Ranch Reimagined
Photography by Tony Berardi & Sally
Good / Photofields
A LaGrange couple creates a year-round,
Caribbean-inspired retreat
Bruce and Joan Smothers had a daunting list of requirements for their next home: corner lot, open floor plan, architectural detail, and enough wall space to display their extensive art collection. Even more challenging, they wanted room sizes to be comparable to those in their current home, but with less overall square footage. Oh, and it had to be in west suburban LaGrange. “If I had clients as demanding as we were, I’d kill them,” says Joan, owner of Smothers Realty Group in LaGrange.
Fortunately, such drastic steps weren’t necessary. Though the Smothers weren’t officially house hunting, they jumped when an ideal property became available. “There are only a few houses like it in town and they rarely come on the market,” Joan says.
Given her real-estate knowledge and Bruce’s lifetime of experience as a contractor, the couple has learned to trust their instincts. “I walk into a house and see it done, and Bruce can see how to get it there,” Joan says. “We have a good mix of know-how and creativity.”
Unlike the other 10 primary residences the Smothers have owned during 25 years of marriage, this home is a ranch. And not just a dime-a-dozen suburban tract ranch either, but an oversized 1957 “executive ranch,” ideally suited for transformation into a sophisticated yet casual retreat.
The Smothers weren’t ranch aficionados until they bought a 1960s Michigan ranch as a vacation home in 2003. “It’s on a Lake Michigan bluff, so we weren’t allowed to tear it down,” Joan says. “We rehabbed it instead, and love its simplicity and feeling of being close to the outdoors.”
That’s the effect the couple wanted for this house, too. “We’ve vacationed in the Caribbean for years and love how all the homes open to the outside,” Joan says. “The way we planned our space is very Caribbean-influenced, with exit doors in almost every room and many outdoor living spaces.”
The Smothers’ project took nine months of intermittent but intense work between January 2006 and April 2007 to complete. According to Bruce, whose knowledge of the home’s specifications is encyclopedic, the house is extremely well built. “The quality actually added to the challenge,” he says. “Demolition took a full month extra because the house was built to commercial construction standards.”
On the plus side, Bruce notes, ranches are typically easy to remodel because they have few load-bearing walls. “They’re basically a series of boxes, so you can move walls almost with impunity,” he says. “And that’s exactly what we did.”
For example, he created a pass-through between the dining room and kitchen to create better sight lines. “With the existing structure, I could have opened up an entire wall between the dining and living rooms, too,” he says. “The house is that well-built.”
Entering the foyer today, the eye is drawn to the library opposite, formerly a plain-vanilla bedroom. The Smothers transformed the bedroom-cum-library into the foyer’s focal point, adding beveled-glass, paneled French doors to match the home’s original entry doors. Bruce then used the library’s former bath and closet to create the spacious walk-in closet Joan demanded for the owners’ bedroom next door.
The living room, an expanse across the front of the home, contained a splendid specimen of that 1950s icon, the picture window. To bring the outdoors in, Bruce substituted a bank of six French doors that open onto a new front terrace.
Joan added two matching chairs to the pair of living room chairs she brought from their previous house. “I knew I didn’t want a sofa here because I wanted to be able to see the fireplace from every angle,” she explains. Not that there was much danger of missing it. Like the house itself, the fireplace is expansive, with a generous hearth that dominates the room. It had been covered with black marble, which Bruce replaced with stucco painted a chocolaty eggplant. He also added a glass tile surround.
Originally, the living room opened directly to the kitchen, right where Joan wanted to place the refrigerator. Bruce moved that doorway, carving space from the attached garage to create an elegant little hallway. “This change was much easier than the last house—where Joan wanted her refrigerator meant taking out three floors of chimney,” he says. “But, of course, I did it for her.”
The kitchen was state-of-the-art in the early 1980s, with an oversized island looming over the room. A new, more appropriately sized island replaced it. The marble top, a striking green with thick, pink veining, instantly caught Joan’s fancy, but the stone was too thin for its intended purpose. Bruce reinforced the slab with a steel plate and faced the sides with matching stone.
Given Joan’s design goals, landscaping was an integral part of the overall vision. “It’s hugely important to me because I’m trying to create the effect of looking out at something beautiful from everywhere in the house,” she says. For example, views from the kitchen include a pergola, patio, and layered decks, which are soothing partners with lushly landscaped beds and simple garden art. The couple turned the stone-clad original garage at the property’s rear into an exercise room that has the happy effect of becoming a focal point in the garden.
After all their years together and their many houses, the Smothers feel they may have finally found home. “We really love the way this house feels and lives,” Joan says. “This will be our last house.” MH
