One thing led to another in this stunning renovation.

Story by Joan Bellinghausen | Photography by Matt Kocourek

The seed for change started small with a difficult-to-replace built-in refrigerator in a lower-level bar, providing the impetus for a large-scale renovation.

“What could have been a $600 fix turned into a home renovation,” the homeowners reflect. “We thought ‘while we’re fixing this, let’s fix these other areas’. We had a moment of weakness, but have no regrets.”

This opportunity to address various shortcomings of the house ultimately included renovating the kitchen, living room, and dining area, converting a covered lanai into interior space, adding a deck, remodeling a powder bath and the primary bath, and, last but not least, reconfiguring the bar in the lower level.

The effort transformed this Shawnee villa into a modern space with elements of Scandinavian design. The direction for this design style – emphasizing simplicity, functionality, and minimalism – stemmed from the wife’s experience of spending a year in Finland.

“I love the clean Scandinavian look with its contemporary look and clean lines,” she says. “We had a vision and knew what we wanted.”

“We wanted to come home and feel awe. We wanted to smile every time we walked in the door.”

Interior Designer Kendra Miner with Evolve Interiors understood what the homeowners desired and, along with Renovations by Starr, turned their vision into reality.

“We brought our own ideas to the table but it was clear we would need guidance to clarify our goals realistically,” the wife says. “Kendra and the Starr team had the experience together professionally to problem solve and make suggestions that met our needs.”

A chef’s kitchen ranked at the top of the couple’s “must haves” so the project enlarged the footprint of the kitchen by encompassing the former dining area, providing much-needed counterspace and under-counter storage.

The kitchen exudes sophisticated simplicity with a curated look of granite, quartz, black-painted cabinetry, and white oak. However, the centerpiece of the kitchen has to be the striking three-dimensional sinusoidal wave light fixture spanning more than six feet over the island.

“We wanted a large statement piece that would draw your eye but also provide necessary lighting,” the homeowner explains.

The couple enjoys entertaining and sharing their hobby of brewing beer with others. The added space in the kitchen, along with the adjacent dining room and outdoor deck, allows plenty of room for just that.

“You would never know that twice a year we turn our kitchen into a micro-brewery,” she says, smiling. “Now we have the space to entertain and to teach our friends how to brew beer.”

The homeowners also found bold light fixtures for the dining area and front entryway. The various lines, curves, and angles of these fixtures speak to the wife’s love of shapes and nod to her background as a geometry teacher.

“We love how you can see our big geometric light fixture through the transom window as you come through the front door,” she says.

In addition, the renovation installed “cloud” ceilings over the kitchen, dining area, and living room. Each cloud ceiling features a floating panel within a recessed area, with light being diffused from within the panel to create a soft glow, giving the ceiling its signature cloud-like effect.

“We had coffered ceilings before, so we were looking for something different,” she says. “Installing the cloud lighting gave us an opportunity to have plenty of ambient lighting.”

Maximizing natural light also played a key role in the design, which features floor to ceiling windows in the dining area. Enclosing the old lanai to accommodate the dining area brought the outside in and eliminated the shade, allowing sunlight to stream in and providing a picturesque view of a nearby pond.

“Now it’s like we’re outside,” she says. “It feels like a treehouse.”

In between the dining area and living room, a three-sided fireplace provides a showstopping focal point, an element that took significant effort to source and install. The homeowners wanted a peninsula fireplace that would provide heat, not a common feature of such fireplaces.

“We really struggled to find one that would put out heat, but we finally ended up getting one from Denmark,” say the homeowners. “We wanted the fireplace to provide a transition between the living room and dining room, but not occlude the view.”

On the lower level, the affinity for geometry surfaces again with a black painted wall embellished with various lines and angles. The renovation reconfigured and expanded the size of the bar area, incorporated more storage, including a full-sized refrigerator behind a secret door, and created a recessed niche for a vintage refrigerator-turned-keg-fridge.

“Including the bright red fridge was a non-negotiable,” she says, explaining that they acquired the 1954 International Harvester (yes, International Harvester used to make appliances) fridge almost 30 years ago and wanted a special place to house it.

To balance the red keg fridge, they resurfaced the pool table to be red and added in a few others pops of color into the space.

Overall, the renovation has given this couple exactly what they wanted.

“We love our house,” the couple says. “We could have built something new, but we love our neighbors and our neighborhood. We also knew it would be more cost effective to renovate than to build.”