ALTAMONT — Josh and Amy Martin wanted a lot of natural light, especially in winter, in the home they built at 1 Long Grass Lane in Altamont. They got it, with 102 windows, many of which face south.

The home’s extended roof overhangs keep the house cool in summer by limiting the amount of direct sunlight. In winter, the sun is lower in the sky so light streams in despite the overhangs, Amy Martin explained.

“We wanted a kind of passive-solar effect, without being actual solar panels,” Amy Martin said.

The project’s architects advised the Martins just where to place the house on the lot to maximize the southern exposure.

“We wanted to view the hills, and we wanted a big front yard,” said Amy Martin.

The Martins, who started building the home in November 2013 and moved in the following August, live there with their two children, Thatcher, 10, and Josie, 7, and with their chocolate Labradoodle. Lula is also Altamont Elementary School’s social service dog.

Amy Martin teaches fourth grade at Altamont Elementary, while her husband is an account executive at an advertising agency.

The couple was involved in all the design decisions from start to finish. In fact, they helped create the floorplan.

They each made their own designs, using Microsoft Excel, treating one square on the screen as one square foot. When they had done that, they “came together to refine a bunch of designs together till we found one we liked best,” said Josh Martin, and then handed it over to the project’s architects, Fred Franco and Dave Loucks.

The house looks as if it has two stories, because windows continue up to the second-story level, but their purpose is to flood the vaulted one-story interior with light. At the top of the interior staircase is only a small loft room; the rest was left open to form a “corridor of light” from one side of the house to the other.

Troy Miller, who built the home, said his favorite feature is that “corridor of light.” It’s unusual, he said, to be able to stand at one wall of a home and look straight down to the other exterior wall, “probably 100 feet.”

Enclosed porches, they thought, would block out the light. So the front entryway has a ceiling that looks like a pergola with posts supporting crossbeams. The ceiling frames the space and marks that one as the main door — “We have a lot of doors,” Amy Martin said — but still allows light in.

Design principles

Besides light, another key principle was organization, said Amy Martin, emphasizing that the couple wanted to keep things “easy, neat, and functional.”

The Martins didn’t want to have a lot of things that would collect dust, she said.

Josh is a minimalist and “will throw away anything if he can,” Amy Martin said, adding that she likes orderliness too.

Much of the design is built-in, like the contemporary gray sliding door in front of the pantry, which Josh Martin made; the magenta door on the mudroom, visible from the kitchen; or the thin stainless-steel wires that serve as the sides of the solid-oak open staircase.

When the Martins moved in, they decided that they would place in the home only things that they felt were really special.

“Everything we have in the house or hang on the wall is something we made, or someone we love made, or has a story,” Amy Martin said. “We hope to inspire that in the kids, too, to surround yourself with things that have meaning and love and history.”

The wooden design pieces on the walls were made by Josh’s father. Josh’s mother did some of the paintings, while other elements are by Amy or the kids. There are not many knickknacks. The family found, on a beach in Mendocino, California, the large sculptural piece of driftwood that lies on the dining room table.

The home’s design features many reclaimed wood accents to give the house a warm feeling despite its many modern touches. Wooden support beams that hold up the row of second-story windows came from an old armory in Schenectady that was torn down, said Josh Martin.

The house is sided in cedar. Amy Martin and her father stained cedar planks for the siding in two different shades and had the construction workers put up the planks “haphazardly,” she said, rather than in a regular, alternating pattern, to give the home a more natural feeling.

Caretakers of history

Before living on Long Grass Lane, the couple owned, for five years, the Hayes House, an Edwardian mansion, built in 1910, later donated to the Altamont Fair, which it sold in 2001. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Martins did a lot of work there, said Amy Martin, including taking down the old, water-damaged wallpaper in five or six rooms, putting in kitchen cabinets, a kitchen ceiling, a downstairs bathroom, and central air-conditioning; and painting the house inside and out.

It had been Kelly green, said Josh Martin, adding that he thought that color was the original paint and that it was unfortunate that he “just didn’t like it.”

The Hayes House, with its original windows, was far from energy-efficient, was full of intricate woodwork that was hard to clean, and was bigger than they needed, Amy Martin said, but they weren’t especially looking to move.

But when they saw the land along Bozenkill Road, they began to think about building a house that would be just big enough and no bigger.

Long Grass Lane

By that time, Josie had been born, and “we already knew how big our family was,” Amy Martin said.

“We didn’t want to have any extra square footage,” said Amy Martin. “We couldn’t afford any.”

For instance, the home has just three bedrooms. “I didn’t necessarily want a bedroom designated just for a guest,” Amy Martin said. It does have a loft space, with a pull-out couch.

The home was custom built, like the others in the development that followed. Realtor and builder Troy Miller bought all of the property, together with attorney George Slingerland, and subdivided it into 10 lots. The Martins, who are close friends with Miller and his family, fell in love with the land, the privacy, and the views, said Amy Martin.

She added that their lot is nearly two acres, and that all of the homeowners together share another 35 acres with everyone else in the development. There is no homeowners’ association fee, but they all contribute to paying taxes on that additional acreage. “There’s a swimming hole, a creek you can wade in, and trails,” said Amy Martin.

The Martins’ home was the first one built. The others include homes owned by Ron and Lois Ginsberg, next door on one side, and Miller on the other. Former Altamont Mayor James Gaughan and his spouse, Keith Lee, built a home behind the Martins.

“Troy had a brilliant idea,” said Josh Martin. “You know how a lot of developers just go in and clear-cut all the trees? He made sure there’s a 20-foot brushline between everybody’s property.”

Miller said that he put clearing limits into the deed restrictions, to ensure that the woods between the homes cannot be taken down. According to the original subdivision agreement, none of the lots can be further subdivided, and the 35 acres of land behind the property, held in common by the property owners, are to be left forever wild and cannot be sold.  

Of the neighbors, Amy Martin said, “Even though they’re pretty close, you feel like there’s no one around you.”

Thatcher Martin, who was 5 years old at the time, came up with the name Long Grass Lane. Before the house was built, the area was overgrown farmland, covered in brush and long grasses.

Miller said of the name, “I thought it was cool, so we went with it.”