also room and board, their monthly cash outlay for child-care would decrease.
Just before Christmas, the Veidenheimers began turning one side of the unfinished basement, about 275 square feet, into an additional bedroom and bath at a cost of around $10,000.
”The rooms in this house are very small, and we treasure our privacy,”
said Taylor Veidenheimer, a marketing specialist. ”So we needed to do something more than put the person in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
Last month, with the room almost complete, they hired Jamiee Redman, 21, from Rochester, Minn., to care for their children, Ian, 2 1/2, and Andrew, 6 months.
A new ideal
Across the country, suburban houses like this one increasingly are being transformed, and in some cases being designed from the start, to meet the needs of young families who need live-in child care.
In the way that the family room or den was the style of the 1960s and 1970s and the home office defined the 1980s, these au-pair suites seem to be evolving as a hallmark of today`s ideal family house.
No figures are available on how many such accommodations have been created in recent years. But one gauge of the potential market is that an estimated 90,000 legal workers (and at least 200,000 illegal immigrants) are providing live-in child care in this country now, compared to 7,000 legal workers 10 years ago, according to the International Nanny Association in Austin, Texas.
In-house `zoning`
Arthur Danielian, an architect in Irvine, Calif., has built dozens of speculative houses with this in mind in the last few years, mostly in the $500,000 price range. He said the addition of an au-pair suite does not necessarily mean a larger house, more rooms or a higher price, but rather a shift in the way interior space is divided.
In new construction, Danielian favors dividing the four bedrooms traditionally clustered on the upper level into a master suite for the parents and a mini-suite for the nanny, with two children`s bedrooms in between. The mini-suite is placed as far as possible from the master suite and always has its own bathroom.
Some buyers prefer to have the nanny downstairs, off the family room or kitchen.
”We call that `zoning` a house,” Danielian said, ”or `flex space.`
” Later on, such a room can be ideal for a teenage child or an elderly parent.
Vincent De Canio, a builder in Smithtown, N.Y., has offered au-pair suites since 1986. In his new ranch- and Colonial-style houses, he typically uses a 12- by 18-foot space between the kitchen area and the garage.
”We saw the market changing,” he said. ”The farther out these young couples were moving, the harder it was to find someone who could come in during the day. They needed a house that worked for live-in help.”
For $10,000 above his base price, which ranges from $174,000 to $350,000, he will turn the area behind the garage into a finished room with a small bathroom consisting of a sink, toilet and shower.
Private `escape`
”It`s been terrific,” said Joyce Pinkus, a businesswoman who with her husband, Michael, bought one of these houses in 1988. Jennifer DeCoteau, who has taken care of the Pinkus children for four years, said she is especially pleased to be tucked away at a corner of the house with her own entrance and a ”beautiful view.”
The last time American middle-class families began en masse to plan their houses for live-in help was the Victorian era. Accommodation for the servants, usually women, varied widely.
”Most of the women were content with little or no privacy or personal conveniences,” said Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies at Yale University, who writes about families and the changing American house. ”That sort of thing is now totally unacceptable.”
Morever, the tradition of being close to the children, Mary Poppins style, has been replaced with the concept of ”personal space,” she said.
This is certainly the view of Glenda Willm, voted 1991 Nanny of the Year by the International Nanny Association. She has been with the same family in St. Louis for seven years. From her own experience and the comments of her peers, she has concluded that at the very least a nanny should have her own room as a sanctuary, with a chance to use some of her own furnishings, as Willm did.
Basic equipment should include closet and drawer space, a television and writing desk. A private bathroom is a plus, even if only a sink and toilet.
”It`s a kind of escape place,” Willm said. ”You want to know nobody`s going to knock on the door to ask, `How much longer?` ”
A private phone line is important, too, she said. And she believes that most employers are willing to pay for it.
But those are just the basics. Sharon Miller, who lives in converted space on the lower level of a 40-year-old split-level house in Morris Plains, N.J., also brought along her exercise bicycle. She cares for the two small children of Marsha Hoch, an accountant, and her husband, Bernard Brothman, a personnel manager.
Separate but there
The suburban housing styles that lend themselves most easily to modification are the split-level and the raised ranch. Both often have a finished lower level with plumbing. If so, the investment can be minimal.
In their 1950s split-level house Hoch and Brothman spent about $2,000 to convert a study into a room for Miller. They updated a bathroom with new fittings and a shower stall and added new carpeting and a telephone extension. In ranch and Cape Cod-style houses, it is a simple matter to cut away shrubbery from the basement`s squat, ground-level windows to let more light in. To build an addition, on the other hand, normally costs at least $25,000 for an extra room and bathroom.
”The ideal,” Hoch said, ”is to create something that gives the nanny a sense of her own separate area and allows you to have a private conversation without feeling she`s always there.” –
