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Oak Park native Laura Christensen and her spouse, Mark, designed their aspiration home for the duration of the pandemic on a spectacular parcel of wooded land adjacent to the Cantigny Golfing Program in Wheaton. The Arts and Crafts-design masterpiece they designed hearkens again to Laura’s youthful experiences in Oak Park, the put where Frank Lloyd Wright and other fantastic architects experimented.
“We had lived in Wheaton for 30 several years and preferred to develop the household we had been developing in our minds for several years — and do it on a big parcel of assets considering that I am a landscape architect and preferred room to plant and appreciate,” Laura claims.
The pair and their setting up staff strike that mark and others.
“Also, given that I grew up to respect fantastic architecture as art, I understand that we are certainly residing in a piece of artwork,” she claims.
Before the house was constructed, Laura stumbled upon a “for sale by proprietor” signal on home bounded on two sides by the Cantigny Golf Training course. Right before prolonged, the couple was ready to procured it and an additional whole lot up coming doorway, assembling 4.5 acres of high quality property.
“We ended up with a Wisconsin escape house with no obtaining to depart city!” she recalls.
“I beloved the cleanse strains, wonderful woodwork, big home windows and other particulars inherent in a Craftsman residence. I really contemplate this kind of household to be the quintessential ‘homey, cozy home’ and preferred to build a single,” Laura states.
At the time they had the land, they moved ahead to assemble a collaborative workforce of specialists to make it a fact and, luckily, experienced purchased most of the materials they required prior to COVID hit, creating constructing materials extra scarce. Mike Sparks of Sparks Architects Inc. of Elmhurst made the property, Brad Drendel of Brad Drendel Builders Inc. of Naperville was the builder and Joan Kaufman of Interior Planning and Layout Inc. in Naperville did the interior layout.

























“The team developed the Christensen household from the floor up, starting off in September 2020 and it took about a 12 months to complete,” Kaufman says.
The outstanding 4,200-square-foot property options a very first-floor grasp suite a breathtaking, cathedral-ceilinged loved ones home with a stone fire flanked by window seats and topped by statement-building ceiling rafters a lovely condition-of-the-artwork kitchen area featuring alder cabinets and magnificent Versailles-patterned tile do the job a light-weight-filled 3-season space from which to delight in Laura’s gardens and a lot additional, which include a basement wine room.

The kitchen area characteristics a placing blue agate backsplash on the array and blue Alaska granite counter tops.
– Courtesy of Chip Haines Photographs & Images
Exclusive touches abound in the residence, this kind of as a kitchen area countertop with a are living edge top made from a substantial, 120-calendar year-old oak the householders ended up forced to lower down from the residence a personalized wood dining booth in the kitchen area, manufactured by Town-Residing Style in Chicago customized art glass cabinet doors in the kitchen area, designed by Kaufman and fabricated by Alpine Stained Glass in Plainfield a
hanging blue agate backsplash in excess of the assortment and blue Alaska granite counter tops Arts and Crafts-style mullioned home windows all over and a porcelain kitchen flooring with tumbled edges, created to search like actual stone.
“Lots of small mother-and-pop firms in the Chicago region had been element of the course of action and we appreciated that,” Kaufman suggests.
The whole building system was all about detail and character due to the fact Laura, as a landscape designer, is greatly interested in well being and wellness, Kaufman adds. Only nontoxic and no-VOC elements ended up selected and all of the cabinets were being still left in a local climate-controlled warehouse to “off-gasoline” for a month prior to remaining put in in the house. Tile was put in on the ground of the kitchen to superior maintain up to the Christensens canines. William Morris mother nature styles look on drapes, pillows and even on the stairway runner.
Even the bogs are striking with the grasp tub showcasing a cost-free-standing soaker tub and a roomy stall shower with a massive sheet of vibrant quartzite as its back again wall.
“The Christensens let our group style and design every thing, from the significant photo down to minutiae like the knobs on every single cabinet doorway,” says Kaufman. “We pooled our resources and know-how to make this residence particular and the Christensens absolutely like it.”
Laura Christensen concurred. “We are experience like the residence turned out even superior than we envisioned. A group of us contributed our exceptional expertises and designed a superb property,” she claims. “It is so tranquil below and we experience like we are dwelling exterior, even when we are inside our home.”
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