Completed client project. The owners came to us with a custom, two-story house in Lake Wildwood, built in 1999, with about 3,549 square feet, four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms. Its raised foundation, white siding and metal gable roof framed a split-level layout: the lower level held the kitchen, family room, laundry and three-car garage, while the main living area rose above them to take in the valley and mountain views. The children did homework and grabbed snacks around the lower-level kitchen, with the dog moving through the same busy route, and that arrangement left little separation between cooking, play and getting in from the garage. The owners wanted the whole home to work better for family life, while keeping the upper great room as a quieter place to gather.
The photographs on this page are from the Designed & Curated portfolio and show finishes we have used on other projects. They are not photographs of this house.
My first question was how the children moved between the kitchen, family room and garage, and what the cook needed to see from the stove. On site, we found the kitchen and family room on the lower level beneath the elevated great room, with the garage and workshop area at ground level. The raised foundation and exposed supports under the deck made that relationship especially clear. I grounded our decisions in the rooms and visible construction we found at this house, rather than treating a floor plan as a substitute for being there.
The kitchen sightline and the lower-level route
We followed the children’s everyday path from the garage door through the kitchen and into the family room, then kept that route open. The island already had a sink, and the owners wanted the kitchen to stay connected to family activity, so we kept the sink and its plumbing in place. The house relied on a well and septic system, and the raised foundation made the existing service paths part of the decision. We traced the kitchen drain and planned the work around its existing location instead of extending plumbing into a new route.
The stove needed a clear view into the family room, without making every surface part of one undifferentiated space. We kept the kitchen’s hard-wearing slate and tile underfoot where spills and traffic were most likely, and used the existing wood and carpet to preserve a softer feel in the adjoining living areas. We organized the kitchen storage around cooking and serving, rather than turning the island into a general drop zone. The children had a defined place to work in the family room, within the cook’s sightline but outside the main route from the garage.
The family room remained visually connected to the kitchen, but its seating and lighting made it feel like a separate place to settle. We specified focused light at the granite counters and gentler light for the family room, so homework and food preparation could happen at the same time without relying on one bright overhead setting. That separation also helped with sound: conversation and kitchen activity stayed downstairs, while the upper great room remained a retreat from the busiest part of the house.
The two levels and the view-facing rooms
The upper great room had a cathedral ceiling, open beams, large multi-pane windows and direct deck access. We kept those defining features intact and arranged the lower-level work around them, rather than pulling the family spaces upward into the view room. The central multizone heating and cooling, ceiling fans and wood-burning fireplace already supported different conditions across the two levels. We used lighting to give the kitchen and family room their own evening character without changing the house’s established systems.
The laundry stayed near the garage, where its cabinets and ground-floor location supported the family’s daily route without sending laundry through the kitchen. We also kept the three-car garage and workshop connection useful for coming in with gear and moving between household and ranch tasks. Across the bedrooms and bathrooms, we retained the existing room arrangement and focused the remodel on the shared spaces that carried the most family traffic.
The home’s 20-acre lot, cross-fencing, mature oaks and open pasture shaped how we treated the exterior. Redfin’s Lake Wildwood sold-home data reported 161 single-family closings, with a median home size of 1,980 square feet on a 15,682-square-foot lot and an association fee for 73% of homes. This house’s custom scale and rural setting were quite different, so we kept the design decisions tied to the owners’ routines and the actual rooms rather than applying a standard layout.
The wraparound deck and the exterior boundary
The dark metal roof, white siding, black deck railing and wraparound deck gave the house a strong, simple exterior palette. We kept the roof and siding, and developed a more sheltered, comfortable use of the deck without obscuring its valley and mountain outlook. The site had broad sun exposure and exposed under-deck supports, so we included shade and softer screening among the exterior decisions, and kept landscaping and planting choices suited to the fenced ranch setting. The FEMA flood map placed the house in Zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard, and the site’s well-drained ground supported the way we approached outdoor use.
Before exterior construction, painting or landscaping proceeded, we checked the Lake Wildwood Association’s Environmental Management Office approval requirement. The Association identified the Redbook as its Rules and Regulations and the Bluebook as its Restrictive Covenants and By-Laws; we used those documents to check exterior materials, colors and parcel-specific building envelopes, and confirmed that the exterior changes required prior approval (Environmental Management Office guidance, Association governing documents, recorded setback and envelope information).
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