The living room is lavishly detailed
space, with a beamed ceiling, French
doors, crown moldings, and inlays
in the fireplace.

Architectural Details

Inside the door is a tiled foyer and the stair hall. A wide doorway to the left opens into the bright and spacious living room, which features a beamed ceiling, custom-milled moldings, and a massive fireplace faced with sandstone and tile.

These and other architectural details send a clear signal that this is the home's most formal space. "As people move through the house," Frank explains, "they should be able to sense the relative importance of each room. I added the most detail to the living room. The farther you get from that room, the less detail you see."

 

Simple white cabinets
complement the wood floor in
the kitchen. The adjacent nook
is flooded with morning light.

The remaining rooms on the first floor are arranged along a hallway that extends from the entry hall to the kitchen. A pocket door can close off this hallway to separate the public rooms -- the living room, dining room, study, and guest bathroom -- from the family's personal realm, which includes the white paneled family room, the kitchen with adjoining breakfast room, and the mudroom. The oak flooring used throughout the downstairs creates a sense of continuity and flow from one room to another.

 

The bright colors in the high
wainscoting and the William
Morris wallpaper make the
small dining room seem larger.

The dining room is the only part of the house that Frank and Minta would change if they could. Measuring 13 feet long by 10 feet, 6 inches wide, it's too small to accommodate the corner cupboards that Minta would like to put in. "The dining room got tight because we needed space for the mudroom entry behind it," she says. "If someone were using the same design without the constraint of the setbacks, he or she might want to make this room larger."

From the outside, much of the house appears to be only one story. Yet there's a surprising amount of space upstairs. The second floor includes a broad stair hall, three bedrooms, three full baths, a laundry room, and Frank's studio (atop the carport). Dormers and skylights bring extra space and light to the upstairs rooms, with their cottagelike, sloped upper walls.