Another Friend's Home

Since there isn't much happening at the Tiny Bungalow this weekend, I thought it would be nice to add an entry about another home I worked on a few years ago. Several months ago, my friends called and said that they had finished painting the interior of the Prairie Style home that I designed for them. This weekend, I finally got around to seeing it. The house looks great. They chose some fantastic lighting fixtures for the place from Oak Park Home & Hardware and they really feel at home. The colors they chose look great too.

The design process on the home was interesting. The overall plan was started by one of the owner's father. He was my boss at the time and thought mixing family with design was a bad idea. I continued developing the plan and we eventually gravitated towards a Prairie School/Arts & Crafts look for the house. Though we were all fans of this period of architecture, we didn't set off to design such a home but this is how it came out. The town that they live in has an "appearance/pain in my ass committee" that reviews designs. After adding some over-sized windows to the master bath (practical?), we were good to go.

It fits the site well as the home opens up to a golf course in the back. Unfortunately the landscape planned for the home is not doing as well as we had hoped. The wild roses look great and so do some of the ornamental grasses. The phlox is not faring as well though. So much for the "native" landscape idea. Hopefully it will grow in more over the next couple years.

A lot of time and effort went into getting the interior stair woodwork, cabinetry, windows and trim to work together. There are also many areas designed within the home to showcase the collection of prints, pottery, and original art glass that the owners have.

The home has an elevator and is designed to be completely accessible. The spatial challenges that this presented were pretty big but in many ways, it helps add to the overall openness of the home. Work on this project was a huge learning experience for them as well as myself. I am sure that there are a lot of things that they (and I) would do differently now and it is too bad that the home pre-dates the recent explosion of available and affordable "green" products and materials as I am sure it would have been a great place to use them. All in all, it turned out well. I dind't have to "get all Frank Lloyd Wright" too often during construction, and the owners seem very happy.