by P. Gaye Tapp

photographs by Tony Pearce

There is a decided American sturdiness to this 1930s Tudor nestled in an old Raleigh neighborhood. Like the family who owns it, the house exudes a classic charm while embracing the practical realities of modern family life.

It hasn’t always been such a marriage of form and function; in fact, the house has taken a number of turns over the years. When the couple purchased the property over a decade ago, a full-blown restoration was desperately needed. My initial call to the house as interior designer was simply to add final touches to the living room and plan curtains in the dining room.

I’ve returned many times over the years to counsel, commiserate and confide. I’ve helped the house transform: Rooms have changed purpose; new ones have been added; design has evolved. The relationship a designer has with her client goes well beyond the paint and wallpaper swatch stages. It is all part of the story of a house.

Embracing entertaining 

When the owners began entertaining, for instance, they found their small dining room wanting. Soon, a grand scheme emerged. A plan to flip the living room and dining room met their needs and an intimate sitting room and a formidable dining room took shape. This switch satisfied their love for entertaining – the lady of the house is a chef with some of the best secret recipes in the South and needed a venue worthy of her skills.

But the grand dining room was just the beginning: This house would prove to have permanent growing pains.

The next job for me was to assist with an substantial addition – including an informal living and dining area, and a master suite upstairs – to address the pressing needs of the growing family. The owner is part of a long-established family of builders, so plans for such an addition to this well-loved and lived-in house moved full speed ahead.

Another call in 2010 from the couple caught me a little off-guard. It seemed an update to the relatively new addition was in order. I was surprised, thrilled and then asked, “Why?”

It was time to refine things. Time had passed, and the clients wanted to add some special rugs. Overhead lighting needed to be addressed in the new living and dining areas. A new project began, the list increased, and we touched every room in the house.

A house that is home can’t be static. It is at its best when changing to suit the desires and needs of a family. This house and family are on the move. More changes are in store, the children are fast becoming teenagers and a lounge or two of sorts are in the works. I’ve no doubt there will be more twists to come in this story of a house.

by P. Gaye Tapp
photographs by Juli Leonard

The quintessential American interior decorator Billy Baldwin once said, “Great blends of pattern, like great dishes, must be carefully tasted. And constant tasting is what teaches a cook how to taste.”

Martha and Paul Michaels of Raleigh have developed their own taste in just this way, over many years, and in many houses. Today, they’ve achieved a near-perfect mix in their current home, which embraces food, family, friends, and art.

Martha is at the center of it all. She would agree that this latest home is her greatest: Instantly warm and welcoming, while managing to be elegant and refined. Martha can be described in much the same way.

The couple is known for their Southern hospitality, and she is considered an expert cook, so it’s no surprise that the heart of the house is its spacious, state-of-the-art kitchen, where guests congregate. An expansive central living room and works of art throughout the house are focal points; a comfortable breakfast room overlooks a broad covered porch with a dining and sitting area, and a walled garden lies just beyond.

It flows together beautifully, and that’s no accident, says Paul, an attorney with Michaels and Michaels P.A., whose confidence in his wife’s design sensibility is absolute. “Martha’s the daughter of an architect. She has a great eye for both art and design,” he says. “She knows what she likes instantly and has a great sense of proportion.”

Martha and Paul both have art in their DNA and strong ties to the arts community here. Paul has served as a founding member and first chair of the Friends of Arts N.C. State board of advisors and president of the board of advisors of the Friends of the Gregg Museum; Martha is a long-standing member of the Raleigh Fine Arts Society; and together they support the N.C. Museum of Art, CAM Raleigh, Artspace and other local arts organizations.

More than 25 years ago, when they married, the couple found sit-down dinners for the family essential, and today Martha’s daughters are quick to get in the kitchen and share their inherited love of cooking. With the addition of spouses and children, today a family meal means cooking for 16.

Though not formally trained, Martha knows what makes a good cook great: The best ingredients from local markets and good planning. She also has a few “must haves” for the kitchen – two dishwashers (to eliminate clutter) and a gas range with six burners. Recipes from the collection of cookbooks filling the kitchen bookcases provide inspiration.

Paul knows his way around the kitchen as well. Soon after marrying, the pair embarked on cooking classes designed for couples, and today Paul is often sous chef. On the rare night Martha wants to order a pizza, he always makes the call.

Of their many established traditions, a favorite is hosting a New Year’s Eve dinner at their beach house. The guest list is the same each year, and so is the menu. Martha prepares osso buco, which is one of her specialties, and Paul chooses the wine.

Entertaining at home 

When entertaining at their Country Club Hills home in Raleigh, their courtyard garden is the perfect setting. There is a sense of order to the green square of lawn surrounded by neat brick walks.  While the grandchildren most often use it as a racetrack, there are benches along the path for those more interested in taking in the view, which includes a bocce court – the site of many spirited games. This is the second house they have built with a court after falling in love with the game at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

The house’s piece de resistance, however, is not outside, but the art throughout the house they’ve has collected over the years. Although they didn’t go about purchasing art for the sake of collecting, an impressive collection is precisely what they’ve created, and it has served as a fitting backdrop for receptions they have hosted for the Gregg Museum and the Raleigh Fine Arts Society.

Major purchases are agreed upon, and while he is drawn to the abstract, she prefers the figurative. A sun-washed gold and sienna palette dominates the first floor of the house and provides a seamless backdrop to the canvases, but the effect is not contrived. Describing their taste in art as homegrown, the two have confined most of their purchases to works by North Carolina artists. “Knowing so many of the North Carolina artists has been a bonus,” Paul says. Among them: Maud Gatewood, “with her dry humor and ever-present cigarette,” Thomas Sayre, whose “brawny work belies his artistic sensitivity,” and Mark Hewitt, who has “wonderful stories about creating his pottery.”

Paul and Martha Michaels have not stopped collecting, but they’re running out of room. The beach house is full of canvases, too, and they often have to give something up in order to add something new. Their children are often the beneficiaries, which makes it all come full circle.

It is apparent that for this couple, the canvases they own are a part of their lives and imbued with memory. Art is not just a matter of taste, it is a matter of home and family.

by P. Gaye Tapp
photographs by Leslie Baker 

Today a formerly derelict Queen Anne-style Victorian house on the corner of North Blount and Peace streets has a new lease on life. Holy Trinity Anglican Church has painstakingly renovated the 114-year-old home for its new administrative offices, and its rector, the Rev. Dr. John Yates III, calls the project a work of redemption.

“We have taken something battered and broken and redeemed it,” he says.

The 350-member church purchased the historic Jordan House in autumn 2010 and began exhaustive renovations, completed this summer. The project involved a corps of parishioners, led by project manager Jim Baker of Fountainhead Design & Build and general contractor Howard Moye of Moye Construction.

Their work has received accolades, including an Anthemion Award from Capital Area Preservation for “outstanding dedication and commitment to excellence in historic preservation.”

Built about 1898 for Dr. Thomas M. Jordan, a distinguished Raleigh physician, Jordan House originally sat on the corner of North Wilmington and Peace streets. It was moved in 2008 to its new corner as part of Blount Street Commons, a six-block project that aims to revitalize the city’s 19th century historic houses and create a vibrant new neighborhood in downtown Raleigh.

“Everyone involved knew without a doubt that this was the right place,” Yates says. “A home in the center of the city.”

When Holy Trinity took ownership, the house’s exterior required a thorough overhaul, and the interior needed to be gutted. It had been divided into five apartments, some original floors were badly damaged, fireplaces had been bricked in, and almost all of the millwork needed to be replaced.

Moye Construction set out to restore the original configuration of the house and was able to preserve much of the original flooring and some of the original doors, creating new custom millwork to match the original throughout the house.

Two graceful front parlors and a library were restored to their original locations downstairs, anchored by a large central hall. A kitchen and new back porch were added to the rear of the house. Upstairs, five large offices were created, while the third floor remains unfinished.

The job of furnishing the almost 4,500-square-foot house relied entirely on volunteers and donations. With the help of a committee of interior designers – again, all parishioners – Jordan House was decorated with striking antiques, traditional furniture, and sisal rugs. With the church’s premise of “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” all was directly donated or purchased by church parishioners, or donated by friends.

The house’s newly elegant interiors are now matched by the its restored façade. After returning the original narrow clapboards to pristine condition, the house was painted a crisp ivory and the woodwork a bright white. With a tall, slate-shingled, hipped roof, an expansive veranda that wraps the front and side of the house, and an octagonal pavilion with a bell-curved roof that hugs the corner, Jordan House has been restored to much of its original glory.

Light-filled haven

The finished house is flooded with natural light, just one of the rector’s favorite aspects of his new home away from home. He calls the library “a haven in the midst of the busy house,” and it’s a favorite of parishioners as well, who have created a borrowing library in its built-in bookcases.

A large chandelier illuminates the round mahogany table in the center of the room. The table came from the Tucker House several blocks south on Blount Street, “where my grandmother Sue Tucker Yates grew up in the early 20th century,” he says. Another cherished space is his private study tucked away upstairs and furnished with an old lectern and pulpit restored by a parish member. The sturdiness of the old furniture grounds him. “I like to stand at these heavy oak pieces, working on my feet with laptop and open books all around, while stealing glimpses out the west-facing window, overlooking the rest of our property and an endless commotion of construction vehicles.”  Holy Trinity has purchased the property next door and plans to build a church there.

In the meantime, Jordan House is the site of countless meetings and church functions. “The house is never quiet – and we are grateful for that!” Yates says.

As he and his parishioners anticipate breaking ground on their new church campus, Yates says his view of the capitol dome to the south, the tower at Broughton High School due west, and the beautiful red brick of William Peace University across the street keeps his mission in focus. “This view serves as a constant reminder of the vibrant city in which we live and of the extensive opportunities we have to serve.”      

by P. Gaye Tapp
photographs by Jerry Blow

Near the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Harvey Street, a stately Georgian-style house seems far removed from the traffic running along Raleigh’s busy main artery. Brian Wordsworth says he chose the house for its history and location: Private, yet close to Raleigh’s thriving city life and Five Points’ nostalgia. Enfolded by its landscape, the house stands much as it did when built, though outbuildings have been added over the years. Recently the interior has undergone a 21st century transformation, one that managed to preserve the house’s original character.

Built in 1931, the house was designed by prominent North Carolina architect William Henley Deitrick for Frank A. Daniels, the influential newspaper president, publisher, and later chairman of the board of  The News & Observer Publishing Company. This landmark gem of a house caught the imagination of Rocky Mount native and businessman Brian Wordsworth when it came on to the real estate market in 2010. He says he could see his family living there.

Memories past and present

Frank Daniels Jr., who grew up in the house and lived there as an adult, has many memories of the place. When he was a child, his grandfather, Josephus Daniels, lived in a stone mansion right up the hill, one that made for the best sledding in Raleigh, with a run right down to Glenwood Avenue.  During World War II, the Daniels family spent evenings in front of the coal-burning fireplace in the living room, the warmest room in the house. Daniels says his parents, his sister, and his grandmother all read there, while Frank Jr. read The News & Observer his father brought home each night from work. The radio was in the back of the house, leaving the living room for their reading ritual. In 1987, Daniels and his wife Julia moved back into his childhood home.

They added an outdoor pool house and exercise studio to the grounds, and celebrated their daughter’s marriage with an outdoor reception. The pool was covered with a floor, for tables, and there was dancing on the terrace. The Danielses hosted Christmas parties in celebration of the N.C. School of the Arts’ performance of the Nutcracker, and special holiday decorations – such as a leafless tree strung with thousands of white lights, one of the first in the city – filled the house and property.

Fast forward to the present: Wordsworth, his wife Kris, and their two children have nestled into the house after extensive renovations. Strains of Allison Krauss’ mellow vocals could be heard on the morning I visited the new Wordsworth family home, and the ambience was distinctly modern. Wordsworth says he wanted a house where his family and friends could kick back in every room, and though there are formal notes in the house, there is no off-putting formality. In his view, “making a house a home is providing all of the attributes for ease in entertaining young and old; a place guests feel comfortable and enjoy.”

Making it happen

To make it a reality, Brian called decorator Margaret Nowell, who had helped him with six previous design projects. She remembers Brian’s originally describing the house as “move-in ready.” Some 20 months of extensive renovations later, the house he envisioned is a reality.

Nowell has achieved a familiar hominess here, with comfortable chairs and ottomans covered with tactile fabrics in shades of blue, grey and beige throughout the house, and soft paint colors in the same colors. “Every house needs a great story,” she says, referring to the house’s original 1931 blueprints, which now hang in a central spot, a nod to the house’s history. Builder Dillon Rose, Jr. brought in more than 90 sub-contractors, vendors, and suppliers from California to Ireland to achieve a seamless transition between the new and old house. Rooms were refurbished, floors replaced, baths added and enlarged, spacious closets carved out in bedrooms, and a broad covered porch added off the back of the living room and dining room. Nowell, Rose and Brian Wordsworth were eager to give me a guided tour. As we walked through the house, it became clear they share the same passion for the project and get along famously.

 The new old house 

An energy – a rhythm – flows through the house. Henry Ward Beecher said “home should be an oratorio of memory,” an appropriate sentiment for a house in harmony with past, present and future.

A rustic table and chairs for outdoor dining sit just outside the dining room, and comfortable chairs for conversation are arranged strategically. A set of drums occupies the studio by the pool, and a big screen TV is ready for football-watching in the pool house, though I suspect on the weekends, most of the televisions in the house are tuned in to the family’s favorite team. It’s not unusual for friends and neighbors to drop in to catch the game and the at-ease hospitality. There is an outdoor kitchen that’s been the site of a school party; nearby is a new carriage house built and furnished for weekend guests. In the most formal room of the house, the living room, a television hangs where a picture might have been when Daniels was young, and it’s turned on and tuned in. That’s no accident. The house may have been built in the 1930s, but today it has state-of-the-art technology in every room, with lighting, security, television and sound all accessible on a touch screen. As Daniels points out, much about life today has changed – improved, even – while it fundamentally stays the same: Families gather and memories are made. It’s an essential part of making a house a home.   

A family photo from Frank Daniels Jr. captures the house in the 1950s on a snowy day.

by Liza Roberts

photographs by Dustin Peck and Mark Petko

When he set out to design a new home for the chancellor of N.C. State University, Marvin Malecha knew the house had to serve many masters.

It had to be a comfortable home for chancellors and their families. It had to work as an efficient events venue for frequent receptions and fund-raisers. It had to represent a long-standing tradition of design excellence for the university at large; it had to showcase North Carolina materials and workmanship for the state; and for everyone concerned, the new house had to foster community.

For inspiration, Malecha looked to “the old Southern home tradition” represented by gabled rooflines, a center hall and hearth, a big staircase into an entrance foyer, a traditional floor plan, and a heart-of-the-home kitchen. And then he gave it all a contemporary tweak.

VISIONARY
Marvin Malecha, dean of the design school at N.C. State, left, led the design team. He says he was inspired by famed architects Carlos Scarpa, Sir Edwin Lutyens, and Hugh Newell Jacobsen.

“I wanted to bring in a traditional constituency, but in a modern way,” says Malecha, who is the dean of the university’s College of Design.

The result, finished in late 2011, was dubbed “The Point” by its biggest donor, Ann Goodnight. Malecha describes its style as “familiar modern.” Constructed almost entirely of North Carolina materials, it is contemporary but warm, marrying comfortable elements like fireplaces – there are nine – with elegant attributes like a vaulted kitchen ceiling, natural light from every direction, and space for significant art.

The Point’s 5,400-square foot ground floor has the layout and the feel of a spacious home, but the real living goes on upstairs, on the 3,100-square-foot second floor. That’s where the three-bedroom living quarters are, complete with a small kitchen, comfortable sitting room, screened porch, and laundry.

It’s all of a piece, but also separate, as it needs to be. Because downstairs may be a lovely showplace, but it works hard, too. When it’s time for an event (and that can be several times a week), the ground floor doubles as a streamlined, efficient venue. What looks like a substantial, mahogany-paneled column in the center of the home opens up to become an elegant bar; the wide first landing of the curving staircase becomes a natural podium from which Chancellor Randy Woodson and his wife Susan can welcome guests. And a catering kitchen tucked away down the main hallway comes to life. With enough room for a fleet of staff to prepare large seated dinners or hors d’oeuvres for hundred-plus guest receptions, the set-up also includes 12 lockers to hold staff belongings, plus a shower and dressing room. That leaves the gleaming showroom of the visible kitchen for guests to enjoy. Outside, the grid of grass that leads to the house is ample parking in disguise: it’s grown on structured soil and resists wear and tear.

“The Point serves a real purpose,” says Susan Woodson, “It’s not just a grand place for people to live in.”

GRACIOUS HOSTS
Chancellor Randy Woodson and his wife Susan, an artist and gallery owner, moved in to The Point in late 2011. Susan Woodson worked with the project’s interior decorator, Judy Pickett, to help make the house a comfortable home. Together the couple host frequent receptions and university fund-raisers.

The Woodsons, who opened the home before Christmas to the entire university community, are warm and gracious hosts. Everyone from janitorial staff to professors streamed in The Point’s double doors on that particular occasion, making Malecha, for one, particularly proud.

“It’s intended to be the kind of house where you would want to go, where you would feel at ease and welcome,” he says. “It belongs to the N.C. State family. It’s fun to see it alive and at work.”

Malecha’s team included architect Ellen Weinstein, builders John Rufty and Randy Beard, interior designer Judy Pickett, and landscape architects Thomas Skolnicki and Derek Blaylock. Armed with a $3.5-million budget raised from 70 private donors, the team built The Point on a piece of Centennial Campus land overlooking Lake Raleigh. It took less than 18 months.

They managed to make the house not only multi-dimensional, but also green. Manufactured from sustainable materials like brick and poplar, heated and cooled with 13 geothermal wells, buffered with six-inch walls of blown insulation, the house is LEED-certified as energy efficient, an accomplishment for a residence of this size. Malecha says they also built the house to last, and he envisions a 200th anniversary celebration for the university at The Point in 75 years.

HEARTH AND HOME
Malecha wanted a hearth in the entry foyer to welcome guests, bottom right. There are nine fireplaces and seven chimneys at The Point, all intended to bring human dimension to a grand place. The stone floor and ample wood of the foyer are also intended to make people comfortable as they enter.
CHURCHLIKE
The high, vaulted cypress ceiling of the kitchen mimics a chapel, one filled with daylight from every compass point. The modernism of the house is glimpsed in fixtures like the angular faucet and pendant lights, but its roots in tradition are visible in the hand-hewn steel hood over the stove. Oak floors here and throughout the house come from the N.C. State forest in Western North Carolina.

BEFORE and AFTER: The two-bedroom house on the site had to be dismantled when the Martins learned that a root from a tree in front had compromised the foundation. The finished renovation glows at twilight.
photo at left, courtesy Tina Govan; photo at right, courtesy James West/JW Productions

by Liza Roberts

photographs below by Juli Leonard

When Steve and Sujitra Martin decided to move to Raleigh from Charlotte in 2006, they knew what they wanted in a house here: Something small but efficient, in a walkable, downtown neighborhood.

The house they built with the aid of local architect Tina Govan is a revelation of contradictions. Small but expansive; practical but quirky. With an abundance of daylight, simple lines, and natural materials, the house is bright and airy, with the spatial sense of a much bigger place. Its cunning design turns nearly every wall into a cupboard; squeezes benches and desks into staircase landings and window wells; fits a pantry under the stairs; tucks a TV and piano into built-in nooks; hides utilities behind pocket doors; and manages to pack three bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen-dining-living room, sewing room, attic loft, and sizable finished basement into 2,700 square feet.

BUILT TO SCALE Maya, her father, and a favorite bear, above, admire the model of their house that architect Tina Govan made before it was built. The roof comes off to reveal tiny furniture inside.

It’s just what the Martins – and now their daughter, Maya, 6 – had hoped for. “How do you get more use out of a room? Tina (Govan) gets how to do that,” says Steve Martin, 46, who works at Square 1 Bank in Durham. Sujitra Martin, 47, who manages the couple’s rental properties near N.C. State, says the result is satisfyingly efficient: “I don’t think that there’s any space here that we don’t use.”

Govan says she was happy to work with clients who truly embraced the idea of a small house. “Some people think they want to live small, but they don’t,” she says. “And a lot of people think of needing rooms and hallways, but you can define spaces in other ways.”

The Martins didn’t need convincing. In the previous decade or so, the couple, who met at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, had lived in eight different homes in eight different places – ranging from Minnesota to Australia, in locations rural and urban, and in big houses and small. This time, they knew: No large piece of land to tend, thank you; no massive square footage to heat and cool; no remote location. With a baby on the way, a bungalow-style house close to downtown (and to Steve Martin’s then-job at RBC Bank) sounded ideal.

Sujitra Martin, who grew up in Thailand’s small Uttaradit Province, also wanted a house that reflected the minimalist architecture of her childhood home. Cooled by cross-ventilation and anchored by a central courtyard, that family house in Thailand encouraged an indoor-outdoor style of living Sujitra hoped to replicate here.

Govan suggested the Martins consider renovating a modest two-bedroom, one-bath house on Holden Street in Oakdale, a small neighborhood of several square blocks sandwiched between Mordacai and Oakwood. It was a neighborhood in transition at the time, Steve Martin recalls, which gave him some pause, but “the transition was underway, and Tina knew it was a good neighborhood.” Govan lived up the street, so her knowledge was firsthand.

Sujitra Martin, marooned in Charlotte on bedrest, put her faith in her husband, in what she could glean from Google Earth images, and crossed her fingers.

When they realized the original house was structurally unsound, they enlisted Habitat for Humanity to take it apart piece by piece for resale, and then started from scratch. Outdoor space was thoughtfully organized to make it easily accessible; architect Govan created a roof deck to replicate the Thai house of Sujitra Martin’s memory, featuring a large center patio with a structure on either side. Geothermal heat and solar panels were installed, and local, often reclaimed, materials were used throughout. Southern yellow pine paneling and beams, reclaimed long leaf pine floorboards, poured concrete floors and minimal decoration were designed to keep it simple.

JUST RIGHT Steve, Maya, and Sujitra Martin use every inch of their house. This window seat in the sitting area of their main room doubles as a bed for visitors and a reading nook for Maya.

Today, they’re all happy, including Maya, who finds endless fun in the house’s unexpected nooks and crannies, window-seats, swings, and lofts. Steve Martin has his own home office space, built into an upstairs landing. The roof deck, patios, and expansive windows feel like home to Sujitra.

And they’ve found that 2,700 square feet is plenty of room for parties and overnight guests. Last year, the Martins say, 13 of Sujitra’s relatives from Thailand stayed with them at once, and everyone had somewhere to sleep, whether it was a futon in the loft, one of the window-seats, or an actual bed.

“My mom and sister love it,” Sujitra says.    

Proud heritage
Monica and Dalip Awasthi in their living room with 5-year-old twins Sheila, left, and Neil, center, and 4-year-old Eva.

by Liza Roberts

photographs by Mark Petko

For Monica and Dalip Awasthi, art is the glue.

It helped cement their relationship early on, and it links the two of them – and their three young children – to the Indian cultural heritage they share.

The Awasthis collect contemporary Indian art, which makes them unusual not just for Raleigh, but for anywhere. Sometimes abstract, often allegorical, modern art from India has only recently attracted a market outside its borders. In the last seven years, the global market for Indian art has grown quickly, according to the Arts Trust, from sales of about $50 million in 2005 to about $375 million.

That’s thanks to collectors like the Awasthis. When Monica, an Indian-American and Raleigh native, now 37, met Dalip, now 48 and a native of Pune, India, his collection of Indian art made a big impression. One painting in particular had her transfixed.

Missing its mate
Golden Flute #15, a depiction of Krishna by Shuvaprassana Bhattacharya, hangs above the Awasthis’ bed. The couple hopes to find its match.

“That’s the reason I married him,” she says today, gesturing with a smile to the painting that hangs above their bed, Golden Flute #15, Parallel Faces, by famed artist Shuvaprassana Bhattacharya. “I had to have that painting.” Now they agree that they have to have its mate. Originally shown as one of a pair, the Awasthis regret that they let the other one get away.

“We have a tendency to buy art in pairs,” she says. It’s symmetrical that way, but also romantic. They have two Jaysari Burman watercolors flanking the front door, one that tells about the life of the Indian gods and goddesses, and one about the life of an average man, from birth to death. They have two tempera paintings by the revered artist Jamini Roy, one a depiction of an Apsara, or female spirit of the clouds; the other a landscape. And they have two mixed media canvases by Rini Dhumal that face each other across the living room: One a woman holding a flower, and one without.

Many of these works depict Hindu gods and spirits in some fashion. Explicitly in the Roy painting, with Apsara; and abstractly in the Bhattacharya, with Krishna playing the flute. Others show native landscapes or city scenes, like the charcoal rickshaw drawing that fills one of their living room walls.

Dalip, a former Lehman Brothers investment banker, became interested in contemporary art from his homeland about 10 years ago, when he had the opportunity to invest in Aicon, a New York gallery dedicated to work from the subcontinent. What seemed like an intriguing investment idea fed a passion that has only grown. And it’s one the couple is keen to pass on to their children, 5-year-old twins Neil and Sheila, and 4-year-old Eva.

Growing up surrounded by the art and food and traditions of their heritage, these young Raleighites are accustomed to the spicy flavors of their mother’s and grandmother’s home cooking, their father’s favorite contemporary Indian music, the rhythms of Indian dance, and the idea that art is a central part of life.

On a recent chilly spring day, as the kids ride their bicycles in loop-de-loops around the living room, family room and kitchen, their parents don’t flinch about the art on every wall or their high-gloss cherry floors. Dalip takes a moment to brew a pot of chai from leaves grown on the tea plantation his brother manages in Assam, and the Awasthis take a moment to reflect:

About the unlikely paths that brought the son of a leading Peshawar family – Dalip’s maternal grandfather was president of Edwardes College near the Khyber Pass, his mother was an early Bollywood movie actress, and his father served in the Indian Navy – together with the daughter of a Cary architect (her mother) and engineer (her father), who are also originally from North India. And then brought them here to Raleigh, to live and raise a family.

They can’t think of a better place to do it, and that has a lot to do with the vibrant Indian community. “We’ve seen this area change so much,” says Monica. “There’s been an explosion of different cultures. Not just the Indian culture, but any culture.”

Nearly every weekend, there is an Indian festival of one kind or another nearby, they say; at least 60 Indian restaurants dot the region, and nearly a dozen different Indian organizations promote the culture. Their Hindu temple is important in the Awasthis’ lives, and so is the art that surrounds them.

Luckily, they tend to see eye-to-eye on that art. Both say they want to fill their dining room walls – empty at the moment, awaiting the right thing – with black-and-white charcoal sketches. And they agree that at the very top of their art wish list is the missing mate for their prized Shuvaprassana Bhattacharya.

For a couple who likes to keep things symmetrical, a match for the painting that brought them together sounds like fate.   

by Liza Roberts 

photographs by Nick Pironio 

Some people build beach houses or mountain houses to get away from it all. Tina Shanahan built a barn. Home to two mares and a filly, the custom barn is the realization of a dream Shanahan, 54, has harbored since she was a horse-crazy girl of 7 in Alaska. It’s not her only dream come true: After 25 years in the Navy Reserves, the registered nurse will be promoted to rear admiral in October. And after years of riding, she won the world championship in the American Paint Horse Association’s Masters Amateur Junior Hunter Under Saddle, and is now ranked No. 2 nationally in the category.

All of that is impressive, but none of it makes her as happy as this: A gleaming new bells-and-whistles barn that now has pride of place beside the North Raleigh house she shares with her husband Kieran, N.C. Secretary of Public Safety. Their 12 acres include a pond, wooded trails, and lighted riding ring, which she happily shares with neighbors on horseback.

“It’s all I will ever need for a lifetime of happiness,” Tina Shanahan says of the barn and the horses who live here. They are American Paint horses, distinguished by their varied markings, and prized for their athletic ability, easy temperament, and versatility. They need to be versatile to achieve the titles Shanahan has earned, which require strength and finesse in the ring in English and Western styles.

She is a petite and cheerful woman, boosted a few inches by the cowboy boots on her feet, made from the skin of an ostrich she shot herself.  “After a stressful day at work, or returning home from Navy duty, the barn is my Prozac… One whiff of the horsey smells of sweet hay and pine shavings, and the world just drifts away.”

Shanahan’s Navy duty and busy life kept her far too busy to consider keeping her horses at home until last year. But when she saw a window of opportunity, she took it. “I didn’t really need a plan, as I had built the barn in my mind for many years,” she says. “I knew exactly how I wanted it laid out.”

She wasn’t about to leave anything to chance. Shanahan interviewed several barn builders before finding her “barn-building soul mate” in Danny Gautier of Sanford. Then she became her own contractor, ordering lumber, brick, cement and supplies. She had to fit it all in around frequent travel as a full-time commanding officer for the Navy Reserves, and kept tabs on every detail.

“It started as a small little project,” says Kieran Shanahan, enjoying a sunny late afternoon at the barn recently. “But when Tina does something, it’s all the way.” Not that he doesn’t enjoy the end result, which includes a “man cave” for him upstairs, complete with pool table, dart board, table shuffleboard, bar, and large TV. He also has a new competition horseshoe pit in front.

Tina Shanahan wanted her husband to like the barn, and also knew exactly how she wanted the barn to look: like their house, which the couple built in 2002 and which sits 50 yards or so away. Like the house, the barn is made of red brick with white columns, lit by identical exterior light fixtures. The similarity is enough that when the barn door is closed, it looks like a small replica.

When it’s open, it’s not necessarily a barn in the way that most people think of a barn. It’s not dusty, or musty, or dim; it’s bright and elegant, spotless, and fully equipped. It’s more a “house for horses,” as builder Gautier dubbed it, than a barn: “Taj Ma Barn,” he calls it.

It’s bright because it’s flooded with daylight from wide doors on either end, and overhead lighting tucked into the recesses of a tray ceiling. It’s elegant thanks to custom stalls made by a steel fabricator in Aberdeen, wood paneling, and spacious dimensions. And it’s tricked out with goodies such as overhead misters for cooling down hot horses; a tack room with kitchen; a fireproof hay room; and a bathing and grooming stall made with the kinds of waterproof walls used in car washes. A retractable-roof shavings shed makes dump-truck deliveries of horse bedding a cinch.

The barn works hard, but it’s clearly a place meant to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, too. Kieran Shanahan says he reads the paper every morning on the barn’s wide front porch, and the tack room’s kitchen makes it easy to serve visitors a glass of wine or snack.

“Every night after dinner we go there and just hang out with the horses,” Tina Shanahan says. Every night when she’s not reporting for duty, that is. “When you love something, you find the time.”  

by Ann Brooke Raynal

photographs by Mark Petko

There’s a house in North Raleigh that is haunted by happiness. Haunted by ghosts, possibly, but certainly haunted by the happiness of its owners. Built in 1890, the Lassiter Farm House has seen births and deaths and scores of children grow up under the limbs of its ancient oak trees. A neighborhood developer saved the house from demolition in the late 1990s, and in 2005 Sherry and Kyle Corkum purchased the historic property, beginning their own journey of preservation and delight.

The couple, who live with son Grant, 6, and niece Kristen, 17, learned early on that their house was no stranger to children of all ages. Built by C.J. Lassiter, founder of Lassiter Mill, it was home to his 13 children before the family moved to “the big house” next to the Lassiter Lumber Mill at Crabtree Falls. Built in 1910 and now owned by Saint David’s School, that lovely clapboard home graces the corner of Lassiter Mill and White Oak, anchoring the campus.

The Lassiter Farm House, for its part, is a classic “H” shaped Victorian farmhouse, consisting of twin A-roofed wings connected at the center. Now, as then, the house features clapboard siding, a tin roof, and Victorian gingerbread detail. A wide staircase rises up from the center hallway, and light streams in from rear windows. Most of the original woodwork and molding has been preserved: visitors immediately notice lovely keystone archways on the main floor, original tongue-and-groove wainscoting, and substantial chair rails. The house was built entirely of yellow pine, a material that resists termites and made it possible for the house to be so completely salvaged.

That salvaging was done by Henry McNair of Creedmoor Partners, who developed the Traemoor Manor neighborhood around the house in the late 1990s. He decided to preserve and update the structure instead of tearing it down to make way for something new. Amber and Roger Allison bought it in 1999, and being history buffs, painstakingly collected articles, pictures and information about the house.

They also corresponded with Lassiter’s descendants. One of his granddaughters, Jane Lassiter Freeman, wrote to them: “Ours was a very large and close family. I am what I am today because of their influence on me. Hard work was expected and given by every single member, and family loyalty and devotion was ever present.” After visiting the remodeled house, Freeman remarked on the skill of the preservation effort. “It was a great thrill for us to walk through your beautiful home and to see how much of the original house and footprint remain. It means a lot to us that someone really cares deeply for the old home place.”

The Corkums felt that way from the start. Before they found it, the couple was living in a rental house in Cary. Kyle, 55, had recently moved his business to North Carolina, and they were hoping to find a house they loved. “We wanted something charming, something unique. I love stonework. I love fireplaces,” says Sherry Corkum, 45. One glance at photos of the Lassiter Farm House online and Kyle knew it was the one: “I’ve found our dream house!” he called out to Sherry, who raced up the stairs as fast as her pregnant body would allow. “He had found it. I agreed instantly.”  Within 24 hours they had seen the house and made an offer.

A real estate developer, Kyle Corkum knew what he was looking for. “The architectural integrity is what caught my eye. The many gables, angles, and the proportions – they were authentic; new homes so rarely get those details right in the way that older homes can,” he explains. “When we walked through the front door and saw the large foyer with the turned stairs, enormous fireplace and cathedral ceiling, we knew we had found our dream home.”

Dreams keep past alive

Whether it is the knowledge of the many generations that have gone before, or whether a ghostly presence actually exists, living in a house as old as the Lassiter Farm House can certainly influence the subconscious. “I’ve had dreams about a certain man walking down the hall to talk to me,” Sherry says, “and when I described this person to a friend in the neighborhood, she said it sounded just like a relative of hers who used to live in this house.”

Amber Allison, who lived in the house before the Corkums, also describes a house full of mystery and ambiance. “Mostly I just had dreams,” she says, “but the front bedroom above the living room always had a wonderful feeling to it when I lived there, and this room was also a draw for a dear friend of mine when she visited.” That friend says she had a supernatural encounter with an elderly female apparition in the room: The ghost of Mary Lassiter, perhaps?

Sherry Corkum appears completely at ease about sharing her house with ghosts, 6-year-old-boys, teenage girls, and the rest of Mother Nature’s creatures. Her favorite spot in the house is the front porch, the better to hear the birds. “I love going out there with a cup of tea to sit in the rocking chair and listen to the birds. It’s their home, too, and every year we get so many birds’ nests! Even in my wreath on the front door. So I make the whole family go in the house a different way so they can raise their babies.”

The house continues to evolve in ways both planned and improvised. When a large tree had to be removed from the front yard, the Corkums’ son asked if they could turn it in to a playing field. Now, “he and my husband play ball out there almost nightly. Kids in the neighborhood will wander up to play soccer. I love having a yard kids want to play in!”

The late 1990s remodel added a two-car garage and bonus room above. The exterior color was changed from white to a creamy buff color, and dark green shutters were added as well. A stone patio behind the house connects the space between the two wings and provides a sheltered nook for an outdoor living room. Off to the side, a hot tub beckons.

The Corkums have plans to make additional changes to the outdoor space this summer. Justin Ballard, a friend who was a lead carpenter on the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition television show, is helping to design a screened porch off the downstairs master bedroom, a covered outdoor seating area for extra shade, and a fire pit for roasting marshmallows.

The loss of two large oak trees is the reason for the new, shaded family space. One of the downed oak trees still had had a wooden ladder nailed into it by the Lassiter children. “Of course the tree had grown so much since then, the steps were halfway up the tree, high overhead,” Sherry says. Kyle brought in a remarkable tree house from one of his other properties to help make up for the loss. A narrow ladder leads up to a child’s paradise, where stripped tree branches crisscross to form the walls of a fort. A long, wavy slide offers a quick exit, and a hammock is suspended underneath.

After a tour of the tree house, Sherry slithers down the slide into the dappled shade of giant magnolias. “It’s the easiest way to get down, she laughs. “And also the most fun.”    

by Liza Roberts
photographs by Geoff Wood

When Dan Forest, newly sworn-in as lieutenant governor of North Carolina, walked into the stately Victorian house with the wrap-around porch on Blount Street that was to be his office, he was amazed.

The Hawkins-Hartness House, built in 1882, was in a state. Rooms hadn’t been painted in 30 years. Electrical wires snaked around in tangled knots. Furniture was frayed; hardwood and linoleum floors were in disrepair; dangling fluorescent lights strobed disconcertingly. “Is this really where you want to bring constituents?” he asked himself. “This is the people’s house.”

Still, “it’s got good bones,”  he recalls thinking.  “You could do something with it.”  The house, built by Raleigh residents Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Hawkins, was sold in 1928 to Secretary of State James Hartness and his wife. In 1969, it was acquired by the state and used as the State Department of Local Affairs and the Department of Historical Preservation before becoming the office of the lieutenant governor in 1988.

An architect by trade and the former senior partner of North Carolina’s largest architectural firm, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting of Durham, Forest knows something about good bones.

But he quickly learned that bones or no bones, “doing something with it” would be no simple task. There wasn’t any state money to fund a renovation, much less a simple paint job.

Lt. Governor Dan Forest

So he did what any self-respecting politician does instinctively: He asked for donations. Not donations to himself or to his party, but to the state-owned house: flooring, painting, countertops, appliances, window shades, cabinetry, lighting, antiques restoration, new furniture, even project management. He asked North Carolina businesses he knew from his architecture days, companies like furniture and office interiors company CBI, Cary Reconstruction Co., Charlotte Flooring, Kitchen and Bath Galleries, Mannington Commercial Carpet,  Absolute Stone,  and Budget Blinds. They all said yes.

“The project took on a life of its own,”  he says. “Once people saw what we were doing, they got engaged. They offered things and did things I would have been embarrassed to even ask for.” State facilities workers chipped in, too, repairing faulty wiring and plumbing.

Forest also rolled up his own sleeves and got his wife and four children to roll up theirs, too. On weekends they left their North Raleigh house to come downtown and paint, clean, and polish woodwork, sew curtains, hang light fixtures, and turn bathtubs into small settees with handmade upholstered cushions. “We put a lot of sweat equity into it. We got creative.”

Five months later, the work was done, unveiled with a May 20 reception for 300, the first of many events Forest has since held in the restored house. He wants to show it off: “It’s the best office in state government now.”

With its central four-story tower, elaborate roofline, and deep covered porch, the 8,200-square-foot Victorian – a close cousin to the governor’s mansion a few doors down – now offers a compelling combination of restored grandeur with a modern aesthetic. Contemporary chandeliers illuminate the house’s original dining room table, now restored and in service as a conference table. Upstairs, the jolt of contemporary furniture is in keeping, Forest says, with the spirit of the house’s own Eastlake Victorian style.  “It’s a more modern version of Victorian,”  he says, “so it makes sense to take a modernist approach upstairs,” where carved wainscoting and sleek Knoll chairs make crisp neighbors.

The furniture and the rest are a boon for the house and the state,  Forest says.  “I’m just amazed that people would step up to do this. Good-hearted people who want their state to look good, and put their best foot forward for no return.”

Forest now has his eye on several of the other large, state-owned, elaborate Victorians in various states of repair that line Blount Street. All spruced up, wouldn’t they together make a terrific consulate row, he wonders? Countries around the world are eager to take part in our state’s growing economy, he says: Perhaps they’d undertake a Victorian house renovation as part of the bargain? An architect-turned-lieutenant-governor can dream.

The intern room features sleek furniture, fresh paint, and restored floors. The bright-green radiator outside the room was painted by the lieutenant governor. Carved railing posts, detailed wainscoting, high ceilings, and wide refinished floorboards make a refined backdrop for modernist furniture in the upstairs hall, bottom left. A carved bannister post features the simpler decoration common to the late Queen Anne Victorian style known as Eastlake. Forest and his family cleaned and polished the house’s woodwork, bottom right.

by Liza Roberts

photographs by Lissa Gotwals

Brooks Bell and Jesse Lipson knew what they wanted, and they had a list. Their new house had to have a fenced yard for their terrier, Theo, and a screened-in porch. A freestanding bathtub, radiant heat, a shower big enough for two. And copper pipes.

Busy professionals – Lipson helps run ShareFile, the business he founded and sold to software maker Citrix, and Bell is CEO of her self-named online testing firm – the couple wasn’t willing to undertake a renovation to meet their idiosyncratic needs.

“We approached it from a very logical perspective,” Bell says, ticking off items one-by-one as they canvassed the market.

On the verge of putting in an offer on a townhouse near Blue Ridge Road, Bell suddenly spotted an enticing listing for a ’50s-era ranch in West Raleigh near Banbury Park. It was “wildly out of our price range,” she says, but appeared worth investigating. It took one step inside to make up their minds: “We were hyperventilating,” she says. “It was our dream home.” (They decided to look the other way on the PVC pipes).

Designed by renowned North Carolina architect F. Carter Williams in 1951, the house had been freshly renovated. It had a new gourmet kitchen and saltwater pool, and had been awarded the 2007 Sir Walter Raleigh Preservation Award.

But Bell and Lipson aren’t the first couple to move into their dream house only to find that it might need a tweak or two. It wasn’t until they’d lived there for a while, for instance, that they realized the grass surrounding the pool was more often muddy than manicured. They ended up deciding on a full-scale overhaul of the whole exterior landscape.

And their first forays into interior design were a bit hit-or-miss, resulting in a haphazard array of earth tones, cream-colored furniture, and a giant white lacquer chair in the shape of a wobbly egg.

Five years and a few interior designers later, the couple is now happily ensconced in a luxurious, surprising house designed with comfort and entertaining in mind. “We ultimately ended up changing every surface, color, and texture. It takes a lot of good design to make it work,” Bell says. That design, ultimately, came from Durham’s Heather Garrett, who started out two years ago with a brief for the master bedroom and ultimately re-did the entire house.

Garrett brought in bursts of saturated color like an acid-green leather love seat, a Chinese red mirror, and a marine blue wall. To an otherwise sleek midcentury aesthetic, she introduced organic textures like pebbled wallpaper, a patchwork rug made of hide, and grasscloth-covered cabinets. Driftwood forms the base of a glass coffee table, and round forms are everywhere. Mirrors, lamps, and bowls bring in curvy shapes, as does a large sculpture of felt boulders. A chandelier of glass orbs and a mirror with a peacock-feather-style fringe shine in the living room.

Garrett also figured out exactly how the couple used the house, and made it work. She took an unappreciated television out of built-in niche above a fireplace and put twisty strips of balsa wood in its place: instant art. She turned a guest room into an airy poolside cabana that can still house guests when it needs to.

And in subtle ways, she made things sparkle. Chrome pendant lights in the kitchen are perforated with star-like pinpricks; a geode shimmers on a side table. One cushion in a uniform velvet pile glints with the texture of reptile skin. There are mirrors in every room.

It all makes for a fitting backdrop to the couple’s collection of contemporary art. Canvases by local artists Jason Craighead and Shaun Richards and sculpture by Thomas Sayre keep company with works collected on their travels. The whimsy of an oversized, commissioned painting of Theo the dog overlooks the sitting room/dining room/kitchen thoroughfare of the house, ensuring none of it gets taken too seriously.

Knowing that they’re here to stay has been liberating, Bell says. “It’s helped us invest emotionally in Raleigh,” she says.

“I think it will be our forever house.”

by Liza Roberts

photographs by Mark Petko

Like so many of life’s most important things, Lisa Sykes’ dream house came when she wasn’t looking for it.

What she wanted instead were rugs for the North Raleigh house she and her family of four had no plans to leave. A call to Raleigh decorator Ann Nicholson led from one thing to another. Nicholson mentioned she might be about to sell her own North Raleigh house, and next thing Sykes knew, she was on its front step.

“I put my hand on the doorknob, and I said, ‘This is it, Kassell. This is it.’” Kassell, her husband, went with it.

“It had the look of perfection…but not perfection,” Sykes says. “Then the kids fell in love with it.”

It’s not hard to see why.

The French-inspired colonial, built in 1992, is traditionally beautiful, but has an unusual, fairy-tale charm. Perched high above a quiet, winding road. It has a balcony that overlooks gigantic front doors. Perfectly clipped boxwoods form a diamond-patterned parterre. Inside, the floor is stenciled, the halls are wide, and French doors bring the outside in to nearly every room.

Heating vents are oversized, scrolled, wrought-iron beauties; doorknobs are antique; ceilings are coffered. Nifty elements like pocket doors, a tucked-away wine cellar, a butler’s pantry, hidden back stairs, and other nooks give it an old soul. An expansive back yard has crannies of its own.

When the Sykeses first saw the house, its old-fashioned kitchen had a refectory table down the middle long enough to seat 20. Floor-to-ceiling tapestries hung in hallways on either side of an open, central living room. Fine French antiques and weathered farmhouse furniture both looked right at home.

Today, many of those furnishings, bought along with the house, remain, and it’s now home base for the Sykeses and their children, Lily, 13, and Nora, 9, plus Kiki the cat and Lucy the Australian shepherd.

Though the house is spacious, it doesn’t have many rooms. They all live in all of them. The central living room is lovely but practical, a good spot for movie-watching on the TV hiding in a built-in cabinet, or enjoying a fire.

The kitchen’s cozy sitting and dining area is everyone’s favorite place, and its extraordinarily long table, now covered by a slab of marble, is where they cook and do homework. It’s also where Lisa and Lily put together the idea to start a Raleigh chapter of Teens for the Cure, an offshoot of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

Lisa, whose own mother died from breast cancer when Lisa was 17, was inspired to start the group last spring, when her daughter reached the same age she was when her own mother became ill. “I wanted to create something bigger than us,” she says. Together the two helped raise $9,600, and have plans to stage a fund-raising fashion show in April.

Their efforts are not only an homage to Lisa’s mother and Lily’s grandmother, they’re also grounded in reality.  “I want Lily to know that she can make a difference,” Lisa says. “She can help to find the cure.”

In a house that celebrates the beauty of times past – but invites its owners to also live in the here-and-now – they’re in a good spot to take on a project like this one. Lisa, for one, says she never takes her health, her family, or her home for granted. “I love everything about it,” she says. “It’s timeless.”

by Jesma Reynolds

photographs by Mark Petko

Christmas is a big deal in the White household. Living in what is commonly known as “the gingerbread cottage” on White Oak Road, John and Ashley White and their sons John and Jack spend a lot of time preparing for the season. It starts with finding the biggest tree they can, usually one 14 to 15 feet tall, to fill the generous living room of what was probably once a log house in the country.

They have their favorite Christmas tree vendor on Six Forks Road, who knows to put his largest Frasier fir on reserve and who also helps deliver the massive tree through the double French doors in the dining room since it won’t make the turn through the front. Once the tree is in place, the task of decorating begins.

The boys string the lights on the tree, using a long pole to reach the highest branches. Homemade ornaments mix with the more elaborate ones. There are always plenty of candy canes to serve as treats for passers-by – nearly  all are gone by Christmas morning. Placing the angel on the top requires standing on the substantial stone mantle of the fireplace. It is a privilege now shared by John and Jack, who take turns each year.

This will be the Whites’ fifth Christmas in the gingerbread cottage. And this Christmas tree tradition is one that has been cultivated by living in such an incomparable home.

Ashley has always had an affinity for the order and classical details of Georgian-style homes. So when this 1928 house came on the market, she was reluctant to consider it. However, one visit with her family left no room for debate. “The boys thought we could live like the Swiss Family Robinson. I took a little bit longer to convince.”

While the log walls and hiding places galore do seem to beckon adventure, Ashley wondered how she was going to hang paintings on a curved wall. But eventually, she considered that the elements that made the house so unorthodox would also make it a memorable place for her family.

“What could be more boy?” she says of the house. So she embraced the challenge and turned to designer Cynthia Schoonover in Greensboro to help lighten the place up and create an English country feel. Mother-in-law Polly White also helped. “She has the most beautiful home and exquisite taste,” Ashley says.

Fabrics were selected to bring in the colors of nature. Tans, golds, burnished reds, and greens from Ashley’s love for plants and orchids create a soothing, cozy environment. The warm white walls lend an airiness and create continuity between rooms. The rich wood of English and French antiques adds depth and sophistication.

It is an environment that is ripe for lingering. And one that seems perfectly suited to shaping lasting memories, no matter the season.

The owners were committed to creating a seamless transition to the outdoors. A generous screened porch with a fireplace and ample terrace connect to the grounds. photo courtesy Jim Sink

An 18th-century vicarage door is the wine cellar’s entrance.

by Jesma Reynolds

photographs by Nick Pironio

A house on four lush North Raleigh acres has the presence of one built ages ago, when master builders and craftsmen devoted years of their lives to a singular project.

The homeowners, who built the French-inspired home a mere four years ago, would have it no other way. After 16 years in Raleigh, the couple was ready for the authentic house of their dreams.

They found the perfect property, then enlisted a local team – designer Jo Ewing, Williams Realty and Building Company, and interior designer Carson Clark – and described their vision. They admired elegant, well-built homes from the ’20s and ’30s as well as those they’d seen  in Europe and wanted to achieve that same substance. They wanted attention to detail, and they wanted to use the finest construction materials. Their new house also had to be warm and embracing, a comfortable place for the two of them and their children, two who are grown and one a teenager.

“Everybody in the project wanted it to be the best it could be,” says project manager and owner Joel Williams. Two years of design and planning, then another two years of construction is what it took. That might seem unfathomable in today’s age of Extreme Home Makeover and 24-hour builder blitzes that celebrate the ability to finish projects in ridiculously short amounts of time.

But this couple had time on their side. There were no hard and fast deadlines, no urgency to complete. Their emphasis instead was on getting it done right. Williams credits the slew of talented contractors – “an exceptional group” – who collaborated to make sure the project was well thought-out and executed.

To walk through it today is to witness the realization of the homeowners’ dream. The house looks like what it is: A timeless, thoughtfully-created home built to last. The feeling it evokes is unmistakably French. Clark and the couple looked to French architectural tradition to inspire paneling, ironwork, and other elements. The house also has the patina of age, thanks to the incorporation of several antique objects and architectural elements collected over the years, many of which served to influence the design of certain rooms.

A marble mantle found by the owners on trip to Paris and an antique trumeau mirror found by Clark set the tone for a paneled living room, a grand space that required three paint colors and a glaze for its seafoam walls.

Nestled in the corner of the living room is a custom banquette befitting a grand salon. Covered in linen velvet, the cord-wrapped back frame is a French upholstery detail. Paneled glazed seafoam walls frame the marble mantle and antique trumeau, both of which determined the spatial planning and aesthetics of the room.

A leaded glass window on the second floor landing frames a Juliet balcony. Antique flooring laid on the diagonal alleviated the need for thresholds between rooms.

Substantial oak doors from Tyecliffe Castle, a Palm Beach estate, were acquired at auction and used in several areas on the first floor. One with a Gothic arch now serves as the door for a red-lacquered, leopard-print-carpeted elevator. Beams from eastern North Carolina tobacco barns are used in the family room, taking away the need for crown moulding. Upstairs in the master bath, a pair of French brasserie panels above matching vanities bring their own elegance.

On the ground floor, a massive 18th-century vicarage door – complete with an oversized key that looks like something straight from a fairy tale – serves as portal to a wine cellar and a notable wine collection. The homeowner is particularly enthusiastic about this feature, offering up the giant key to a visitor. After a few jiggles and twists, the lock releases. “What’s behind the door is really secondary,” he says.

On the main floor, designer Clark points out the kitchen and back hall’s antique parefeuilles tile floors. Originally used as subroofing in France, the earthy terracotta hues of the tiles create a unique warmth.

The owners’  love of natural elements is evident throughout the house. Stone of many kinds – from honey onyx to various marbles – is everywhere. “The movement and the way the light plays off of it…it’s like artwork from God,” the owner says.

Walls are Venetian plaster, a refined material with a polish and sheen of its own, requiring the time and expertise of skilled craftsmen to create. Marble dust is mixed into liquid plaster, then applied in multiple thin layers. A vigorous burnishing gives a gleaming, polished look; wall corners are rounded.

Many of the rooms’ floors are reclaimed oak, laid in a herringbone pattern in the more formal areas, and varying width in others. A custom iron work balustrade elevates the grand staircase into a work of art.

Details like these and fine craftmanship at every turn are evidence of the many hands that worked to realize the owners’ dream. Upon completion of the house, the homeowners invited everyone who’d helped in its creation and their families to see the finished project by hosting a barbecue. With more than 50 guests in attendance, the homeowner stood to thank each worker individually, noting that person’s distinct contribution. “It was a day of great joy and celebration,” he says.  

Formal parterres of boxwood and roses, planted by Oxford Green, surround an antique fountain.

photographs by Nick Pironio

When Kim Shirley and her husband Graham decided to move out of Five Points to build a house on a spacious corner lot in West Raleigh, they wanted light, efficiency, and a home better suited to their lives as busy empty-nesters.

They also wanted whimsy, which is clear as soon as a visitor stands before the house’s arched front door.

“I would call it a little bit storybook, with gothic elements,” Shirley says, “and cottagey.” It’s also contemporary. The unique mix makes for daylight-flooded, efficient rooms with personality. Shirley, a designer for Dixon Kirby Homes, brought years of experience to the job of creating a home to suit herself, her lawyer husband, and their 23-year-old twins.

But the wooded, quiet neighborhood they chose and have come to love was new to her.

“I’ve been in Raleigh for 18 years, and I’d never heard of this street,” she says. “We got here, and all of a sudden, we can hear birds, not Glenwood traffic.” The couple took two years to think about the house they wanted and to draw up plans. Because no one had lived on the lot for years, it was wildly overgrown. Under tangled vines, the couple found hearty azaleas and camellias. When they cleared out debris and overgrowth, a burbling creek emerged.

The Shirleys tucked their 3,500-square-foot house to one side of the picturesque setting, allowing streaming daylight and the sounds of nature to fill its rooms.

Shirley’s design touch inside is a light one and thoughtful. Floors made from irregular oak reclaimed barn wood bring the outdoors in, and add a rustic counterpoint to sleek windows, light fixtures, and hardware. “I tend to like things that are classic with an updated twist,” she says.

Charm and practicality go hand-in-hand here. Kim and Graham both work from home part of the time, and each has a place for that. The upstairs is largely the kids’ domain, so the Shirleys can live almost entirely downstairs when the twins aren’t visiting. The living spaces are modestly proportioned and spare, allowing design elements like windows and light fixtures to shine. “We don’t have any dead space,” she says. To a visitor, it’s all wonderfully alive.  -L.R.

by Liza Roberts

photographs by  Nick Pironio

Donna and Jim Belt believe in wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept of beauty that celebrates imperfection. When the former Tokyo residents moved into a downtown Raleigh condo, they combined earthiness with refinement, symmetry with imbalance, and Japanese treasures with American practicality.

With the help of Raleigh interior designer Lee Tripi, the couple installed bamboo floors, a streamlined fireplace, a minimalist bathroom, and space for art they’ve collected over decades living abroad.

“I like that really clean look with a central focal point,” says Donna Belt, 60, who owns Raleigh’s Spiritworks, an art and writing studio. “But I also want some nature.” In a 2,000-square-foot apartment on the fourth floor overlooking Glenwood South, nature comes in the form of an irregular barn beam for a mantle. It comes in potted plants on a spacious corner balcony, and in the raw silk of Japanese textiles Belt uses to dress tables and herself.

“I like that flash of history, of imperfection,” she says. The shogun standing just off-center on the mantle is one example. The mantle itslef also adds sabi, or timeworn authenticity, to the streamlined, wabi-like simplicity of the fireplace. Other pieces from the Belts’ travels – they also lived in London and the Netherlands for Jim Belt’s career as a business executive – create interest in an otherwise pared-down space.

The busy empty-nesters say getting out of a house and into a condo is liberating. “I love it that it forces you to use all of your space, and use it wisely,” Donna Belt says. She credits interior designer Tripi with helping the couple to do that.

Tripi “is able to take space and think about it differently,” Belt says. “I have my own taste, and I used to think: Why would I need someone to tell me what I like?” But Tripi’s unique design for the couple’s bathroom – an entirely open room, incorporating a shower – made her a believer. “I never would have conceived of this completely different use of space,” she says.  Not that living creatively is a new concept for the Belts. Jim Belt is the co-founder and president of the Raleigh citizen group Downtown Living Advocates, and the couple is involved in community projects including Artsplosure and BEST Raleigh, which puts art up in public spaces.

They believe Raleigh is a hotbed of opportunity. “You can create anything you want in Raleigh,” Donna Belt says. “We found that here, we can make a difference. It’s what we never had in London or Tokyo.”

Jim Belt and his granddaughters, Genna Losurdo, 5, and Brielle Losurdo, 7, take full advantage of the condo’s large outdoor patio. The girls live in North Raleigh with their parents Cara and Anthony Losurdo, and visit their downtown-dwelling grandparents regularly.

Donna Belt loves textiles she collected in Japan, like this Obi sash, used here as a table runner. She took lessons in Tokyo on the ancient art of Ikebana, or flower arranging, and enjoys creating traditional arrangements like this one.

The kimono sculpture is a piece by artist Ellen Kahn.

The couple’s sleek bathroom is one open space, with a floating wall to divide the shower from the rest. Designer Lee Tripi “is very Zen and minimalist,” Donna Belt says. “He’s able to put things together, and it’s just like: ‘of course.’ ”

A charming porch off the kitchen is a regular place to lounge and provides natural overflow for entertaining.

by Jesma Reynolds

photographs by Catherine Nguyen

Anyone who’s gone through purchasing a home knows what a big and sometimes agonizing decision it can be. But when the current owners of this gracious property caught wind of its upcoming sale, the wife’s reaction was swift and sure. “I told our Realtor we would make an offer sight unseen.” Familiar with the house and its uniquely private setting, she knew it offered what the family of five had been seeking – a connection to the outdoors, space for entertaining, and an elegant but livable floor plan.

When she and her husband eventually saw the house, they were even more convinced that this was the one. Situated on several quiet acres inside the Beltline and adjacent to Crabtree Creek, the stately home was surrounded by a lush and established yard. The variety of trees and shrubs spoke to the wife’s love of flower arranging and gardening. And though the interior needed some updating, the bones were solid and the possbilities endless.

After a year-long renovation that entailed moving walls,  adding light to dark interiors, and creating several outdoor living rooms, the family moved into this generous space. The solid front door was replaced with a multi-paned one that is flanked by side lights and a transom. Heart pine floors on the main floor add an earthy glow. And paintings by notable North Carolina artists collected over the years lend refinement and interest.

The wife’s love of art helped determine the kitchen layout. Knowing she wanted a favorite painting by Kate Worm to define it, she worked with designer Diana Browning and builder Joel Williams to plan placement of sinks, appliances and storage. Rather than fill the walls with upper cabinets, they focused on sturdy tables and islands to anchor the space, giving it a decidedly European feel. The range of interior colors is muted and natural, inspired by the foyer’s wisteria-patterned wallpaper. “I’m drawn to a loose palette in art,” say the homeowner. That translates into a painterly composition of soft greens, watery blues, persimmons and ochres.

Entertaining is effortless no matter the season. The heated saltwater pool is a favorite for the teenage set.  Access to a bucket of bathing suits and a gathering space under a covered porch with ceiling heaters (and a flatscreen) truly makes it a four-season place. Upstairs, the ample kitchen and bar flow onto another outdoor porch that offers expansive views of the grounds, where various deciduous and evergreen specimens flourish, including rare mountain laurel shrubs that were brought by a next door neighbor from the western part of the state years ago.

Along with the natural creek below the property, several fountains create a tranquil respite. “I wanted the outdoors to come in,” says the owner.   

The dining room features two works on paper by local artist Jason Craighead.

In the living room, a painting by North Carolina artist Scott Upton reflects light and adds warmth. The homeowner says she often works at the desk here with her laptop in the morning.

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed
and every morning revealed new miracles.
-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

by Jesma Reynolds

photographs by Catherine Nguyen

For more than two decades, Greyson and Garland Tucker have been working together to shape their Raleigh garden into a series of wondrous spaces. It has been a labor of love, inspired by literature and by trips to England’s famous gardens. Over many seasons, the couple has created a garden with elegant proportions and sensibility, one that is full of beauty in every season. It has played host to many memorable events – Easter sunrise services, wedding breakfasts, ceremonies, receptions, and classical concerts.

When they began, the Tuckers’ spacious back yard had established trees and shrubs, and though portions of it were overgrown, Greyson, a master gardener, knew she could work within its existing framework. A grove of Eleagnus seemed to be the perfect area for a walled garden, one that would be near invisible from other parts of the yard. That private aspect had a special appeal: When she had measles as a child, Greyson says her mother read her The Secret Garden, which influenced her desire for her own secret garden someday.

As timing would have it, just as the Tuckers were about to embark on the project, 19th-century handmade bricks became available from the demolition of a relative’s downtown warehouse. Garland recalls that about 20 dump-truck loads were deposited on their front lawn, and after unsuccessful attempts to find someone to help, he began the labor-intensive, solo task of cleaning the rubble from each brick, and then transporting them all, one wheelbarrow-load at a time, to the back yard. It took an entire summer, two hours every evening, to complete the job. “Every great gardener needs a source of cheap labor,” Greyson chuckles.

With materials on site, the couple enlisted the help of architect John Hitch to help design the secret garden’s surrounding wall. They wanted to incorporate an archway entrance and unique brick details like pointed coping and rounded edging along the top of the wall. They had photos from their travels to help illustrate their vision. “We didn’t want it to look like a fort,” says Garland, “and we wanted it to be structurally sound.” The final design included a dovecote in one corner, creating a pleasing focal point that also houses garden tools and a sink for cutting and arranging flowers.

Finding someone to install sharp-cut, steep-pitched slate tiles was difficult until the couple made the serendipitous acquaintance of an English roofer working at Chatham Hall in Virginia, where one of the Tuckers’ daughters was attending school. He said he’d be able to make the challenging cuts required on the corners of the hexagonal roof. His one requirement for taking the job was afternoon tea, so Greyson dutifully complied, serving him every day he worked.

Greyson designed the border garden to mimic the spacing and waves of color found in English perennial gardens. Through trial and error, she determined which plants would grow best in this area, making adjustments so that something would bloom every season. She recalls poring over garden catalogs to select appropriate plants since few were available here at the time. Today, a mix of perennials, annuals, deciduous shrubs and evergreens provides texture and color throughout the year. “Fall is my favorite time,” she says.

When the walled garden was complete, the couple delved further into the process of transforming their entire back yard. Again inspired by their travels, Garland constructed a walkway to the west of the walled garden that gently slopes downward, following the natural contours of the property.

An allée of hydrangeas flanks the path of patterned cobblestone and stone. The composition is framed by a woodsy arch of Lonicera fragrantissima, more commonly known as “first breath of spring,” making a stunning connector to the lower yard. It was another summer’s worth of labor by Garland, done again for the “sheer joy of it.”

“It puts you on a high working with nature,” says Greyson. Her profound love of gardening is shared with Garland. Though today the couple works outdoors together, there was a time, Greyson recalls, when the children were small and the two would have to take turns gardening. “We would fight over who would cut the grass and who would watch the kids,” she laughs.

A six-foot-wide front door pivots to open, taking its sidelight window along for the ride.

photographs by Nick Pironio

When North Carolina Museum of Art director Larry Wheeler told Walter last winter how excited he was about the latest renovation on his ’60s-era modernist house in Chapel Hill, the work had barely begun. A visit to the glass-walled home he shares with his partner, designer Don Doskey, required maneuvering around drop cloths, imagining museum-quality art on walls scraped down to studs, and believing in the vision the two men shared: A place for art, for friends, for an inside-out embrace of nature.

“This was the house nobody wanted,” Wheeler joked. Today, after a series of renovations including the massive one just completed, it’s a house anyone would covet. Thanks to a raft of Raleigh architects and contractors, Doskey’s interior design, and the couple’s ever-growing collection of art, it’s a showplace. It’s a home that expands and contracts depending on what’s required, easily filling easily with dozens of friends and colleagues to celebrate a visit from New York artist Mickalene Thomas one day, for instance; comfortably shrinking to the minimal needs of two on others.

Getting this house there wasn’t fast or easy. Wheeler agreed to tell Walter about the experience in detail, and in his own words:

Larry Wheeler and Don Doskey in the foyer with a Taveres Strachen neon sculpture that spells out the words “You Belong Here.” It was a milestone birthday gift for Wheeler from friends.

I was chatting with acclaimed novelist Lee Smith at a summer party in Hillsborough in 1997 when she revealed that she and husband Hal Crowther were trying to sell their house in Chapel Hill – on a one-acre wooded lot a mile from downtown. Worth a look, my partner Donald Doskey and I agreed.

The hilly setting on Cedar Street was spectacular; the house not so much. Don said that it reminded him of a double-wide trailer. Yet the house in its simple form and ample space on two levels had great bones, clean lines, and multiple references to mid-century modernism, from whence it sprang in 1964. It had real potential. Don, an ingenious interior designer, and I, a design and art nut, bought the place for a great price and immediately began to allow the house to speak for itself.

Eight stages of major renovations and four episodes of landscape architectural improvements over 17 years with the involvement of three architects, primarily Louis Cherry, and four landscape architects, primarily Walt Havener, have produced a house in its present set of vibrations.

The point, of course, is that for a home to become a living entity, it takes time and patient observation, imagination, a collection of exceptional ideas, and most of all, a vision that embraces the best qualities of form and space. Don guided the process, seeking the early advice of the architect John Terence Kelly of Cleveland, who worked with Buckminster Fuller on the design of the geodesic dome.

John Kelly suggested that we change the entry from the living room to a large foyer made out of the existing dining room, create larger windows facing the woods, and open the flow among the five primary rooms on the main level. The vocabulary began to be established for openness to the outdoors, clean lines, and comfortable, gracious flow.

A wide deck that runs the length of the house provides a tree-house like setting for reading the Sunday papers or hosting large groups.

Don and I soon invited our friend Louis Cherry into the conversation. Reinterpretation of modernism is his brand, and he loved the challenge of tackling our project. Don insisted on a master plan, which Louis provided — not that we could do it all at one time. In an early stage, we added a cantilevered deck/terrace at the entrance that runs the length of the house. It is preceded by a Japanese garden enclosed by a wall separating the house from the driveway and entry garden. Mahogany hardwood floors in the living/dining area came next, along with rusted Corten steel (à la artist Richard Serra) facing on the fireplace. A renovated master bath and adjacent dressing room had been recently completed.

A new kitchen was the big project for 2008. Louis, Don, and I designed a reform of the existing kitchen based on the sanctity of the continuous line, maximizing natural light, and minimizing the usual kitchen ephemera. The result, built by Durham contractor Jeremy Farber, was a beautiful streamlined open setting for cooking, entertaining, and hanging out.

For a couple of years, Don and I discussed the potential for creating a media room/library out of the guest bedroom adjacent to the living room. The goal was to open up the primary living/entertaining spaces to each other and the outdoors. Enter Louis. His plan called for the aforementioned changes, a new but smaller guest bath, and the addition of a streamlined wall of windows between the living/dining area and the entrance deck.

Paper sculptures of athletes liven up the kitchen, where a marble take-out box sculpture by Peter Glenn

Who could build it? This is a recurring dilemma for us who insist on meticulous attention to detail and exceptional craftsmanship. I was spoiled by my role presiding over the building of the new west wing of the North Carolina Museum of Art, designed by Thomas Phifer.

After interviewing several contractors, Louis suggested a new firm, the Raleigh Contracting Co., and its affiliate arm, the Raleigh Architecture Co., founded in 2012 by Robby Johnston, Craig Kerins, and Taylor Medlin, all of whom were star architecture students and proponents of the modernist aesthetic. They were keen to take on our house — with the provision that they could impose their design mark, as well. Agreed.

With Don standing guard, the group laid out a plan to slice two interior walls in the entry away from their adjoining walls in order to create views into adjacent rooms, make a skylight out of polished black steel, and handcraft a six-foot-wide pivot door out of polished and rusted steel to make a muscular and dramatic entrance.

Raleigh Architecture, likewise, designed a rusted and shaped Corten steel surround for the door and wall of windows. This architectural element integrated windows, doors, and the face of the house while bringing a reddish contrast to the charcoal black exterior. The polished steel motif was carried into a 20-foot beam in the living room and door and window surrounds. Craig Kerins also designed and made a steel table to frame the living room sofa and steel surfaces for side tables in the library. A floor-to-ceiling window in the new small bath frames a view to a side garden while adding a bit of voyeuristic tension, and the book-matched marble slabs surrounding the shower, which Don insisted on, became an unexpected ta-dah.

Shelves in the upstairs hall hold an ever-changing display of art.

While the art selections have been primarily my choices, the interior design of the house has always been overseen by Don. The dining room is distinguished by vintage 20th-century furniture, including a rare art deco dining suite made by Romweber, featured in the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair; a Robert Fitzjohn-Gibbons side table and an orange lacquered Parisian table from the 1920s; along with a Cameroon beaded tribal stool table from the early part of the century. Knoll sofas and chairs by Pfister from the 1960s and a contemporary chair by Philippe Starck anchor the living room. A 10-foot-long sofa designed by Don, a custom Stark carpet, and hammered-silver paper by Donghia on the slanted ceiling define the space of the new library/media room.

The collection of art is the result of years of responding to uncontrollable impulses and includes local and regional artists and artists of international stature. Among the artists represented are Jaume Plensa, Donald Sultan, Anthony Goicolea, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Zanele Muholi, Carlos Quintana of Cuba, Alex Soth, Hank Willis Thomas, Angel Otero, Vee Speers, Alex Prager, Tom Hunter, Taj Forer, Stacy Lynn Waddell, Dan Gottlieb, Carolyn Janssen, and Tom Lopez. A neon sculpture by Tavares Strachan and video works by Michael Itkoff add a contemporary energy.

So there you have it. A house and collections developed over time according to clear principles – with the involvement of many artistic design perspectives attentively curated by Donald Doskey and me. Enjoy the current results.

A massive photographic collage landscape by Carolyn Jannsen fills a bedroom wall.

by Ilina D. Ewen

photographs by Catherine Nguyen

They said it couldn’t be saved.

From the sidewalk, the stately house at 304 E. Park Drive was proof of the adage that looks can be deceiving. Off came the rose-colored glasses once you stepped inside. It was a duplex, split in two. Floors were bowed, electricity was of the knob and tube variety, the plumbing questionable, and historic integrity was stripped at every turn. We counted eight different styles of doors and knobs, a crazy quilt of trim, and original space chopped up to serve as bedrooms. Our contractor said he would have struck a match to the place if we hadn’t had a convincing vision to transform it. I should have recorded the faces of every friend who saw the house in its pre-renovation state. Their bugged out eyes and inflection said it all. “You’re, um, actually going to buy this?” We noted the exchange of sideways, skeptical glances.

A modern kitchen takes the place of several smaller rooms in the original floorplan.

The kitchen pre-renovation.

Suffice it to say we’ve proven the naysayers wrong. Today they are eating their words in our glorious kitchen.

It’s a satisfying result for a house with quite a past. It has stood since 1921 in the historic Cameron Park neighborhood (That’s 94 years old, in case your math is as rusty as mine), carved from the holdings of the Duncan Cameron plantation between 1910 and 1927. The 1942 Hill’s Raleigh City Directory shows that noted local historian Charles Crittenden, once director of the state archives, lived here. An annual award in his name is presented by the N.C. Literary and Historical Association to people who preserve and study the history of our state. As a history major myself, I think his is a fitting legacy to follow.

My husband and I have always been drawn to old spaces, beginning in our first home, a 100-year-old Chicago condo with 12-foot ceilings, picture frame molding, and a marble fireplace. Our sense of place is heightened knowing we are part of a story, leaving our own mark as we respect the architectural vernacular of a neighborhood. We celebrate living in a storied house. I’m not talking about the three floors of living space we enjoy. We’ve yet to see ghosts or hear any spirits murmur in the night, but there is a palpable sense of living in the throes of other families’ commonplace goings-on that weave together to create a blended history. Our family is simply adding another chapter to the story.

The screened porch today works as a three-season family room. It was once the site of a neighborhood daycare.

We follow on the heels of nine Dominican friars who made the house a priory. Some time before them, another sort of fraternal order lived here: the brothers of Sigma Alpha Mu, an N.C. State fraternity inaugurated in 1938. Other characters peppering the home’s history include various N.C. State students, musicians, a mid-life bachelor who apparently lived like a fraternity brother himself, and a woman who ran a daycare in the back of the home. Meditative piano ballads and a book about Buddhism were penned here.

Based on what we uncovered during renovations, the house hosted many raucous parties over the years. The front room that served as a chapel of sorts for the friars had also used as been party central for the brothers of Sigma Alpha Mu.

We found artifacts of all kinds, remnants of previous lives: A poster of Dumbo from the 1940s, a ball cap with the words “Negro Swimming Invitational,” a tattered parchment of prayer sheets. Various odds and ends reflect the trappings and mysteries of an old house – enough blue marbles to fill a couple of jars; a strange teardrop-shaped, smooth stone attached to a burlap string; thick rusted nails from a bygone era that the construction crew cursed at every turn; a veritable storybook of fraternity paintings. The pledge class of 1958 decorated the walls with their nicknames: Fish, Babe, Berk, and Stud. In fact, the sidewalk in front of our house still bears the names of fraternity brothers etched into wet concrete in the 1960s. One of those brothers knocked on our door one day shortly after we had moved in. He had a glimmer in his eye as he recounted some tales of his time living here.

The house couldn’t have anticipated a family of four like ours enjoying its gracious spaces. It was built originally as a duplex. We are the first to make it a single family home. It was our third historic renovation, so we were no strangers to the work entailed in reviving an old house. But this project was daunting. We applaud the North Carolina Historic Preservation State Tax Credit program for making such a massive renovation possible. The 30 percent state tax credit it provided allowed us to save this historic Raleigh home, and two before it.

You can’t build something new to look historic, after all. Character is earned.

The wet bar’s vibrant green countertops are made of recycled glass. The room connects the kitchen and screened porch and provides plenty of storage for the couple’s wine collection and an occassional bottle of home-distilled spirits

The living room, with its its arched windows and sturdy fireplace, acted as party central when the house was a fraternity, and as a “chapel” when the house was as a priory.

Graffiti from fraternity days was uncovered during the process of removing paneling in the living room.