BEFORE

“I wish it were ours,” I thought when I spotted the ugly brown house on the hill overlooking a pond in the park. Six years later, it was our ugly house. Slowly, over the years, the ugly house got less ugly and, after several renovations, became a beautiful home where we raised our two children.

AFTER

“Oh, I looked at that house,” remarked a local woman I met just after we moved in. “The brown one in the park by the pond?” That’s what she said, but she meant, “Oh, I looked at that ugly house.” Its ugliness was precisely what attracted me to the house. I could easily visualize its eventual transformation from the moment I stepped into it.

The front, before (left), and after.

A House Only a Mother Could Love?
The house was a typical center hall colonial with absolutely no charm, but it had a spectacular location. It was an ideally situated, totally boring builder box that fit all our criteria: the right size and number of bedrooms for a growing family and a floor plan that would be a cinch to renovate.

My wish list included being near a park and walking distance to a train station for my commute to New York City. This house was in a park with tennis courts and playing fields, a few blocks from a quaint New England village, the neighborhood school our two children would eventually attend, and a three-minute walk to the train, which was great for my daily commute. It couldn’t get any uglier or any better.

The annual miniature boat regatta is in the park across from our house.

Phase I: Kitchen/Family Room, Backyard Garden and Patio
We were a young family at the time with limited resources, so we envisioned the renovation in phases. Our priority was to redo the classically 70s-style kitchen. Its brown formica countertops, barely functional harvest gold appliances, drab taupe vinyl flooring, and dark fake wood cabinets had to go.

BEFORE
The original kitchen was dark, drab, and dated.

AFTER
The kitchen after the renovation.

We knocked down two walls to open the space to the adjacent family room and replaced the flimsy sliding doors with French doors. The fresh open plan design, with new windows and doors opening to the outdoor space, brought light into the formerly dark and poorly integrated kitchen-family room.

BEFORE
The family room didn’t integrate well with the adjacent kitchen. 

BEFORE
The old sliding door brought very little light into the large family room.

AFTER
Family room renovation included replacing the sliding doors with French doors to the garden.

AFTER
We opened the kitchen to flow into the family room and brightened the entire space.

The kitchen-family room with its central island would become the hub of the house where we’d spend most of our time together.

New Home Office Off the Kitchen
With newly designed built-ins, a formerly dark room off the kitchen became the office from which I launched this blog in 2009.

Indoor to Outdoor Rooms
Just after moving in, our two-year-old son fell through the unsightly rotted deck outside the family room. Thrilled he wasn’t injured, we were also very pleased to later replace the eyesore with a patio of aged bricks set in sand.

BEFORE
Our two-year-old son fell through the rotted deck.

AFTER
We removed the rotted deck, added French doors to the yard, began building a stone wall, and later installed a brick patio.

AFTER
The new brick patio with all-weather rattan furniture from Walmart was an unbeatable price point. In the background is the covered porch addition.

The small backyard and garden became a long work in progress. The big mess we inherited developed over a period of time into an oasis with a few distinct outdoor rooms. Along with the new patio came wood privacy fencing and evergreens.

BEFORE
The backyard when we moved in.

AFTER
The backyard had a dry stone wall and a terraced sloped garden behind it. 

Over a period of months, we built a low, dry stone wall and terraced the sloping property behind it with ornamental grasses, purple hydrangeas, and a variety of perennials, including echinacea, agapanthus, astilbe, delphinium, and hosta. We let blue creeping phlox and clematis pour over the edges of the wall.

Artist Danielle Mailer’s sculpture created a focal point in the garden.

Artist Danielle Mailer’s steel dancing figures performing a pas de deux on the grass.

Phase II: Renovation and Addition With Covered Patio
After nine years in the house, we began a significant and final renovation. We completed the backyard and added a covered dining patio (some would call it a veranda) below a new second-floor guest suite. Accessed through the dining room’s new French doors, we enjoyed many memorable meals al fresco, even in the rain, as we could sit comfortably undercover in what became one of my favorite outdoor living spaces.

Magnus loved to warm himself in the sun.

Phase II: Second Floor Renovation
Although we only added about 500 square feet, by pushing out the back and one side and completely reconfiguring the existing footprint, we were able to create a large master bedroom suite with a sitting area and lavish spa bathroom, guest room/office, additional bathroom, and even squeezed in a small laundry room.

The new master bath included a steam shower and a luxurious 6-foot jetted tub. We hand-picked Calacatta gold marble for the countertops and tub surround and chose small rectangular tumbled green jade marble tiles on the floor and base of the shower.

The new guest room/study above the covered dining porch with built-ins and my custom-designed sleeper sofa covered in lush wool mohair fabric.

In the new primary bedroom and the guest room/study, we created the ambiance missing from the original space by adding details like new tray ceilings and cove lighting that cast a soft glow at night.

Sunroom Addition Below Master Bath
On the first floor, the new sunroom echoed the footprint of the master bath above it with floor-to-ceiling windows, built-in bookshelves, and a hand-painted checkerboard wood floor.

First-floor sunroom/music room.

Transformed Foyer and Staircase
To brighten the formerly dark and drab first-floor foyer, we borrowed a few inches from two closets on either side of the existing front door to carve out enough space to add side lights and a transom above a new solid mahogany door.

BEFORE
The original front entry hall, as the former owners had it when we first viewed the house.

AFTER
Front entry hall after renovation.

A New-Old House With Timeless Character
During the renovation, we shortened a wall in the foyer at the foot of the stairway and punctuated it with a new custom-designed newel post. Other unique details throughout, including seven-inch high baseboards, wide crown moldings, wainscoting, and new custom-designed recessed panel Shaker-style doors, transformed our former builder’s box into a “new old” house with timeless character.

Front Entrance and Perennial Garden 
For the front entrance, a new flagstone landing and a portico supported by substantial Tuscan columns doubled as a small patio with a front-row view of the pond and the annual Fourth of July fireworks in the adjacent park.

We continued the stone from the entrance to steps bordered by a dry stone wall framed by a prairie-style garden with tall grasses, colorful perennials, and a fragrant lilac bush blooming each spring.

From the front garden patio, the curved path of flagstone steps led to a gravel driveway and garage. We added new barn-style garage doors, and to create cohesiveness with the garden wall above it, we faced the areas around the doors with the same stone used for the retaining wall.

View of the park from the house.

I’d lobbied unsuccessfully for replacing the front lawn with a field of wildflowers. The park surrounding us was like an extension of our property, providing stunning views of the pond and trees, which we enjoyed for many years from two Adirondack chairs perched on our little hill.

Photos: Robin Plaskoff Horton.