The gray house with white trim and a fuschia-colored door sits along the town's main corridor.

It's a house Karen didn't think artists painted depictions of. She was wrong. A small painting of the home's front exterior now hangs inside.

The retired couple moved from Dayton, Ohio, three years ago. They were looking to downsize and to be closer to their children -- at least some of them.

"Our house in Ohio was 7,000 square feet," Mac says. "What happened is all of our kids went to school, and none of them came home."

Instead two of their six children moved to Oregon, one to Indiana and three to North Carolina. The MacAulays chose a house on the same street as one of their daughters, putting them in easy distance to four of their grandchildren.

It's a house plenty big enough to welcome guests and to house all the old vacuum tube equipment from Mac's amateur radio hobby. The couple converted an old workshop off the garage to serve as the retired technical consultant's radio room.

Although the house is in downtown Hillsborough, the back yard now attracts enough nature to keep both these naturalists happy. Before becoming trained as a naturalist, Karen taught first and second grade in a parochial school. When Mac retired, she trained him in natural history, too. Now the two continue to educate the young as they did in Ohio. And all the caterpillars and butterflies that visit their yard help.

The Challenge

The MacAulays liked the house and its location -- within easy walking distance to not only their grandchildren, but also to the library, the post office and other needs.

"We can walk to the wine store, the drug store. We can even walk to two funeral homes down the street," Mac jokes.

"Some weeks go by where I don't have to drive a car at all," Karen adds.

Yet the back of the house didn't quite work for a couple who wants their six children and seven grandchildren to visit comfortably.

"It was cramped," Mac says. "When we bought the house we knew we needed to do something."

The home's small, U-shaped kitchen had cabinets that hung down from the ceiling, separating the kitchen from an equally small family room to its side. Beyond the kitchen and family room, with its fireplace, were a laundry area, storage closet and a stairwell to the basement.

The cabinets kept light from entering the family room, and there was little space for a breakfast table.

"We had the table flush with the wall, and you couldn't even use the back of the table," Karen says.

Not only that, they couldn't see the back yard, which Karen had spent a good deal of time planning -- starting with the trip back to Ohio after deciding to buy the house. That revamped yard was to include space for their grandchildren to play as well as a shade garden, pocket prairie, vegetable garden and a waterfall pond bordered by rocks.

"We planned for lots of birds, butterflies and kids," Karen says.

Their new plan had to keep a usable back yard, open the back of the house to that back yard, provide more space in the kitchen and still house a laundry area.

The Solution

"Basically what we did was strip everything out but the fireplace and start over," Mac says.

The MacAulays hired Bizios Architect and builder David W. Roberts. Together, they decided to extend the back of the house and to make the entire back area one large open space.

The kitchen, which now has ample space for the breakfast table, is large enough to boast an island with a stovetop and seating on the other side. The angled island, which is turned to give a view to the back yard, also lends an air of entertainment. Mac notes that he was told a cook is like a performer. Now he can easily entertain his guests as he cooks and chats with them.

No division exists now between the kitchen and the family room except in the grouping of seating around the fireplace. To help with that open feel, windows were placed all along the back and sides of the addition and the entrance to the basement stairwell was removed. The basement entry is now outside. Beyond where the stairwell was is a sunroom corner with bench seating that doubles as storage.

"The laundry room was a problem," Karen says.

The architect, Georgia Bizios, thought about different places to put a laundry room. In the end, they decided to hide it in the open. On the side wall opposite the sunroom is a stretch of cabinets with a deep sink and countertop. Inside those cabinets are the MacAulays' washing machine and dryer. A fold-out ironing board is in a drawer.

"It can turn into a laundry room in a moment's notice," Karen says.

Mac adds, "In the summer we can use it as a buffet counter to get food to take outside."

And the sink and countertop, placed next to the back door, are convenient for washing and temporarily storing the vegetables and berries brought in from the garden.

"We don't have a lot of extra space, so we try to use what we have in a good way," Karen says.

While remodeling the couple also decided to add an unplanned art room upstairs for Karen to paint in and to store their nature items - rocks, bird nests, owl pellets. They nixed a stairwell from the downstairs addition up to the room, as it would have taken over the sunroom space.

"I think that's more important than the stairs," Karen says. "It's a little bit awkward going through the bedroom, but it could be used as two bedrooms. It's like a suite."

"Oh, how sweet," Mac quips.

The Cost and Materials

The MacAulays spent $100,000 on the addition and remodeling. They chose to also complete the work on their back yard at the same time, hiring a landscaper to help plant and others to help design and complete the pond.

"Being retired," Mac says, "we tended to focus on getting exactly what we wanted so five years from now we didn't say, 'Boy, I wish we had done that.' "

"I think when you're younger, you tend to do things in steps," Karen says.

The couple tried to use recycled materials where they could, including recycled doors.

Besides being environmentally friendly, recycling hardwood flooring and doors helped the MacAulays keep the look of the new downstairs space consistent with the rest of the house.

They used hardwood flooring rescued from a 75-year-old apartment building in Winston-Salem for the downstairs addition. They estimate that the recycled flooring cost about 20 to 30 percent more as it had to be found and refinished.

"But it's a very good idea to do that, and we were willing to do that where we could," Karen says. "That was the most significant thing we did."

In the art room, the couple chose cork flooring.

"I wanted something that was ecologically friendly," Karen says. "It's very renewable, and I like the looks of it."

For their countertops downstairs, they chose quartz.

"You know how we like rocks," jokes Karen, the naturalist.

Do you have a remodeling story to share? Contact Catherine Wright at catherine.wright@gmail.com.