Project overview - This historic home in the Maple Grove Road Rural Historic District west of Bloomington was beloved. The homeowners wanted to grow old there and envisioned their children coming home from school and work and someday bringing partners and maybe children of their own to stay. The house, however, lacked a few key elements of that vision: a big enough kitchen in which they didn't need to use the oven for extra storage, a mudroom that wasn't doing triple duty as laundry and powder room, and an ensuite wing on the main floor that would serve as the owners' retreat, giving visiting family full reign over the main part of the house.

Client description - These Central Indiana clients craved color and energy, story and history. We created a natural architectural palette of white, wood, and black, but there's no lack of color in these spaces. The sun streams in all the new windows; it sits high on the property, such that every room feels like a treehouse, with an ever-changing backdrop of leaves and sky; and the furniture and decor—some belonging to the clients already but much sourced new or new-vintage—layers in with the clients' textile and art collection and creates an art-gallery effect that is warm and inviting and rich.

Design solutions - Adding on proved a fun challenge for our architectural design team. The property slopes dramatically to the back, and the upstairs windows and existing rooflines needed careful consideration. And, of course, all the new spaces needed to flow seamlessly into the old. In close consultation with our interior design team, our architectural designer stretched the main floor in two directions, adding two different gable additions over a new crawl and basement craft room and swapping around all the existing main floor spaces to make everything work. The renovation feels so right that it's as if it was always configured this way.

Outcomes & testimonials - This historic home transformation has been featured in design articles in The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Homes & Gardens, and Camille Styles. "Marriage saver!" the homeowner wrote about the design process with SYH. "We received personal attention…through every step….. What set [SYH] apart was an absolute collaboration as they made sure we had our say and our input and tastes as part of the process. We are a few years out since the project was completed and still immensely satisfied with our decision to remodel but only because we chose this team!"

Photography by Sarah Shields.