A heavy plate-bronze front door provides a commanding entrance to the residence.
Like many renovations, it started with something small. After 23 years, homeowners Cathy Simon and David Kuney had tired of their master bath, which sported an ’80s-era skylight that, as Simon puts it, “made the room feel like a sauna.” The couple contacted architect David Jameson, whose vision of a sleek, modern bath soon spilled over to encompass the adjoining closet, home office and master bedroom. As the detritus of years of day-to-day living melted away behind carefully planned storage built-ins and a new streamlined environment, the owners were smitten. “When I came upstairs,” Simon recalls, “my blood pressure went down.” The couple, both attorneys, decided they wanted to establish that sense of calm and serenity throughout their home.
The family room flows into the kitchen where the cabinetry has been refaced in teak.
Five years later, the entire residence has been transformed into a spare, minimalist space full of subtle, deceptively simple, modern architectural elements that work together to form a cohesive whole. “The house is curated with just three or four materials,” Jameson says. He followed the design blueprint he established in the master suite, incorporating teak paneling on walls and ceilings, plate-bronze surfaces and expansive unfilled travertine fireplace surrounds into the rest of the house.
Seen from the entry hall, the owner’s home office features a walnut desk
Jameson’s repetition of materials brings unity to the home, which at nearly 6,000 square feet felt disjointed prior to the renovation. “The project was about taking an existing home and repositioning the way the rooms are experienced,” the architect explains.
The living room showcases an asymmetrical limestone-clad fireplace and a wall of windows framed in teak.
The number of rooms hasn’t changed—in fact, the footprint for the house remains exactly the same—but their configuration and orientation has. Jameson opened up some walls and closed off others, creating what he calls “a front-to-back relationship with rooms flowing together,” so sight lines are open from one end of the house to the other. He replaced rows of traditional windows with “window walls”—separate windows banked together without trim that reach from the floor up to the headers near the ceiling. The window banks are framed in teak to make each one look like a single, solid structure.
BEFORE: The traditionally styled living room prior to the renovation.
The finished spaces are a perfect complement to the couple’s modern art collection—large abstract canvases that draw the eye throughout the house. The front entry, with a massive plate-bronze door and ceiling, opens into a spacious hallway that is empty of everything but artwork; bearing walls that couldn’t be moved have been widened to resemble art installations. The teak paneling, which includes quarter-inch reveals between panels, figures prominently on the walls and ceiling and flanks the stairwell at the end of the room.
BEFORE: The front hallway prior to the renovation.
To the left of the entry, David Kuney’s study offers a panoramic view of the front yard. The same warm, honey-colored teak paneling conceals shelves and cabinets. Also to the left, the living room showcases the first of five fireplaces in the home clad in unfilled travertine. The other side of the hallway opens into the dining room, with a square French walnut dining table and a matching sideboard that cantilevers out from the wall—both designed by Jameson.
The dining room is dominated by a French walnut dining table that matches the built-in sideboard.
An expansive family room/kitchen appears beyond the dining room. The kitchen’s layout hasn’t changed, but the cabinetry has been refaced with custom-designed teak and there is now one large-scale island where there used to be two. The counters are a honed gray schist called Pietro Cardoso, and the backsplash is acid-etched ceramic fritted glass, which includes a layer of enamel painted on the back for durability.
In the master bath, limestone sinks, plate-bronze countertops and stone flooring create an elegant, streamlined space.
The skylight in their bathroom was not the only one the couple had grown to dislike over the years. They requested that Jameson get rid of the others—one in the kitchen and one in the family room above a casual eating area. The architect designed floating ceilings that hang below each skylight to block the sun and heat while still allowing indirect light to filter into the room.
BEFORE: The dining room prior to the renovation.
Stair rails were replaced by tempered glass with delicate handrails of plate bronze. The upstairs master suite is entirely carpeted with custom-made felted wool from New Zealand, while Simon’s home office, the walk-in closet and the bedroom all boast teak cabinetry.
The master bedroom boasts a bedstead and built-in night stands
In the master bathroom where it all started, Jameson has created a haven of tranquility, with shallow custom limestone sink basins, a limestone soaking tub and plate-bronze countertops. The roomy shower stall has a five-foot-wide pivoting door and a floor made of Inca stone—one piece of which is cleverly raised to allow water to drain around it. The architect also added state-of-the-art elements, including a wall of windows made of ionized electronic glass that becomes frosted for privacy at the touch of a button; walls on each side of the room are made of opaque glass with light fixtures behind them that cast a softened glow on the room. Each includes a mirror as part of the glass expanse.
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