SPLIT-LEVEL RENO WORTH IT
Despite challenges and obstacles, couple happy with home transformation
Leanne MacDougall and Jeremy Strauss have lived all over the world. They had no desire to live in a split-level home.
But after visiting friends in Somerset, Md., while still living out of the country, the couple became smitten with the neighbourhood’s charms.
In the spring of 2015, MacDougall spotted a listing for a splitlevel home in the neighbourhood that was in their price range and arranged a walk-through that did not initially pan out.
“I said there would be no way I would buy the house. It was poorly laid out, and I didn’t like the configuration of the floor plan — it just seemed very quirky,” MacDougall, 47, said.
The house appears to be a ranch but is actually divided horizontally, front to back.
The front door opens directly into the living room, where you are greeted by two half-staircases — one goes up to the bedrooms, and the other goes down to the kitchen level. The house was quickly cast into the reject pile.
A year into their continued search, things were getting desperate.
“We spent another year in the apartment building with ridiculous rents, including a rent increase of 30 per cent,” MacDougall said. “We were just aching to get out of there.”
Luckily, the house they previously rejected went back on the market — though it had an even higher asking price. A second look was arranged — this time including Strauss, who had a moment of déjà vu during a walk-through.
“Apart from the strange hemispheric division of space, it’s very similar to the house I grew up in,” the 48-year-old said.
“The No. 1 aspect was the neighbourhood, and, financially, this was the only way we were going to get into the neighbourhood.”
The possibilities offered by a transformative renovation danced through the couple’s heads.
Their real estate agent recommended a consult with Lou Balodemas of Balodemas Architects. The designer walked through with his prospective clients, noted which way the floorboards ran in the lower level, and proposed removing the interior walls and adding sliding-glass doors that would open onto the backyard and bring in more natural light.
The couple also contemplated adding a cathedral ceiling in the living room or adding a foyer, and the idea of an open-plan kitchen, dining room, mud room and laundry room helped allay their concerns about the house.
Split-levels, also sometimes called “tri-levels,” are an architectural dead-end that were built in abundance from the 1930s to the ’70s. Balodemas said real estate developers saw them as a way to make more money on less house, and promoted subdivisions full of them.
“A regular house is a basement and two levels,” Balodemas said.
“By doing a split-level, you eliminate the basement, take the other two floors and split them, and now you have a four-level house that’s two-thirds the square footage of what they would have been building. I think, on a square-footage basis, it was probably cheaper to build.”
The couple made an offer on the home as escalating clauses kicked in, and they ended up closing for US$1,027,000 in July 2016.
They now owned a 2,600-squarefoot, three-bedroom, three-bath design anomaly — in Somerset — which MacDougall, Strauss and their two daughters (nine and 11) could call home.
Renovation plans were drawn up, and demolition began in December.
All the interior walls on the kitchen level were removed along with mismatched doors and windows on the back wall. Slidingglass doors took their place.
Although the existing kitchen appeared to be in pretty good shape, moisture damage and termites had made it unsalvageable.
Originally, there were two halfstaircases leading down from the kitchen level to the basement. The design team sealed off one staircase and used the captured space for the new full bath.
But, as the space evolved, unforeseen challenges presented themselves.
“Picking the finishes was the hardest thing, especially the tile,” Balodemas said.
The design scheme called for a kitchen island with a generous overhang in the front that would turn the space into a casual dining area. The couple had seen encaustic tiles during their travels in France and spotted more examples on Houzz that they wanted to emulate on the front of the island and the backsplash.
MacDougall and Strauss finally selected a tile design from a West Coast supplier.
The couple found two chandeliers from Ochre they liked, but they were too expensive, until the lighting company offered two floor models at a substantial discount. Strauss drove to New York and picked them up himself.
Years ago, Strauss was given a cappuccino machine as a birthday present while the family was stationed in Geneva.
The machine runs on 220-volt electric current and needs a voltage regulator to work properly.
To hide the voltage regulator, the design team proposed an appliance garage — an idea that was accepted, but the garage door proved to be problematic. The cabinet company offered to build a custom door for US$2,500, which seemed excessive, so the compromise was an US$800 aluminum roll-up door.
The project lasted six months and cost a little more than US$150,000, but the downstairs level flows, feels and functions in a completely different way. The original flooring was replaced by a combination of engineered oak in the kitchen bordered by glazed porcelain tile coloured Brazil Black.
Kitchen cabinetry is faced in Prosecco and gloss white thermafoil, an inexpensive and easy-toclean surface choice.
The sought-after patterned tiles for the island face and backsplash are handmade Moroccan cement tiles in a Barcelona pattern.
For lighting in the kitchen, the team selected long-lasting LED strip lights.
The Jenn-Air refrigerator came with the house. The new cooktop, oven and dishwasher are all from Bosch.
Just past the kitchen, the back corner of the space hosts a laundry centre, complete with an ironing board hidden in a cabinet. More storage was supplied, including a space custom designed for Strauss’s bike.
And beyond the bike storage is the home’s new compact full bathroom, featuring a vanitysink combination unit. The room is bordered by a pocket door and hexagonal patterned wall tile.