“Now we have a good friend in Greenwich, Connecticut, with a ranch-style home that has an in-law suite on one aspect of the swimming pool that impressed our concepts for our home,” Williams says. “This home is simply comfy for everybody. We entertain typically and our home is sort of like ‘Cheers’ with our family and friends exhibiting up on the mudroom door and being welcomed inside at any time.”
Main, who labored with AARP earlier than his current job, says one-level residing is right for everybody, particularly for finally ageing in place. In the course of the pandemic, Williams’s mom got here to reside with the household in a personal visitor suite with its personal kitchen, household room, workplace or visitor room, two loos, and a screened porch. The 6,133-square-foot residence additionally has a decrease stage with a further bed room, a health room and informal entertaining house.
“Now we have a number of household close by, and it’s essential to us to have a pleasant move for entertaining inside and out of doors,” Main says.
Main and Williams labored with Anthony Wilder, founding father of Anthony Wilder Design/Build in Cabin John, Md., to deliver their imaginative and prescient for his or her residence to a stage past their expectations.
“Now we have three youngsters at residence who’re 3, 9 and 16,” Williams says. “We even have three in faculty or not too long ago graduated who’re 19, 22 and 23, so we wanted house for everybody to have some quiet and privateness in addition to a large enough open-floor plan for us to be collectively.”
One-level residing is changing into more and more common with Wilder’s shoppers, he says. He and his spouse reside in a one-level home, too. However discovering the appropriate property within the crowded D.C. space generally is a problem.
“We initially wished to be in North Arlington, however the heaps had been too small to design a home with a visitor wing or guesthouse,” Williams says. “We discovered this nook lot in McLean that had a small home on it that we initially supposed to rework, however finally we realized that it might be less complicated to knock it down and begin from scratch than to attempt to incorporate it into our imaginative and prescient.”
The household moved into their residence in 2018. In 2020, the home tailored simply right into a office and schooling middle for his or her preschool, elementary college, highschool and faculty college students.
“Designing and constructing a customized residence like this might price round $2 million,” Wilder says, which doesn’t embrace the land or landscaping.
Serenity in a family-centric family
Whilst you would possibly anticipate a family that often has all 9 relations in residence may very well be chaotic, the design of the house with vast hallways, excessive ceilings, heat supplies and expanses of glass partitions supplies an sudden serenity.
“We intentionally designed this home with excessive ceilings that aren’t too excessive,” Wilder says. “These are about 10 toes excessive. Ceilings which can be 12 toes excessive can be too tall and create an echo.”
Wilder labored with Williams and Main to develop the imaginative and prescient for the house, whereas Sean Mullin, an architect with Anthony Wilder Design/Construct, drew the plans.
The allure of the home is instantly obvious, with its width stretched throughout the one-acre lot and dealing with a semicircular driveway illuminated by gasoline lanterns. A cupola crowns the white brick-and-stucco property, and stone stairs result in the entrance entrance.
A leaded glass window above the gently arched wooden entrance door provides an old school component of romance to the house. To the left of the lobby is a sleek formal eating room with an image window, pocket doorways to the kitchen, and loads of room for household and buddies to assemble.
“We favor the ‘much less is extra’ strategy and easy magnificence,” Williams says. “Anthony actually understands that and introduced our concepts to life.”
As Wilder explains, “Good design is invisible.”
In the principle household room, which is open to the adjoining kitchen, a two-sided gasoline fire is ready right into a floor-to-ceiling wall that separates the room from the corridor and is seen from a house workplace by means of glass doorways.
“The fireside wall is manufactured from an artificial steel that appears like stone, which supplies each a up to date and an old-world visible influence,” Wilder says. “We intentionally positioned the fireside at eye stage when persons are seated so it’s not hidden by the espresso desk.”
The open kitchen is the “nerve middle” for the family, says Williams, with loads of house for her and her mom to prepare dinner and for caterers after they entertain.
“Now we have a really clear and easy white kitchen with a grey tile backsplash as a result of we wished a contemporary look,” Williams says. “The large island is crucial factor to me as a result of we’ve a lot of exercise round it within the morning when everyone seems to be consuming breakfast and preparing for the day.”
The kitchen features a triple-bowl stainless-steel farmhouse sink with Waterworks fixtures and a six-burner Thermador vary with a grill. Adjoining to the middle island are a glass eating desk and a butler’s pantry with additional storage and a built-in wine rack. The desk is ready in entrance of a wall of glass with a view of the pool and bushes behind the home.
The house embraces a yard with a swimming pool, sizzling tub, out of doors fire and landscaping by McHale Landscape Design, based mostly in Higher Marlboro, Md., which supplies each a pretty view from inside the home and privateness.
“Your complete home looks like its sitting in nature due to the landscaping outdoors,” Williams says. “When it snowed earlier this 12 months, we opened all of the home windows so we may really feel like we had been built-in into nature. We constructed a ‘snow girl’ outdoors within the patio with apples for lips.”
Main says considered one of his favourite points of the home is the sunshine all through the rooms.
“I like to take a seat within the solar, and I even work outdoors once I can,” Main says. “Within the night, we are able to put the gasoline fire outdoors on and the panorama lighting is gorgeous. It looks like a retreat with out having to go away.”
The couple is having new landscaping planted in entrance of their home to duplicate a few of the yard plantings.
Suites and house for everybody
Past the kitchen and informal eating space is the mudroom, which is outfitted with closets, hooks and benches to accommodate the household and friends. The aspect entrance into the mudroom supplies a stepless flagstone entry to the house together with a sublime wooden door that echoes the principle entrance. Inside, a door leads from the mudroom to the personal visitor suite the place Williams’s mom lives.
The visitor suite features a household room with a wall of home windows dealing with the swimming pool and patio. The household room is open to a sublime white and grey kitchen with a big island that resembles the principle kitchen.
“My mom cooks with us more often than not and the youngsters are out and in of her house, so there’s little or no separation between us,” Williams says. “However she has her privateness when she needs it.”
The suite contains 10-foot-high ceilings, a bed room in use as an workplace, and a full lavatory that connects to the corridor of the suite and the second bed room. The suite’s essential bed room contains one other full lavatory and entry to a personal screened porch.
On the other aspect of the principle kitchen, a large hallway leads behind the household room and contains doorways to the house workplace and bedrooms for the couple’s youthful kids. The sunshine-filled hallway features a tall window on the finish of the home. Just under that window is a gap to the health room on the ground under to permit loads of pure gentle into that house. A transparent glass panel was put in as a substitute of a low wall on the finish of the hallway above the health room to permit for extra gentle to fill each areas and for a connection between the 2 ranges.
For busy dad and mom and professionals like Williams and Main, a sanctuary house is crucial. Their main suite rests on a wing off the principle stage and feels nearly like a personal residence. Two glass doorways flank the fireside and join the room with the vanishing-edge pool, patio and sizzling tub.
“In the summertime we are able to hear the waterfall within the pool once we’re falling asleep,” Williams says.
The bed room has a vaulted ceiling with floor-to-ceiling glass on the rear wall, which faces bushes, crops and a landscaped rock walkway. Three extra home windows above the mattress fill the room with much more pure gentle. The first lavatory has a sculptural free-standing bathtub set beneath a window and an oversize bathe. All of the showers in the home have been designed as no-threshold showers.
“We stayed in a lodge in Barcelona as soon as that I simply beloved, so I requested for the bathe to be designed like that one with as many bathe heads as potential,” Williams says.
The aboveground decrease stage contains one other visitor bed room with a full lavatory and personal entry to a quiet patio with seating that can also be accessible from the principle household room.
“We used this downstairs space as a classroom when colleges had been closed and introduced in a gymnastics coach for our daughters, too,” Williams says.
The decrease stage has a big open house for informal entertaining and household gatherings, a media room, and the health room with glass doorways and the opening to the principle stage.
“This can be a well-used home,” Williams says. “I’ve lived in greater houses, and there generally is a wonderful line between an excessive amount of house and a cushty residence. We use each little bit of this home, and we are able to even use my mom’s visitor suite for different relations when she’s touring.”
With the assistance of Wilder and Mullin, Williams and Main created a welcoming residence that embraces everybody who enters it.
