The owner of a home on the Severn River that received a major makeover likes to point to one small detail in the house to sum up the family’s style. “In the guest bathroom there’s a mosaic tile bath mat with flip flops on it,” she says. “That tells the whole theme I wanted the house to have—fun, casual, take your shoes off and kick back and relax.”
That effortless style did not happen without a lot of work. When the homeowner decided to make the waterfront cottage, which had been a summer retreat, into a full-time home, it was too small for this family of two adults and four children.
At first, the aspiration was to update the kitchens and baths, but the home was built in a traditional style, with each room completely self-contained. The owners craved more open space and rooms that related to each other. Knocking down interior walls to achieve an open floor plan would have made the structure unsound; instead, contractor Bert Winchester of Winchester Construction recommended that the house be brought down to its footprint, the walk-out basement.
The homeowner, a former television news reporter, tackled this extreme makeover as if she was researching an assignment. “Like a lot of people who build a house, I had files,” she says. “I had photo files, files of fabric, and paint samples.”
I wanted the house to have—fun, casual, take your shoes off and kick back and relax.
She also had a file of home styles she preferred and all had one thing in common: a gambrel roof. “I grew up in the Midwest so my husband likes to tease me that I wanted our house to be shaped like a barn,” quips the homeowner. In actuality, the couple wanted to create a house emblematic of northeast coastal architecture. More importantly, “we wanted to create a house we could make childhood memories in for the children and a home they would want to come back to,” adds the homeowner.
A large front porch is screened for three season comfort and offers incredible views of the Severn River. Photo by Angie Seckinger.
Catherine Purple Cherry, AIA, LEED AP, of Purple Cherry Architects in Annapolis created an architectural program that worked within the Bay critical area and the cottage’s footprint while accommodating the needs of a large family. “This is a homeowner with an incredible aesthetic sense, to the level of a professional,” says Purple Cherry. “That made the process easy.”
The new home design extensively modified the walkout basement and reconstructed the living spaces on the main floor. A new top level was added to give the house the volume it required for the large family. “They expressed their desires from a room allocation standpoint—the number of rooms they desired, where they desired them to be,” says Purple Cherry. “They wanted unique bedrooms that expressed the personality of each of their children.”
“They wanted the interior to relate to the exterior, specifically along the porch,” she continues. “They wanted the inside to be able to fully open up to extend the living space outside.” The homeowner also requested that the kitchen connect to the family room area.
Unique to this project was the amount of thought the homeowner put into the use of space and the organization of the family’s life. Four children generate a lot of “stuff,” and the homeowner was cognizant of how she needed to structure the house to make running the home easier.
“Although this is a large house, they were moving from a larger to a smaller house from a storage standpoint,” Purple Cherry recalls. “When you do that, you specifically talk about where you want the linen room to be, the laundry room to be, the pantry, etcetera. For one client it might be fine to go to a basement level to get food from a pantry; for another client that might be completely unacceptable.” The homeowner confirms that, “We like to be organized. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ ”
This massive undertaking was to be constructed in a neighborhood with a strict neighborhood association. In order to receive approval of the structure from the community, builder Bert Winchester framed a wooden silhouette of the top of the existing house so the neighbors could see how large the extra volume would be when finished. Luckily, they approved.
The new home was erected and included more entryways onto the porch so the family can enjoy an indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Each child received a unique room, one with a loft, for example, another with a window seat that doubles as a bed for sleepovers. In addition, there are carefully allotted private spaces, including an office for the husband and a craft room for the wife. The kitchen was opened onto the living room and a pantry was added to support the active cooking scene. The result is a home without wasted space where every room is used.
“I like that the scale of the rooms is small, so there’s an intimacy to the house even though it is fairly large,” says Purple Cherry.
Coastal tones of white, blue, and yellow are accented by one-of-a-kind vintage and antique pieces that lend the space a soothing, lived-in aesthetic. Photo by Angie Seckinger
In their previous home, the homeowner made use of nice hand-me-down furniture. The new house gave them the opportunity to finally invest in new pieces that embrace their casually elegant lifestyle (and that hold up to the wear-and-tear of four children and their abundant friends). Working with Bethesda-based interior designer Kelley Proxmire of Kelley Interior Design, the homeowner tossed out her previous home’s color scheme of autumnal colors—reds and greens—in favor of coastal tones of white, blue, and yellow.
“[The homeowner] loves color, and I think we were successful in the use of color,” says Proxmire. In addition to a blue main room and a soft yellow kitchen, Proxmire used bold colors for the children’s rooms, finishing the girls’ bathroom vanities in a bright pink, for example.
Rather than fill the house with thematic coastal accessories, Proxmire steered her client to one-of-a-kind vintage and antique pieces. Proxmire is particularly fond of a copper sailboat sculpture she picked up in an antique store in Georgetown and her use of antique mirrors. “Mirrors give you more bang for your buck,” she explains. “You can cover the space on a wall and they don’t need to be incredibly expensive, and you create so much light.”
Furnishings were selected both for their beauty and for their durability. The homeowner states that the new house is a frequent stopping place for family to have crab feasts and for the kids’ friends to come and play cards or hang out. Areas like the family room are built to last, with a wool sisal rug and an oversized ottoman for feet or for board games. However, it’s not built for coach potatoes, as there is no television.
“We don’t have a TV in the main living area on purpose,” says the homeowner. “We wanted it to be a gathering area, not a viewing area, a place to play checkers, to have a cup of tea when the kids get home, to read the newspaper. If you’re focused on the TV, you aren’t focused on each other.”
The homeowner’s favorite room is the kitchen, a room where she spends most of her time. “It’s bright and open, a great place from which you can nurture your family,” she explains. Proxmire drew on blue, white, and yellow to make the kitchen communicate with the main living space and channeled a touch of French Country style in the pantry with a yellow and blue toile.
The house functions expertly, but it is also a home of revealing details that give it a charming beauty. Catherine Purple Cherry notes the flair of the office tower and the thoughtful curve of the entrance way. On the porch, Proxmire created a trompe l’oeil rug under the teak furnishings, and she had the kitchen chairs custom painted with a scene emblematic of each child based on photos the homeowner took at the beach. There are lamp shades trimmed in seashells. In the office, which has unadorned windows to maximize its view, a compass is inlaid in the wood floor. These are little details that add up to a home built for making family memories.
Christianna McCausland is a Contributing Editor for ChesapeakeHome.
Contacts:
Kelley Interior Design: kelleyinteriordesign.com or 301-320-2109
Purple Cherry Architects: purplecherry.com or 410-990-1700
Winchester Construction: winchesterconstruction.net or 410-987-5905
