Homes and Gardens

With its three-level silhouette and pretty stained-glass windows, this hundred-year-old house resembles its Cambridge, Massachusetts, counterparts, at least on the outside. The interior, however, is unabashedly twenty-first century. The owners spied the potential on their first visit. “We were living in New York City, but were thinking about how nice a house with a yard would be. We saw the place on a beautiful fall day and that was it,” recalls the wife.

When two designers are given carte blanche, the result is a suburban Boston residence that gives their clients—a professional baseball player and his wife—a warm welcome to New England.

The prospective buyer was understandably wary when he went to see yet another property for sale, after years of searching for that perfect sweet spot in Maine that had to be near deep water. For starters, he couldn’t see the forest (or the potential home site hidden within) for the trees. “I met the seller by the side of the main road—there was no access to the property—and we made our way through the densest woods for a long time,” he remembers. “We walked and walked and then suddenly I saw the blue of the cove, and Sheep Island, then the view across the cove.

A savvy designer awakens the inherent beauty in her old Colonial Revival house with a do-over that emphasizes its classic good looks.

Katherine Hodge confesses to a penchant for falling for the least lovely house on the street. “Why buy something halfway decent if you can find something really bad and fix it up exactly the way you want?” asks the interior designer. For ten years she has worked largely in renovation design, with layout, cabinetry, kitchens and bathrooms her specialties.

The amiability and mutual respect among the design professionals and their clients is reflected beautifully in the renovation of a Westport home that puts a contemporary twist on the Arts and Crafts tradition.