With the kitchen and porch area acting as the core of the family’s home, the rest of the house seems to grow out from it. The floor plan has a just-right feel: open and airy in some spaces, but also cozy and private in others. For example, the pantry includes a welcoming desk and a window for a healthy dose of natural light. It’s far from the dark, closed-off closet idea of a pantry most people have. The thoughtful design takes a small, strictly utilitarian room and makes it about connections and experiences.
"I knew that I wanted to amp up the design within the room, because it is very open to the kitchen,” Zuba said. “There's a built-in desk within the pantry, which you don't see very often, but it's a really great place for my boys to do their arts and crafts or their homework."
These sorts of unexpected moments were top-of-mind for Zuba as the designs came together. She worked with her project team (including architect Beth DeBaker and builder Tom Kenny of Scott Simpson Design + Build) to imbue the home with a bit of wit and personality, leaning into including some unique spaces and features. Take her office door: It’s a 19th century behemoth, salvaged from a house that was being torn down in the Bronzeville area of Chicago. Not exactly what you’d come to expect to be included in a brand-new home.
"I think it's very important with new builds, to find ways to amp up the charm,” Zuba said, “and make it feel a little bit more lived in and some moments of imperfection."
Keeping the home in conversation with the 19th-century peers that surround it doesn’t just happen with the design details inside the house, but on the outside as well. Situated on a leafy block not too far from Northwestern University and Lake Michigan, the home makes for a good neighbor. It takes traditional Tudor styling — think light-color stucco and dark details — and remixes it slightly into a more contemporary twin-gabled look, all while appearing completely appropriate within the context of the nearby homes.
"It was really important to us that it not feel like a brand-new house that just plopped down in this old neighborhood," DeBaker said.
The team was able to up the project’s always-been-there profile in small ways, too, including by protecting a massive silver maple tree in the home’s front yard. That tree became the focal point of one of the project’s most open-and-airy features: the two-story, glass-encased staircase that connects the main floor to the upstairs bedrooms. Featuring Marvin Ultimate Narrow Frame windows, the stairway acts as a bright, light-filled counterpoint to the home’s intentionally smaller moments.
We worked with Marvin Ultimate to create the stair tower so we could stack windows together, and really create this kind of feeling of a wall of glass.”
Beth DeBaker
Architect
But when it comes down to the connections and experiences that make the home what it is, it all comes back to the inclusion of the servery window. Builder Kenny explained: "I've been putting in Marvin windows for 34 years," he said. "One of the advantages of using Marvin is this creative advancement and always designing new things. We really had the opportunity to take advantage of that here."
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