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By Dylan Roche
Photography by Keyanna Bowen, East & Lane
It’s a challenge: How do you remodel an older home and maintain its charm while making it conducive to modern living? With this goal in mind, designer Julia Longchamps and architect Charles Paul Goebel teamed up to reconfigure an Easton home tucked away on 20 acres of forest along Maxmore Creek.
As Longchamps explains, the house was originally built in 1969 but styled to look like the early 1900s. The new owners, who have a large family and love to entertain, found that the linear, railroad-style layout didn’t meet their needs. Instead of a choppy floorplan in which one room led to another without adjoining hallways, they needed something with a better flow. Still, they did not want to simply tear the house down and build something modern. “We wanted to get rid of the railroad style but make it look like something that has always been here,” Longchamps says.
Goebel describes the architecture as transitional colonial, noting how it blends traditional exterior elements with modern design characteristics, such as an open plan, soaring ceilings, and expansive glass. The remodel added 1,200 square feet to the existing 3,100 square feet and incorporated rooms and amenities that wouldn’t be found in a traditional historic home: a mudroom, a laundry room, and a bar. Nevertheless, the traditional exterior of the home has not been compromised.
“As we often do, the home is more traditional on its street side, yet more modern on the other faces, where glass areas are dramatically increased to capture light and views,” Goebel says. These views were important because it was the beautiful natural surroundings that drew the owners to the property. “The property has three significant and distinctive views which the home now addresses: woodland, pond and pool, and Maxmore Creek, which flows to the Tred Avon,” he adds.
The kitchen serves as a central space for entertaining and living, with not one but two islands, plus a breakfast nook and a small sitting area off to one side. Longchamps describes the kitchen and sitting area as the owners’ “eat-live space,” which had to be both practical and attractive. Each kitchen appliance has its own built-in nook and can easily slide out of view, minimizing the feeling of clutter. The island dividing the kitchen from the sitting area has paneling, so it looks more like furniture. All of this makes the space feel less like a kitchen and more like a place where people can gather, relax, and simply live.
Once the sliding glass doors between the sitting area and a screened-in patio are opened, they create a generous, seamless space that can accommodate a crowd, complete with a table for dining and chairs gathered around the fireplace for sitting. “We needed it big to entertain,” Longchamps explains. It’s easy to picture a large group of loved ones meandering from a cooking prep zone in the kitchen to a comfortable chair on the patio without ever feeling like they went to a different room. “Being able to do this indoor-outdoor dining was really important.”
Throughout the house, Longchamps makes use of a neutral color palette and durable, practical textiles that do not compete with the magnificent views of nature. Nowhere is this more evident than in the living room. Wide windows open onto the forest beyond, which practically becomes a work of art.
A large neutral sectional sofa dominates the room but is surrounded by many elements intended to surprise. “We really wanted to keep everything neutral and then layer our color in through our textiles: our pillows, the little swivel chair,” Longchamps says. “We have little fun pops like our leather chair in the corner and the little wood accent on the lamp, the pop of color from the cabinetry.”
Indeed, the built-in shelves hold colorful decorative items, the soapstone fireplace stands out boldly against the white wall, and the walnut-and-marble cocktail table serves as a handsome anchor for the room.
This may be the formal living room in the home, but it’s not formal in the stuffy sense of the word. The size and softness of the sofa beg one to come and lounge there. Its fabric was chosen because of its durability, but “even though this isn’t a performance fabric, it has a lot of movement. Its colors—these browns and warm creams—are very forgiving,” she says. Another place where durable textiles came into play is the breakfast nook, where the seating is upholstered in Sunbrella fabric that can be wiped down if food is accidentally dropped there—a likely occurrence when the grandchildren visit.
Even with a neutral palette, some bold statements are hidden away in surprising places. For example, glass mosaics adorn the wall in the moody blue bar room, and the quartz countertops are streaked with subtle blue veining. The master bedroom has a wallpapered accent wall that makes a big impact. Longchamps and Goebel’s bold design strategies have breathed new life into this older home—a life infused with beauty and mindful elegance one might experience while vacationing. Even outside, the teak furniture on the pool deck creates the ambiance of a luxurious resort.
ARCHITECT: Charles Paul Goebel, AIA, AICP, LEED AP, Principal Architect, Easton, Maryland. BUILDER: West and Callahan, Inc., Easton, Maryland. INTERIOR & KITCHEN DESIGN: Julia Longchamps Design, Stevensville, Maryland. LANDSCAPE DESIGN: George’s Green Thumb, Easton, Maryland.
© Annapolis Home Magazine
Vol. 15, No. 4 2024