New-School Elegance: A Home That Meets the Moment

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Today’s world of real estate, architecture, and interior design can feel overwhelming at times. Fortunately, this month’s featured home provides a blueprint for what happens when messaging, best practices, and exceptionally keen design advice combine to not only build a home that meets the moment, but one that will help create the moments that define the lives dwelling within it. 

THE PROJECT: A rare, previously undisturbed parcel of forested waterfront land along the South River, and a young couple with hopes of building their seminal family home in which they would raise their three small children. 

HOMEOWNER PROFILE: Jacqueline and Max are returning to Jacqueline’s home state after years of living and working in New York City after college. Astute and busy professionals with defined and distinctive taste, they both prefer easy and understated elegance in design and are comfortable with setting standards and pushing a style barrier or two.   

EXECUTING THE PLAN: After securing their land, the couple had some initial thoughts on home plans, but also a lot of questions about how to best manage a mature, forested lot. They brought their concerns to Mueller Homes of Annapolis to review them. Knowing just how tricky these situations can be, Mueller Homes’ President, P.J. Mueller, suggested that an architect should also be consulted to review the site for viability and best practices associated with maximizing the space they would have.  

DESIGN TAKEAWAYS: So how does this home “meet the moment”? This is accomplished in various ways, large and small throughout the build explains Mueller. 

Stephanie Cook from Speight Studio Architects of Annapolis would take the lead in that regard and set out to ensure that the experience of building a new home didn’t begin and end with just fulfilling a wish list.

“The most important thing I can do by far is listen to the clients,” says Cook about her approach to a project. “Not only to what they are saying but to what they aren’t saying as well. I always try to discover the little pieces that lay between the lines of the conversation, things that they may never think about verbalizing.”

Starting with the exterior, Mueller says, Jacqueline and Max made a less predictable choice for an Annapolis-based waterfront home. 

“They really wanted the white brick, and brick creates a challenge, especially from an architectural standpoint because certain areas require a lot of structural [support] methods, especially on the inner walls and such.”

This, he adds, is something that he, project manager Jim Trotter, and Cook collaborated on from a standpoint of securing the structure and adding elements to enhance the aesthetic, pointing to the Hardie plank siding that was added and an integrated gutter system mindfully contrived to double as an architectural feature that fits the façade so well it provides character and just a hint of elegance.

The entryway is a great example of how well the team collaborated to craft a dwelling that spoke to its owners’ good taste. Max noted that it was important to them that the house, while new, embodied qualities of a home that looked like it could have been there forever. 

“When we went to Stephanie (Cook), we said we want to have the size and scope of a nicely sized traditional home, but we want it to feel like it’s 300 years old,” Max explains. “Our goal was to have a truly timeless home and from an exterior standpoint, that’s why we went with the whitewash brick and more of a traditionally shaped home. I like to say it’s a modern English cottage style home from an exterior standpoint.”

Along those lines, a covered, recessed, and arched front door was chosen. The approach was then enhanced by the unique placement of lighting at the entry.   

“Two lanterns [were placed] on the side versus being on the face of the brick, providing an element of old cottage character, but yet it has a new school elegance to it,” says Mueller, who credited Cook with the nuance and thought given to the details associated with the entry. 

The homeowners, who are huge fans of interiors’ expert and influencer, Shea McGee, chose solid white oak floors with an invisible finish to play up the pure, natural characteristics of the wood throughout the home.

“The inside of our home kind of falls into the category of transitional,” Jacqueline explains. “We wanted to maintain just classic traditional elements, but also, we definitely are attracted to a more modern style…and we were inspired a lot by nature. We have a forest behind us right now, and we just tried to keep the colors inside the home, very neutral, but pulled in a lot of colors that you see in nature, dark greens and rich browns.”

The couple notes they had many great partners working on the space that would become their kitchen and breakfast room, and these synergies paired with the ideas they brought to the table, resulted in an elevated family gathering space.

“I noticed with the type of subcontractors that we worked with … they were excited when you brought something to them that they’ve never seen before,” says Max of the highly skilled craftspeople who helped ensure their vision.  

And that feeling was mutual. Max adds he was not entirely sold on the concept of two islands in the kitchen before Cook suggested it, but now he says he can’t imagine not having the functionality they provide.

All the cabinetry was crafted to convey a top-quality, minimalist vibe. The couple worked with an Ohio-based subcontractor, Hilltop Woodworking, with whom Jacqueline’s family has a history. The process was a painstaking one, she admits, primarily because it all needed to be done remotely, but the company obliged in every way sending sample after wood sample, until they, for lack of a more appropriate term, ‘nailed it.’

Custom touches, such as the range hood and surround treatment, were advantageous suggestions put forth by Hilltop.

“The idea to do the live-oak beamed surround in the kitchen above the oven, that’s something that we had not seen anywhere, and it was not inspired by anything that we researched, so we just would’ve never thought to do that,” Max says. 

The couple also used the kitchen as a style laboratory of sorts for the trends they were seeing in all their interiors’ research relating to mixing metals and finishes. 

“We were told by everyone that mixed metals are in, and it’s absolutely okay to explore options with metals. For the most part, we stuck to gold, bronzes, and blacks just because I felt like that was the most complementary to the different tones and colors we were using throughout the home,” Jacqueline says.

While many younger families have been ditching the traditional dining room over the last couple of decades in favor of open-plan dining, these homeowners sided with tradition, citing with three kids and counting, and nearby families, having that dedicated space for celebratory events didn’t just sound good in theory, for them it was essential. 

Following tradition in this manner provided an opportunity to get creative with how the spaces would transition from one to the next. Fortunately, getting from space to space turned out to be one of those things that Cook heard without the couple actually saying it, and the result is architecturally enriching throughout.

“People don’t often think too much about those moments spent moving from room to room in their homes, but there is potential there to be a little more thoughtful. In this particular home, we employed not only a series of arches, but also some really deep, cased openings to create an awareness of being ‘between’ and I think it positively affects the experience of moving through the house,” Cook says. 

ELEVATING THE UPPER LEVEL

The home currently has four finished bedrooms, and the room to grow an additional guest suite above the garage. These rooms are among the most cherished aspects of the home for the couple, especially the personalized approaches taken in each of their kids’ rooms, or their “little jewel boxes”, as Jacqueline describes them. 

Using thoughtful contemporary iterations of traditional colors, such as the muted rose pink in their daughter’s room, decorative elements such as wallpaper on the ceiling, and updated approaches, such as matching the trim color to the wall color, each child’s room is as individualized as the child—without looking like the standard “boy’s” or “girl’s” room from their parents’ generation.

The primary suite, says Mueller, could have been easily executed with four standard walls of drywall, but why do that when you’re building new and only a lack of imagination could limit you? 

Taj Mahal stone was then chosen to top their custom white oak vanities, stained dark, which were made to look like a dresser by sizing them so legs could be added at the bottom.

“So, it looks like old pieces of furniture rather than kind of your typical, ‘Just set it and forget it’ vanity,” adds Jacqueline.

“I definitely followed Jacqueline’s guidance on all this stuff,” says Max of his wife’s eye for details like these. 

“I think the beauty that I see [in this process] is the fact that we pulled from so many different sources, and we scoured Pinterest and Instagram and design books. If we showed you how many Rizzoli interior design books we have now, really, we could have an entire library of them. But what we found is that the style we ended up with was ‘Max and Jacqueline,’ he explains.

“It speaks exactly to who we are as people, and as a couple, and as a family.”