Tucked into a wooded hillside in the Poplar Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, this renovated home takes full advantage of its sylvan surroundings.
When Robin Wood, a former non-profit executive, and husband Dr. James (Jimmy) Wood, chief of orthopedic surgery at Harbor Hospital, purchased their Poplar Hill home back in 1996, they knew a major renovation was inevitable. We wanted this house to be more of a reflection of who we are,” says Robin. “We wanted a better welcome quotient for our guests, and to reorient the space so that we could live the way we were accustomed to living.”
The Woods are warm, outgoing people, who prefer their home to be brimming with loved ones—whether it’s a Sunday brunch with their four kids, now ranging in age from 18 to 28, or a cocktail party with friends—but the existing home’s uninspired design and steep lot were not exactly conducive to the couple’s desired lifestyle. “We entertained friends and family all the time in California. When we came to Baltimore we were meeting new people and really wanting to welcome them into our home but the house just didn’t reflect who we were, so we spent a lot more time going out than inviting people in,” says Robin.
The couple considered moving but were hesitant to leave the Poplar Hill area. “We love the neighborhood, plus we have access to everything,” she says.So the two opted to stay put and instead, in 2004, hired a team of experts—a pair of architects, an interior design team, and a landscape architect—to create a place they wanted to call home. “We really felt the need to make it our own space,” says Robin.
Updating the Exterior
Architect Tina McCoach of Baltimore-based Thornhill Design Studio recalls the exterior challenges of the home renovation. “It looked like a bad split-level Swiss chalet,” she says. The original home was covered in off-white stucco-like synthetic and punctuated with horizontal, vertical and diagonal dark wooden bands to resemble timbers. “It just did not convey anything about the homeowners’ bold personalities. Functionally and stylistically, it just did not work.”
Interior Designer Dan Proctor with client Robin Woods in her vibrant living room, which incorporates items and art she and her husband have collected throughout the years.
According to McCoach, she and husband Doug, also an architect on the project, hoped to give the home a more modern and contemporary feel. “Originally, it was a dull box, so our goal was to create something more dramatic to reflect the people that lived there. We took off most of the dark banding and just kept a few of the verticals and horizontals to give the home a better sense of proportion,” she says. “Then we introduced flat roofs to complement that existing banding.” They also replaced the exterior cladding with Hardipanel vertical siding, made of durable composite cement fibers.
Although the Woods hoped to increase the 4,000 square feet of livable space, the narrow strip of land behind the home prohibited any substantial additions; however, the lot did allow for some minor expansion around the two main entries to the home. The front door was pushed out to extend the entry foyer, which allowed Dan Proctor, principal of Baltimore-based Kirk Designs, along with fellow designer Fabrizio Fiorini, to design a curved mahogany coat closet lined with Spanish cedar. “There needed to be more of a transition into the main part of the home,” says Proctor.
The team also added to the footprint at the back door entrance by enclosing what used to be a small patio. “As you approach the house, generally this is the entrance you see first and it’s the way a lot of family and friends enter the home,” explains Robin. “We wanted to formalize it so that you didn’t feel like you were just coming in the back door.” Now the entrance is a unique burgundy and gold leaf rotunda, with a hand-rubbed finish using colored spackle by artist John Garthling, who is now on staff at Kirk Designs.
Letting it Flow
Updating the exterior of the home was just the beginning. To create a better flow in the home, Proctor and Fiorini set out to open up the space—and that meant tearing down some walls, especially those surrounding the centrally located staircase. Now, a handcrafted, custom-designed iron banister allows for views throughout the main living area. The couple appreciates its curvy design. “There were lots of right angles in the home,” says Robin. “Everything felt very square so I wanted some curves to give the house a better sense of flow.”
Throughout the design process, Proctor was mindful of the homeowners’ goal to entertain more often and says the living room overlooking the kitchen is now the ideal space for friends to gather. “This is now a wonderful home for entertaining,” he says. “People can be cooking in the kitchen, others can be up here standing around in the living room, and everyone can be engaged in conversation.”
Color, too, plays a key role in the home’s design. “There was already a lot of color in the house,” recalls Robin, “and I think Dan was very happy to see that we were not afraid of color.” Surprisingly, it was a set of vertical-striped silk drapes in the living room that sparked the color palette for the entire home. A part of the original home’s décor, the fabric’s vibrant shades of green apple and coral served as the jumping-off point for both Proctor and Fiorini. Although the shades differ, they are all complementary. “We used different color palettes throughout the home but they all wrap together,” says Proctor. “I don’t think there is a sense of jarring from room to room but the colors are different.” The master bedroom, for instance, features a deep magenta hue, which is a cooler version of the coral in the main space.
The Woods have also traveled extensively and have collected beautiful pieces of art along the way. The ornate glass mirror that hangs over the mantel in the living room is a replica of one that hangs in a church square the couple found during a trip to Italy, and the bronze mirror in the dining room is a Sergio Bustamante they purchased while vacationing with friends in Mexico City. “They have a wonderful art collection that reflects them a great deal,” says Proctor.
“As a designer that’s always exciting for me. It’s exciting to create a palette—to create a backdrop—and have people live in that backdrop by bringing in their things and living their life in it, as opposed to bringing in everything new.”But it wasn’t until a particular piece of art was hung in the kitchen that the designers knew they got it right. A family member had painted a large still life of a pear for the couple, but it had been packed away prior to the start of the renovation. “I didn’t see it before we started,” recalls Proctor, “so it was quite miraculous when it got placed that it just fit.” Robin, too, was pleased. “I was a little surprised when [the pear painting] was hung and was perfect, but I think those colors are just in my consciousness,” she says. “That’s the kind of flow going on in the house now.”
Opening up the stairs and walls around the kitchen allowed the room to breathe and flow into the rest of the home.
Accessing the Outside
Another one of the couple’s main goals was to have greater access to their outdoor space. “The home we moved here from in California was also in a wooded setting but there were lots of ways to get out of the house, to be part of the outside,” says Robin. “But here, we could see the wooded surroundings but there weren’t a lot of ways out.” So Proctor’s solution involved adding a total of three new sets of doors that were not part of the original home. In the living room, for example, he replaced stationary windows with a set of French doors. And in the family room, he added a pair to access the back lot as well as the steps to the basement.
“The house was dark and felt choked by the hill coming down in the back,” recalls Proctor. “By introducing some new windows we were really able to make a difference.” Tina McCoach agrees. “Without the windows above, all you would see is retaining walls but by creating those taller windows, you can see all the way up the hillside,” she says.
Once the home’s floor plan was transformed to access the outdoors, it was time to spruce up the lot and make it worthy of this extensive remodeling project. “The back of the house was just not a place you wanted to go,” says Dr. Wood. “There was really nothing to take you out there.” So the couple hired landscape architect Mark Willard, of Baltimore-based Mark Willard & Associates, LLC, to change all that.
“I wanted to utilize as much of the property as possible,” says Willard. But that was not without its challenges. The lot is steep, especially in the rear of the home, so Willard excavated behind the existing retaining walls, adding new walls where necessary, and installed proper drainage systems to ensure their longevity.
Because the entire Wood family loves the outdoors, Willard created a seating area at the top of the backyard hill complete with Adirondack chairs and a firepit. “That is like candy,” says Robin, who calls it her moon-viewing spot. “The whole family—the kids, our kids’ friends—whenever they’re here, they are out there at the firepit.” Willard also extended the mocha-toned boulder staircase from the firepit into the adjacent woods, where the couple often hikes. “I didn’t want the firepit to feel like the final destination,” he says, “rather I wanted it to feel like more of something you see along the way, to make you feel like there’s even more to see.”
The front of the home also presented some landscape design concerns for Willard. “There had always been an issue with guests not knowing where the front door was located, so one of our goals was to make it so that the new layout easily led people to the front of the house,” says Willard, who tackled the dilemma by reconfiguring the driveway and adding hardscapes, including walls and steps, that would focus a person’s attention on the primary entrance.
After many intricate and thoughtful renovations to their home, the couple’s favorite room in the house is the kitchen. “It really is the heart of the home,” says Robin, who enjoys spending quality time cooking with Jimmy and their children, when they are visiting. It is also why they’ve filled their recently renovated digs with dozens and dozens of old photos of when they were dating, their kids as they were growing up, and special occasions they have shared as a family. “That is the part that is home,” says Robin. “These are the things we carry with us wherever we go.”
Kelli Rosen is a freelance writer based in Monkton, Maryland.
Contacts:
Kirk Designs: www.kirk-designs.com or 410-468-0798
Mark Willard & Associates, LLC: mwa-us.com or 410-377-0703
Thornhill Design Studio: thornhilldesign.com or 410-435-2257
