Some projects are more intensely personal than others. The Weeks House, in Louisville, Tennessee, renovated by Brian Pittman, Assoc. AIA, is one of those. For Paul and Jeannine Weeks, who were living in Connecticut and working for a pharmaceutical company, renovating this house meant recreating a dwelling that was built and designed in 1950 by Paul’s father, Felder Weeks, AIA, and making it their retirement refuge. “Felder Weeks had five children, and all of them cherished this house,” says Pittman. Paul Weeks agrees, “I could talk about this house for hours.” For Pittman, who was going through a divorce at the time, the project was the perfect outlet into which to channel all his energy after coming home from his day job as a designer with Knoxville firm McCarty Holsaple McCarty. Pittman and the Weekses were all committed to making this project sing.

The late Felder Weeks bought the one-and-a-third acre plot of land in 1950 for $750. He recognized the value of the property, on a peninsula on the Tennessee River, and knew that though it seemed remote at the time, it was destined to change. It is now about a 30-minute drive from Knoxville. The A-frame house, at 1,656 square feet with three tiny bedrooms and one bath downstairs and a loft bedroom upstairs, was built as a vacation place, and not somewhere to retire and live year-round. “Jeannine and I suffered from a fatal disease,” Paul says, “It’s called ‘final house syndrome.’ We bought the home from my parents and when my father died and my mom moved to a condo in town, we had to make this house into one we could spend the rest of our lives in.”