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Description: |
The stately home stands out from its upscale neighbors in light gray stucco accented by white half-timbering and a red tile roof. Brackets painted green and pale yellow poke out from under overhanging eaves. In the early 1900s, furniture designer Gustav Stickley originated the Craftsman style home. He used natural materials, pergolas, wood, built-in benches and cabinets, and structural elements as decoration. He designed around inglenook fireplaces ¿ intimate areas with built-in benches ¿ based on his belief in a human need to "nest." Ferraioli spent four years adding two half-baths and a full bath, central air, renovating the kitchen, converting the summer porch to a year-round sunroom and refinishing the woodwork. And being a landscape designer, Ferraioli re-created the outside into a fragrant and colorful escape of flowering fruit trees, stone walkways, vine-wrapped pergolas and places to bask in the sun. Inside, unique features include rich chestnut interior and exterior doors in barn-door styling and paned glass, and wood floors with intricate, inlaid borders. Pocket doors slide easily to divide the entry from the dining room. Their styling repeats in the room's built-in china cabinet. Plate molding encircles the room. Rustic but elegant surfaces blend in the earth-toned country kitchen, such as a tumbled marble backsplash with metal inlays, tin ceiling, speckled granite counters and cherry cabinets. Ferraioli stripped what was a white tile backsplash behind the cooking area to the original red brick, offsetting the steel of the commercial-grade Viking stove. An adjacent butler's pantry abounds with the charm of original wooden drain boards and built-in cabinets, shelves and drawers. The living room holds the inglenook fireplace within its cozy setting. Sunlight pours through windows onto the Brazilian cherry floor of the glorious year-round sunroom, accessible at either end through paned glass doors. A former exterior wall was rebuilt with ledge stone. Upstairs, a built-in linen cabinet provides convenient storage within a central hallway. Closets abound in several bedrooms. Elaborate crystal and bead chandeliers dress up the soft, garden colors in the bathrooms (two full, two half), finished with decorative painting, beveled subway tile and tumbled marble floors. The master bedroom overlooks the picturesque gardens, and the chimney's brick in the master bath adds to the antique charm of the old-fashioned medicine cabinet, dentil molding and claw-foot tub. Ferraioli created a garden lover's paradise with ledge stone walls and pillars and a front garden dotted with weeping evergreens. A paver driveway leads past trees and bushes that will soon burst with color to the detached two-car garage, gardens and bluestone patio. |
