After reading several books on feng shui, design devotee Alex Stefan discovered that while different schools contradict each other on specifics, they all agree on one overriding principle: Trust your gut feeling. “If you feel something is right, it probably is,” says Stefan. “And if something’s not right, you’re probably correct and you should explore why.”
In 2004, when Stefan and his life partner and business associate Helena Pulyaeva found their 1980s contemporary in Bethesda, both of these impulses were in play. A real estate-agent duo with RE/MAX 2000, the couple could see that while the home’s basic open design would suit their active entertainment schedule, a major renovation would be necessary to correct some inherent flaws. “When we walked into the living room and foyer area with its cathedral ceiling,” recalls Stefan, “it was as if we were standing at the bottom of a deep well. A massive stone fireplace dominated the room. The house, decorated in French Country style, was contemporary, but not contemporary enough for our tastes.”
The year-long transformation involved a well thought-out approach that simultaneously diminished the home’s excessive size while opening it in new and unexpected ways.
Essential to the transformation of the space, says Stefan, are the new stainless-steel-and-glass front door, flanked by glass panels, and the stainless-steel railings that define the newly opened stairwell and overlook. Over the door a triangular fogged window framed in wood was replaced with banded clear and frosted glass, reframed in stainless steel.
In the great room, the couple offset the overwhelming verticality of the two-story space by introducing a number of horizontal elements. A system of box-housed halogen lighting installed on the side walls infuses the room with enveloping warmth. Shoji screens with wider spacing than is seen traditionally cover the expanse of double sliding glass doors opening on to the 1,000-square-foot deck. The existing oak floors were replaced with Brazilian cherry in five-and-a-half-inch-wide planks to enhance the desired clean look and add richness. “The hardest decision was getting rid of the fireplace, the pride of the previous owner,” recalls Stefan. “But at 12 feet wide and 10 feet high, the thing defied furniture placement. We kept bumping into it no matter where we put the furnishings. We haven’t regretted the decision for a moment.”
The couple’s extensive contemporary art collection reinforces the modern look. The great room took on a new intimacy with the installation of a mobile by California artist Bruce Gray in the center of the room. Its eight-foot span helps to anchor the voluminous space. Friends and long-time collectors of the Russian exile artist Alexander “Sasha” Zhdanov (who died in his adopted city of Washington in 2006), Stefan and Pulyaeva own more than two dozen works by the expressionist master, many of them large-scale and museum quality.
Low-slung furniture and a decorative paint treatment on the walls reinforce the horizontality of the great room. Matte and glossy white paint in alternating horizontal stripes adds texture to the walls. The couple selected contemporary furniture in a white palette, complemented by accents in red and black. Pieces like the white wool and leather sofas and the occasional tables from Ligne Roset complement their collection of mid-century modern furniture icons, such as Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair, the 1948 Eames fiberglass La Chaise and the 1962 Arco floor lamp by Achille Castiglioni. Taraxacum, the dandelion chandelier designed by Castiglioni in 1988, defines the foyer.
Low-profile furniture also distinguishes the adjoining kitchen’s breakfast area: namely, an oversized white table and Japanese-inspired seating from Ligne Roset. In the kitchen, Canadian maple cabinetry and an island in red laminate with a black quartz top sit on aluminum legs. “We didn’t want a purely industrial kitchen. We went with wood to soften the space,” says Stefan. “The legs give the kitchen a lighter look. The cabinetry takes on the appearance of furniture and there’s added cleaning ease.” A modular Miele cook top with gas and electric burners, two ovens by Miele and Gaggenau, a Marvel wine cooler, a built-in Miele espresso machine and two top-loading Fisher & Paykel dishwashers enhance the kitchen’s performance.
In the dining room and the master bedroom, also on the main level, the couple introduced dark floors with six-inch-wide planks. Venetian plaster walls created by McLean-based Faux Illusions add color and texture. “We decided to ignore the common wisdom of uniformity usually seen in contemporary design, where all the walls are white or off-white and the floors are the same throughout,” says Stefan. “We wanted to make each space unique.”
The dining room furniture departs from the low profile seen elsewhere. An oversized square table in dark wood with polished chrome inserts complements and contrasts with the sleek polished aluminum of the Philippe Starck Hudson chairs.
Upstairs, there are additional bedrooms, one of which has been transformed into a studio
for Stefan, who is also a professionally trained art photographer. He displays the bulk of his work on the home’s lower level, a gallery-style space, in addition to holding a few exhibits every year in local galleries.
The only structural change made in the house took place in the master bedroom. Walls were removed and part of the attic opened to create a library bound by a stainless-steel railing and accessed via a spiral staircase in the same material. Black slate with aluminum inserts replaced the traditional fireplace. When entertaining, the couple uses dividers to screen off the bedroom and allow guests to access the fireplace seating area and the loft library.
“We had 100 people here recently and the house did not feel crowded at all,” says Stefan. “Just as we imagined—with some major adjustments—in the beginning.”
Judith Turner-Yamamoto is an art historian and features and fiction writer based in Washington, DC. Photographer Bob Narod is based in Sterling, Virginia.
When Wilma and Bruce Bowers first learned about the availability of the 1960s Cape Cod that they would purchase in 2004 and renovate for themselves, they leapt at the opportunity. “We had always admired this sweet house on a cul-de-sac in McLean’s historic Salona Village, where we’d lived since 2001,” recalls Wilma Bowers, who with her husband, Bruce, owns Bowers Design Build, Inc. “In 2003, Dr. Bill Davis, 93, the designer, builder and owner, died. We loved the house so much that even though we’d only lived in our other home for two years, we bought Dr. Davis’s home from his estate.”
The couple began a 10-month design phase for a renovation and expansion of the 4,600-square-foot house, which sat on a generous acre-plus lot. “We wanted the home to still look like the house that Dr. Davis built, albeit with some major Bruce Bowers improvements,” says Wilma.
Bruce’s plan, which would increase the size of the home by nearly 50 percent to 6,500 square feet, was informed by this guideline. “We kept the central Cape Cod core of the home and created a three-story addition to the right, an addition to the rear and a front garage addition to the left,” says Bruce. The project also included major landscaping that would extend the family’s living and entertaining spaces outdoors to a new dual-level terrace complete with al fresco fireplace and a fabulous new pool.
Repeated rooflines and window elements from the original house added balance to the expansion and connected the old and new. For the new master suite added to the rear of the home, for example, Bruce Bowers used the dormer shed expansion technique employed traditionally in Cape Cods to pick up extra ceiling height and to create a new space that possessed all the charm of the original house.
Gutting the interiors down to a structural skeleton to accommodate all new electrical/mechanical systems presented the couple with a clean slate for re-imagining the interior. “One of benefits of designing your own home is the opportunity to think through how you live and design for that,” says Wilma. “We give our clients a design survey up-front that tells us what their day is like, and where they spend the most time in their home. We all have preconceived notions about how we want to live based on the conditioning we’ve had, on what real estate agents tell us, on how homes have been built. We put ourselves through our own questionnaire.” The Bowers jettisoned the traditional formal dining and living areas in favor of an open great room floor plan to take advantage of the property’s views, enhance circulation and provide a much-expanded kitchen to accommodate large family gatherings.
They opened the original dining room to the kitchen/family room space. In the new dining area, a load-bearing solid masonry rear wall was taken down to allow a six-foot expansion out the back. Rather than installing load-bearing columns, which would break up the new open space, they utilized a huge steel beam to support the floor upstairs and the roof above.
In this expanded area defined by an exposed timber-beam ceiling, the couple designed buffet storage with a system of rollout drawers and an easy-care stone surface. “Bruce’s immediate family is 35 people,” says Wilma. “I can set up for a party of up to 50 people in less than a half hour. I just open the cabinet and set up the top as the staging area.”
Maximizing available light was a top priority. In the original house, an upstairs bathroom positioned over the foyer created a low ceiling with awkward lines that blocked natural light. The bathroom was relocated, allowing Bruce to modify the foyer ceiling height and to admit light from the front dormer windows.
Gigi Parr, interior designer for Bowers Design Build, worked with the couple on furnishings and color palette to further meld the indoor/outdoor connection. “With so many open areas and a lot of glass, I wanted to hold on to a sense of warmth and welcome,” she says. Gold undertones in the faux-finished foyer introduce hints of warmth. In the great room, she selected a rich golden shade to energize and invigorate. “Scale is tricky in an open space like this. Pieces with weight and character, like the armoire in the great room, are needed to provide a sense of proportion,” says Parr.
“This is our third whole-house project, and we are finding the third time really is the charm,” says Wilma Bowers. Indeed, Bowers Design Build, Inc., won a Contractor of the Year award in the category of whole-house remodel over $1 million for the project. “It is the compilation of everything we knew we loved in this ideal setting.”
Art historian, fiction and features writer Judith Turner-Yamamoto is based in Washington, DC. Photographer Anne Gummerson is based in Baltimore.
Having spent most of her life in the area, Stouffer wanted to preserve the look and feel of old Potomac—what she defines as “casual elegance” and the notion that the house belongs to the land. An avid outdoorswoman—she and her family ski, golf and enjoy summer water sports and boating—Stouffer wanted the house to embrace its natural surroundings.
“Texture is enormously important,” says BETH Stouffer. “I find it in the natural world and bring it into interiors where it creates interest and movement.” A 1980s two-story addition bumped out the house with a new family room on the ground level and a guest room above. The Stouffers wanted to improve the flow between the original home and the addition and expand their cramped galley kitchen. To actualize their vision, Beth Stouffer turned to architects Jim Rill and Kay Kim, whose approach to quality design and attention to detail presented the perfect fit.
“The challenge,” says Rill, “was how do you blend a 1950s rambler with a towering ’80s addition; how do you create, out of a wooded jungle, the inviting outdoor spaces essential to the family’s lifestyle?”
Scott Stouffer’s vision for the outdoor spaces also came into play. He wanted to develop the idea of a property set in the woods, but one that brings definition to the natural spaces in the landscape. Taking their cue from the sloped site and the multiple levels of the interior, Rill and Kim wrapped the house in a series of terraces, breezeways, porticos and courtyards to provide nine distinct outdoor spaces that flow down to the pool and its pavilion and bathhouse. Landscape designer Bob Hawkins of Hawkins Signature Design completed the plan, choosing vegetation that complements the natural setting.
“With this property, the most important room in the house is the yard,” says Rill. “It’s these outdoor rooms that the main rooms in the house actually define.”
Re-imagining the main rooms was a major part of the collaboration between Beth Stouffer and Rill. Stouffer was involved early on in the design process and discussions, with Rill and Kay presenting her with sketches and ideas.
Part of the ’80s addition, the long rectangular family room presented a design challenge in its combination of small traditional windows and an outdated brick fireplace on one wall and a vast expanse of contemporary glass on another. They decided to overhaul the entire room, changing its proportions and scale and imparting it with eclectic architectural details that would relate the traditional elements to the modern, from a paneled ceiling to a fireplace in rough-hewn Western Maryland fieldstone topped with a classical wooden mantel.
Despite the room’s exceptional openness, Stouffer im- parted a sense of warmth and embrace. Here, as elsewhere in the house where the rooms have a view of the outdoors, Stouffer used earth tones in a palette of greens, gold and red. “I wanted the inside of the house to reflect the outside. Almost every room has a view. That’s what I was really trying to keep,” she says. “We wanted to be in the trees, but I softened the wall of contemporary windows here with silk panels. The texture of the fabric further pulls in the outdoor textures.” She painted the ceiling a deep chocolate brown to echo and tie in with the soaring mahogany ceiling in the kitchen. Furnishings upholstered in fabric and leather anchor the room around the hearth, while two contemporary woven leather walnut wing chairs and a marble-topped game table provide a separate reading area.
The oversized master bedroom and bath were also gutted. “We didn’t need a huge master bedroom. We wanted it to be comfortable and to lend itself to the outside, as if we were sleeping in the out of doors,” says Stouffer. The newly designed space with a wall of windows opens onto a portico offering expansive views of the pool area. A new fireplace opposite the bed adds a sense of warmth.
The modest scale of the room and the color scheme hold balance with the panoramic views. Tones of soft gold and a watery blue with hints of green and brown moderate the lavishness of the fabrics. “Texture is enormously important,” says Stouffer. “I find it in the natural world and bring it into interiors where it creates interest and movement.” A pair of chairs—one in brown silk with small blue polka dots and the other in chenille with a suede-stamped cushion—is a case in point. A long-treasured Tibetan temple piece found a new home as a dramatic headboard. An antique Venetian glass chandelier, a distressed country bench and an antique nine-foot Louis XIV walnut armoire add to the room’s uniqueness while the tonalities of the needlepoint rug reinforce the color palette.
In the master bath, Stouffer chose to execute the tile design in travertine for its texture and informality. Rill & Decker designed the cabinetry, which Stouffer softened with a woven cane front. Operable clerestory windows above the shower reinforce the focus on architectural detail and echo their use elsewhere in the house.
Stouffer possesses an eye for accessorizing to create subtle interest. On close inspection, the one-of-a-kind chandeliers discovered in a Naples, Florida, hotel now in place in the breakfast room reveal a group of tiny cavorting monkeys. In the living room, two whimsical red leopard print chairs add an element of fun to the sturdy leather and chenille sofas and the needlepoint rug that anchor the room.
“I search for pieces that provide engagement in the most subtle of ways, wherever the eye rests,” says Stouffer. “My husband and I are very casual people. We have four kids and three dogs. We wanted this house to feel extremely inviting to the family as well as guests, a place where one feels welcome to sit wherever you like and put your feet up. This house feels complete, it feels like home, but it doesn’t feel ‘done.’”
Interior Design: Beth Stouffer, BKS Designs LLC, Potomac, Maryland Contractor: Conrad Zink and Allan Smith, Zink Construction, Bethesda, Maryland Architecture: Jim Rill, AIA, and Kay Kim, Rill and Decker Architects, Bethesda, Maryland Landscape Design & Installation: Bob Hawkins, Hawkins Signature Landscape, Bowie, Maryland.
Designer Beth Stouffer with the family's pug, Bandit.
A breezeway connects the front of the house to the rear
galleries and terraces, which in turn spill down to the outdoor
living spaces paved in limestone.
In the family room, Stouffer chose to paint the ceiling a deep
chocolate brown to echo the wood on the kitchen ceiling.
Furnishings upholstered in fabric and leather anchor the room
around the new stone hearth.
Rich fabrics, an antique Venetian glass chandelier and a
Louis XVI armoire grace the master bedroom.
Master bath.
The architects opened up the existing staircase with playful
metal rails and covered the ceiling in mahogany.
The pool pavilion boasts a complete outdoor kitchen with a
built-in grill,refrigerator and ice maker.
Stouffer selected rustic materials to reflect ger natural
surroundings: slate-tile floors, swinging doors made of ipe
and vanity hew from salvaged lumber and pearwood-twig legs.
An indonensian drum doubles as a table and a sounding
device for guests to announce their arrival.
View from guest room balcony.
The artwork of Bethesda-based Nebiur Arellano evokes the transcendent blues of the stained-glass windows at Chartres, the burnished golds of the Byzantines and the earthy ochres of India. These are a few of the associations that may come to mind if an observer tries to put into context the radiance achieved by this artist’s techniques that are particular to her work.
In her visually rich and lavish silk canvases, Peruvian-born Arellano has adapted the traditional tools and materials of the silk painter. Capitalizing on the inherent iridescence of this ancient textile, she creates intricate, layered tapestries inspired by the indigenous cultures of her homeland. The dazzling jewels of Sipán, the mud city of Chan Chan and the rhythms of Huari textiles all find their way into Arellano’s work.
“I am from Lima, a huge city,” says Arellano. “But traveling inland, I discovered another Peru, a landscape and culture that reconnected me with my heritage. I saw immense deserts; high mountain ranges; huge, finely carved stones. Even the mud, the dust, the wind of these places affected me. The weavings, jewels and sculpture I saw were primitive and ancient, but the colors were vibrant, the lines were strong and there was also something incredibly modern about them. The paintings I make grow from my need to decipher this enigmatic alphabet of a living culture that I recognize as mine and that gives me my identity.”
Arellano began her career as a sociologist in Lima, but loved painting since childhood. She began taking art courses while working full-time, but when her second child was born, she began focused art studies in Lima. “It was an incredibly violent time in Peru. There was terrorism, guerrilla activity,” recalls Arellano. “We found ourselves near a car explosion with the retaking of the Japanese embassy. My eight-year-old said, ‘Mommy, I’m too young to die.’” When Arellano’s husband, a British journalist who now works as a translator, brought the family to Washington in 1992, she continued her studies at the Corcoran School of Art.
After originally working in oil on wood panels, Arellano began experimenting with silk in 1995. Inspired by traditional Peruvian weavers who worked the fibers of alpaca and a similar animal, vicuña, to create textiles, she approached silk as a modern substitute for these materials. She works with white Crepe de Chine, a thick, strong silk that she stretches on bars, then begins by drawing the design
directly on the silk. She uses silk paints that offer saturated color that is at once vibrant and translucent. She also works with gutta, a metallic acrylic paint used traditionally in silk painting as a resist to keep colors from bleeding into one another. However, Arellano uses gutta as paint to build depth and texture. The additional application of several layers of metallic paint creates extra dimension. An average work contains six to seven layers of paint. “When I remove a work from the stretch bars, the work is very rigid,” says Arellano. “People mistake my works for weavings, for glass, enamel or paper. They’re really not sure what they’re looking at, and I love that.”
Arellano developed her unique technique through trial and error. In 2000, working on very thick silk, she found the resist didn’t work and the colors began spreading. Trying to cover her mistake, she applied metallic paint and discovered that she liked the effect and began layering the paint to build up the surface. She now integrates delicate gold and silver leaf in some of her works to create further dimensionality on the surface, marrying it with the layered metallic paints.
Arellano’s work has received international attention. She has exhibited her silk paintings at the United Nations in Geneva, at the Organization of American States in Washington and in galleries, shows and exhibits in DC, Baltimore, West Palm Beach, Cologne and her native Lima. She has participated in four Smithsonian Craft Shows (including 2007’s in April) and will travel to Paris for a two-artist show in November. Her beautiful self-published book, Nebiur, depicts the artist’s work in its full color.
“People mistake my works for weavings, for glass, enamel or paper. They’re really not sure what they’re looking at, and I love that.” —Nebiur Arellano
Motifs taken directly from petroglyphs and from ancient weavings and carvings surface in Arellano’s canvases. In Chan-Chan in Red and Gold, 2004, these repeated elements energize the canvas with their graphic clarity, generating movement as the layered patterns and tonalities of burnished gold and cinnabar build depth and push beyond the surface of the silk. Homage to the Lord of Sipán captures the overwhelming brilliance of the cache of jewels discovered in 1987 in a royal tomb that dated back to approximately 200 AD. Sipán is located in the northern part of Peru, close to the coast, where the Moche culture ruled
from the time of Christ to 700 AD, centuries prior to the Incas.
“My work is a visual expression that comes from within, from my Peruvian roots. I marry these impulses with contemporary expression and strive to revive this Peruvian heritage through my work,” say the artist.
“Life is extremely fragile, as I learned firsthand watching my country be torn apart. I want to celebrate life in my work and bring joy while I restore in part some dignity to these cultures that were destroyed centuries ago.”
Judith Turner-Yamamoto is an art historian, features and fiction writer in Washington, DC. Stacy Zarin Goldberg is a photographer based in Olney, Maryland. For more information on Nebiur Arellano, visit www.nebiurart.com.
Tania Seabock spent four and a half months painting the central-foyer ceiling in this McLean home. This is the central medallion.
Think of ceiling murals, and the image that comes to mind might be Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel, or the tiled and painted interiors of Istanbul's Blue Mosque or Spain's Alhambra. The painstaking attention to detail, the craftsmanship and the skill associated with such undertakings may seem the purview of another century. But for Northern Virginia-based artist Tania Seabock, whose projects include the renovation of the ceilings of the U.S. Treasury Building and residences in Manhattan's Trump Tower, the challenges presented by vast soaring surfaces and the execution of colossally intricate decorative themes—what she refers to as "extreme ceilings"—are part inspiration and part daily routine. "I'm motivated by the work of Renaissance masters, by the work of the artisans of Eastern cultures," says Seabock, who specializes in ceiling murals, architectural gilding, wood grain, marble and trompe l'oeil ornamentation. "I look at these amazing ceilings and I think about how long it must have taken to complete them. Why were they created at one time and why has the ability to work in this way all but disappeared? These historic accomplishments challenge me to create increasingly intricate work."
Seabock, whose family includes a number of artists, showed an inherent talent for art at an early age, winning numerous competitions. Discouraged by her parents from pursuing art school, she turned to mathematics, her other passion. However, a move to San Francisco in her junior year of college led to total immersion in the arts. "I was finally free to follow my own path, and I became involved in performance art and worked as a sculptor and mold maker." Her love of interior design and interaction with people led her to faux finishing. She immersed herself in the chemistry of paint and color theory, studying under various masters in the field in the U.S. and in England, and by 2000 she decided to pursue faux painting as a career in the Washington, DC, area.
"I am mostly self-taught," says Seabock, "but after several years of practice, I decided I wanted to pursue studies that would take my work to the next level." In 2003, she took a leave of absence from a thriving career and moved with her husband and their two-year-old twin boys to southern France, where she studied with Michael Nadai at the Advanced School of Decorative Painting, located in a village with only 70 residents. "I wanted to focus on honing my skills with wood, marble, light and shadow, and I wanted the discipline of doing the work eight hours a day over and over, until I didn't need to look at any pictures and could simply paint from my head," said Seabock. She graduated with honors in 2004 and moved back to the DC area, where she began focusing her practice on ceilings.
Her most challenging ceiling to date is in the McLean home of Fuad and Mary Sahouri. It is part of an ongoing project that involves all the rooms on the main floor and will include a number of ceiling murals as well as glazed and Venetian-plastered walls, faux-painted marble columns, wood-grain faux-painted doors, gold-leafed niches and faux Oriental rugs executed in stain.
For four and a half months, Seabock worked on the 25-foot-high ceiling of the central foyer, a rectilinear space that opens into an octagon over the stairwell, creating an elaborate mural with a central rosette and 55,000 gold tiles. As is usual with her projects, Seabock's design is her own, but influenced by the patterns and colors of Moroccan interiors. Detail is the defining hallmark of her work. "I like art that is highly technical and involves discipline. Once I have mastered a technique and practiced it repeatedly, my feelings come into play in creating compositions and a dynamic design."
She begins a mural by painting a background in a gray beige mid-tone, a technique adopted from 16th-century Dutch painters. This technique allows her to move up or down in value on the gray scale, creating a sense of mood. "When I paint, I use many classic techniques. For example, I paint with beer and pigment, or I sometimes use vinegar as well. I usually over-glaze my work in oil, which gives it depth," she says.
Sheen is the biggest key to this mural's success. Seabock worked on a matte sheen and built up to a satin. The contrast between sheen and matte surfaces creates an increased illusion of depth. "I moved my hand in a different direction in rendering each of the tiles to simulate the movement found in the shimmer of gold, so each tile is individualized unto itself. I averaged 1,200 to 2,000 tiles a day." She estimates that she will have painted 150,000 tiles for this project by the time it's finished.
"I'm passionate about repeated patterns," says Seabock. "My love of math and art intersects in the repeated pattern, composition and geometry that inform my work. There is a lot of math in art and art in math." The artist, who has produced four how-to DVDs in gilding, wood grain, marble and painting (available online at www.fauxwarehouse.com) is now starting to teach her techniques in various schools throughout the country. "I will probably become increasingly involved in teaching and continue to create educational DVDs, but I don't think I could ever stop creating my own designs and doing my work for interiors. The love of interior décor and houses runs too deeply."
To see more of Seabock's work, visit www.ceilingdesigners.com.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto is an art historian and features and fiction writer based in Washington, DC. Photographer Bob Narod is based in Sterling, Virginia.
After reading several books on feng shui, design devotee Alex Stefan discovered that while different schools contradict each other on specifics, they all agree on one overriding principle: Trust your gut feeling. “If you feel something is right, it probably is,” says Stefan. “And if something’s not right, you’re probably correct and you should explore why.”
In 2004, when Stefan and his life partner and business associate Helena Pulyaeva found their 1980s contemporary in Bethesda, both of these impulses were in play. A real estate-agent duo with RE/MAX 2000, the couple could see that while the home’s basic open design would suit their active entertainment schedule, a major renovation would be necessary to correct some inherent flaws. “When we walked into the living room and foyer area with its cathedral ceiling,” recalls Stefan, “it was as if we were standing at the bottom of a deep well. A massive stone fireplace dominated the room. The house, decorated in French Country style, was contemporary, but not contemporary enough for our tastes.”
The year-long transformation involved a well thought-out approach that simultaneously diminished the home’s excessive size while opening it in new and unexpected ways.
Essential to the transformation of the space, says Stefan, are the new stainless-steel-and-glass front door, flanked by glass panels, and the stainless-steel railings that define the newly opened stairwell and overlook. Over the door a triangular fogged window framed in wood was replaced with banded clear and frosted glass, reframed in stainless steel.
In the great room, the couple offset the overwhelming verticality of the two-story space by introducing a number of horizontal elements. A system of box-housed halogen lighting installed on the side walls infuses the room with enveloping warmth. Shoji screens with wider spacing than is seen traditionally cover the expanse of double sliding glass doors opening on to the 1,000-square-foot deck. The existing oak floors were replaced with Brazilian cherry in five-and-a-half-inch-wide planks to enhance the desired clean look and add richness. “The hardest decision was getting rid of the fireplace, the pride of the previous owner,” recalls Stefan. “But at 12 feet wide and 10 feet high, the thing defied furniture placement. We kept bumping into it no matter where we put the furnishings. We haven’t regretted the decision for a moment.”
The couple’s extensive contemporary art collection reinforces the modern look. The great room took on a new intimacy with the installation of a mobile by California artist Bruce Gray in the center of the room. Its eight-foot span helps to anchor the voluminous space. Friends and long-time collectors of the Russian exile artist Alexander “Sasha” Zhdanov (who died in his adopted city of Washington in 2006), Stefan and Pulyaeva own more than two dozen works by the expressionist master, many of them large-scale and museum quality.
Low-slung furniture and a decorative paint treatment on the walls reinforce the horizontality of the great room. Matte and glossy white paint in alternating horizontal stripes adds texture to the walls. The couple selected contemporary furniture in a white palette, complemented by accents in red and black. Pieces like the white wool and leather sofas and the occasional tables from Ligne Roset complement their collection of mid-century modern furniture icons, such as Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair, the 1948 Eames fiberglass La Chaise and the 1962 Arco floor lamp by Achille Castiglioni. Taraxacum, the dandelion chandelier designed by Castiglioni in 1988, defines the foyer.
Low-profile furniture also distinguishes the adjoining kitchen’s breakfast area: namely, an oversized white table and Japanese-inspired seating from Ligne Roset. In the kitchen, Canadian maple cabinetry and an island in red laminate with a black quartz top sit on aluminum legs. “We didn’t want a purely industrial kitchen. We went with wood to soften the space,” says Stefan. “The legs give the kitchen a lighter look. The cabinetry takes on the appearance of furniture and there’s added cleaning ease.” A modular Miele cook top with gas and electric burners, two ovens by Miele and Gaggenau, a Marvel wine cooler, a built-in Miele espresso machine and two top-loading Fisher & Paykel dishwashers enhance the kitchen’s performance.
In the dining room and the master bedroom, also on the main level, the couple introduced dark floors with six-inch-wide planks. Venetian plaster walls created by McLean-based Faux Illusions add color and texture. “We decided to ignore the common wisdom of uniformity usually seen in contemporary design, where all the walls are white or off-white and the floors are the same throughout,” says Stefan. “We wanted to make each space unique.”
The dining room furniture departs from the low profile seen elsewhere. An oversized square table in dark wood with polished chrome inserts complements and contrasts with the sleek polished aluminum of the Philippe Starck Hudson chairs.
After reading several books on feng shui, design devotee Alex Stefan discovered that while different schools contradict each other on specifics, they all agree on one overriding principle: Trust your gut feeling. “If you feel something is right, it probably is,” says Stefan. “And if something’s not right, you’re probably correct and you should explore why.”
The only structural change made in the house took place in the master bedroom. Walls were removed and part of the attic opened to create a library bound by a stainless-steel railing and accessed via a spiral staircase in the same material. Black slate with aluminum inserts replaced the traditional fireplace. When entertaining, the couple uses dividers to screen off the bedroom and allow guests to access the fireplace seating area and the loft library.
“We had 100 people here recently and the house did not feel crowded at all,” says Stefan. “Just as we imagined—with some major adjustments—in the beginning.”
Judith Turner-Yamamoto is an art historian and features and fiction writer based in Washington, DC. Photographer Bob Narod is based in Sterling, Virginia.
Alex Stefan and Helena Pulyaeva.
Venetian plaster walls warm up the dining room, where Philippe Starck's classic Hudson chairs and the chandelier by Terzani provide contrast with the dark wood table and floors.
Japanese-inspired seating and an oversized white table, all from Ligne Roset, reinforce the color scheme in the kitchen.
The red laminate island by Artcraft infuse the room with "the warmth of a red pepper."
The only structural work in the home's renovation took place in the master bedroom, where part of the attic was converted into a library loft, accessed by a stainless-steel spiral staircase.
Alex Stefan, a photographer in his spare time, shows his work in a gallery space on the home's lower level.
