Building team creates masterful design on 4.5 acres in Wheaton

Oak Park indigenous Laura Christensen and her partner, Mark, crafted their aspiration property during the pandemic on a breathtaking parcel of wooded land adjacent to the Cantigny Golf Class in Wheaton. The Arts and Crafts-style masterpiece they created hearkens back again to Laura’s youthful encounters in Oak Park, the area in which Frank Lloyd Wright and other remarkable architects experimented.

“We had lived in Wheaton for 30 yrs and wished to make the property we had been coming up with in our minds for a long time — and do it on a huge parcel of property since I am a landscape architect and wanted area to plant and appreciate,” Laura says.

The couple and their setting up crew hit that mark and other folks.

“Also, due to the fact I grew up to take pleasure in excellent architecture as art, I recognize that we are definitely living in a piece of artwork,” she says.

Prior to the dwelling was developed, Laura stumbled on a “for sale by owner” indicator on house bounded on two sides by the Cantigny Golf Course. Just before lengthy, the pair was ready to procured it and an additional good deal future door, assembling 4.5 acres of top quality residence.

“We ended up with a Wisconsin escape house without having owning to depart town!” she recalls.

“I liked the clear strains, wonderful woodwork, massive home windows and other details inherent in a Craftsman house. I certainly think about this sort of house to be the quintessential ‘homey, cozy home’ and wanted to build just one,” Laura claims.

At the time they had the land, they moved ahead to assemble a collaborative group of gurus to make it a actuality and, the good news is, experienced purchased most of the resources they essential in advance of COVID strike, building developing materials a lot more scarce. Mike Sparks of Sparks Architects Inc. of Elmhurst designed the house, Brad Drendel of Brad Drendel Builders Inc. of Naperville was the builder and Joan Kaufman of Interior Organizing and Style Inc. in Naperville did the inside design and style.

“The team constructed the Christensen residence from the ground up, beginning in September 2020 and it took about a yr to finish,” Kaufman claims.

The amazing 4,200-sq.-foot house features a 1st-floor learn suite a spectacular, cathedral-ceilinged spouse and children place with a stone fire flanked by window seats and topped by statement-creating ceiling rafters a pretty condition-of-the-artwork kitchen area showcasing alder cupboards and attractive Versailles-patterned tile work a mild-loaded 3-year space from which to get pleasure from Laura’s gardens and considerably more, which includes a basement wine home.

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The kitchen area functions a striking blue agate backsplash on the range and blue Alaska granite counter tops.&#13
– Courtesy of Chip Haines Pictures & Pictures&#13

Exclusive touches abound in the home, these types of as a kitchen countertop with a stay edge top created from a large, 120-yr-previous oak the house owners were being pressured to reduce down from the property a personalized wood dining booth in the kitchen area, produced by City-Living Design in Chicago custom made artwork glass cabinet doors in the kitchen, created by Kaufman and fabricated by Alpine Stained Glass in Plainfield a&#13
placing blue agate backsplash around the vary and blue Alaska granite countertops Arts and Crafts-design mullioned windows all through and a porcelain kitchen ground with tumbled edges, built to glimpse like serious stone.

“A lot of very little mother-and-pop businesses in the Chicago area were aspect of the course of action and we preferred that,” Kaufman says.

The full development course of action was all about depth and nature mainly because Laura, as a landscape designer, is greatly interested in well being and wellness, Kaufman provides. Only nontoxic and no-VOC components have been picked and all of the cabinets ended up left in a local climate-managed warehouse to “off-gas” for a month in advance of staying installed in the house. Tile was set up on the floor of the kitchen area to far better maintain up to the Christensens canine. William Morris nature designs seem on drapes, pillows and even on the stairway runner.

Even the bogs are putting with the master bathtub featuring a free of charge-standing soaker tub and a roomy stall shower with a huge sheet of colorful quartzite as its back wall.

“The Christensens let our workforce design almost everything, from the big photograph down to trivia like the knobs on every cupboard doorway,” claims Kaufman. “We pooled our resources and know-how to make this household distinctive and the Christensens definitely appreciate it.”

Laura Christensen concurred. “We are experience like the home turned out even greater than we envisioned. A group of us contributed our exclusive expertises and established a fantastic household,” she suggests. “It is so tranquil listed here and we experience like we are dwelling outside, even when we are inside our home.”