Written by Darius Amos | Design by DeGraw and DeHaan Architects | Photography by Laura Moss
Architect Jeff DeGraw was given an entirely blank slate when a husband-and-wife team tasked his Middletown, N.Y.-based firm,
DeGraw and DeHaan Architects, with the creation of a backyard pool house in northwest Bergen County. The start-from-scratch project resulted in a classic 200-square-foot structure, a little brother of sorts to the main home, a 1960s garrison colonial that DeGraw’s company was renovating at the time.
Above: Custom cabinets of the pool house pop with Philipsburg Blue, the color courtesy of Benjamin Moore. The homeowners selected the hue to match the patio furniture as well as wall trim found inside the main house.
“We went for simplicity,” DeGraw says of the pool house.“It was meant to look like an outbuilding of a New England estate and really a ‘Mini-Me’ of the neighboring structure. Our pool houses always work in cohesion with the primary home.” Just steps from the in-ground pool and surrounded by a neatly laid brick paver patio, the pool house and its welcoming French doors invite visitors inside for walk-up bar service. Cabinetry designed by DeGraw (the blue hue is the choice of the homeowners) stores glassware and drinks as well as other pool equipment and
supplies. A changing room and washer and dryer are also inside. Dual pergolas highlight the exterior design and create balance and length along the pool. This feature also helps enclose the yard, DeGraw says, and lends to the “intimate and private environment.”
“Pool houses are like destinations,” he says. “With so many aspects from the main home, these buildings are just like extensions
of the living room.” For these homeowners, DeGraw says, the pool house is a “little world and oasis” right in the backyard.