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Photography by Matthew McFarland
[Entryway] Mr. Young made the extra-long bench himself, covering it in real leather and building shelves into the Euro plywood end-pieces. He built the coffee table, too, leaving open space under one side to slide magazines and remotes out of the way, and creating a recess they can fill with sand, shells, or anything else that strikes their fancy.
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The house sat on the market for eight months, while young couples grabbed up all the other Hansel-and-Gretel gingerbreads in South City. This one was just as affordable, just as respectable. But what you saw from the street was a set of aluminum windows and a tall, skinny juniper bush, awkward as a teenage boy who doesn’t know where to stand.
Sam Young, a nurse at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, took one look and shook her head. “No,” she said, her tone kind, even regretful—but firm.
Her husband, Tom, was studying to become a licensed architect; he’d worked long enough at Space LLC to know how much could change. “Let’s at least see the rest of the house,” he murmured, mental wheels already spinning.
With Mrs. Young lagging a step behind, they climbed the concrete steps. Inside the front door, they found themselves in a sort of mudroom, its floor about 6 inches lower than the rest of the main story, which was visible but cut off by a clunky sliding-glass door. Blazing hot in summer, the mudroom promised to be chilly in fall and winter, and its beadboard ceiling had seen better days.
[Dining area into kitchen] The dining table was a castaway the Youngs grabbed at their last apartment; they stripped off the dark, milky stain and found a fine grain. Mr. Young built the bar’s steel frame, curving it into a foot rail at the bottom, then covered the bar’s front in smoky bronze Italian ceramic tiles. For the countertop, he used a plank left over from the new bamboo floor, sealing it with a pour-on resin.
For a fairy-tale house, it was an inauspicious beginning.
The Youngs bought the house in November 2007, but they didn’t move in until spring 2008. By then, Tom and his father-in-law, Joe Fresta, had begun its transformation.
“He lives right down the street, and he was over here with me like every night for six months,” Mr. Young recalls. “We really had fun. The mission of this house was to do all this”—his wave includes the bronze-and-wood kitchen and bar, freshly modern dining and living rooms, and now-luminous, climate-controlled entryway—“on a budget.”
First, they solved the Rubik’s Cube of the living room, which had a nonfunctional fireplace on one wall and two doors on another, leaving no place to put a sofa or a TV. Once the walls were seam less and the new furniture was in place, Mrs. Young brightened up considerably.
Next, Mr. Young traded the old archway—which connected the living room to the dining room, and had little ledges notched on either side—for a clean, squared-off opening with beveled wood trim. Then he knocked down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, and replaced it with a bar he built himself. (“In college, I worked at the architectural shop, and it all came back!”) He sawed through the ceiling, straight up into the attic, and created a walled, triangular space, 17 feet at the highest point. For a skylight effect, he installed a light that shines straight up and bounces down again, softened. “I wanted to open up the ceiling, so it wouldn’t feel small,” he explains.
Except for their new baby daughter’s room, which they painted a tipsy lime-rickey green, the Youngs made all of the walls white. They wanted color to come from their rugs, furniture, and pale, satiny bamboo floorboards. Soon the original stained-glass windows started to sparkle, as light poured into the home’s interior from the cutaway ceiling and the new, tall windows punched into the old mudroom. Mr. Young left its brick wall exposed, but whitewashed it, then covered the new windows with shades, translucent as rice paper.
[Bedroom] Mr. Young hung French doors between the dining room and bedroom. to keep them translucent, like the shade wall in the entryway and glowing, diffused lamplight, he used frosted Plexiglas that cost a mere $100. Then he spent what he’d saved on the hardware.
By the time baby Nina was crawling, the entryway was a serene continuation of the living room, and she could scatter rag dolls and stuffed animals without creating the chaos that trails after small children in tight spaces. Under the front windows, Mr. Young built a square plant ledge: “We wanted to define all the edges plainly and simply.” Over the winter holidays, photos of Nina line the ledge; in the warmer seasons, the room becomes a miniature conservatory, lush with plants.
“What a lot of people looked at as a big problem, I think has become one of the house’s best assets,” Mr. Young says. “It’s a great entry room, and it fills the house with light.”
Resources: Dining room: light fixture: IKEA, 1800 E. McConnor Parkway, Schaumburg, Ill., 847-969-9700; pendant lights: Lighting Associates, 186 E. Kirkham, 314-531-3500; Living room: chair and couch: Crate & Barrel, 1 The Boulevard–St. Louis, 314-725-6380; rug: Good Works, 6323 Delmar, 314-726-2233. Kitchen: hood: The Home Depot, 1603 S. Hanley, 314-647-6050; hood extension: Peters-Eichler Mechanical, 3115 Sutton, 314-647-4023; cabinets: Tops Unlimited, 700 Biltmore, 636-343-0341; hardware: Locks & Pulls Design Elements, 9590 Manchester, 314-918-8883. bathroom: Tile: RBC Tile & Stone, 800-230-8453; faucet and vessel sink: Lowe’s, 1212 S. Kirkwood, 314-835-1779. Throughout: bamboo flooring: iFLOOR, 800-454-3941; JELD-WEN windows and doors: Tree Court Builder’s Supply, 3636 Tree Court Industrial, 636-225-7717. Exterior: house numbers: Peters-Eichler Mechanical
