Oak Park indigenous Laura Christensen and her husband, Mark, built their desire dwelling for the duration of the pandemic on a spectacular parcel of wooded land adjacent to the Cantigny Golfing Class in Wheaton. The Arts and Crafts-style masterpiece they made hearkens back to Laura’s youthful encounters in Oak Park, the location the place Frank Lloyd Wright and other exceptional architects experimented.
“We had lived in Wheaton for 30 years and needed to build the home we experienced been creating in our minds for yrs — and do it on a huge parcel of residence given that I am a landscape architect and wished place to plant and enjoy,” Laura says.
The couple and their developing group hit that mark and other individuals.
“Also, because I grew up to appreciate fantastic architecture as artwork, I fully grasp that we are truly living in a piece of artwork,” she claims.
In advance of the house was designed, Laura stumbled upon a “for sale by owner” indicator on house bounded on two sides by the Cantigny Golf Training course. In advance of long, the pair was equipped to bought it and another good deal up coming doorway, assembling 4.5 acres of high quality property.
“We ended up with a Wisconsin escape house without having obtaining to go away town!” she recollects.
“I cherished the cleanse traces, excellent woodwork, massive windows and other facts inherent in a Craftsman household. I genuinely take into account this style of house to be the quintessential ‘homey, cozy home’ and desired to construct a person,” Laura suggests.
After they had the land, they moved forward to assemble a collaborative crew of experts to make it a truth and, luckily, experienced ordered most of the supplies they required in advance of COVID hit, earning constructing materials much more scarce. Mike Sparks of Sparks Architects Inc. of Elmhurst developed the property, Brad Drendel of Brad Drendel Builders Inc. of Naperville was the builder and Joan Kaufman of Interior Setting up and Design Inc. in Naperville did the inside layout.

























“The group crafted the Christensen household from the floor up, starting off in September 2020 and it took about a 12 months to finish,” Kaufman suggests.
The amazing 4,200-square-foot dwelling capabilities a initially-floor grasp suite a amazing, cathedral-ceilinged family members place with a stone fire flanked by window seats and topped by statement-earning ceiling rafters a lovely point out-of-the-art kitchen featuring alder cabinets and attractive Versailles-patterned tile perform a light-weight-stuffed three-season home from which to get pleasure from Laura’s gardens and a great deal much more, together with a basement wine area.

The kitchen area features a putting blue agate backsplash on the selection and blue Alaska granite counter tops.
– Courtesy of Chip Haines Visuals & Images
Distinctive touches abound in the residence, these as a kitchen countertop with a dwell edge leading manufactured from a large, 120-year-outdated oak the householders were forced to minimize down from the assets a custom wooden eating booth in the kitchen area, designed by Town-Living Style and design in Chicago custom made art glass cupboard doorways in the kitchen, built by Kaufman and fabricated by Alpine Stained Glass in Plainfield a
striking blue agate backsplash over the vary and blue Alaska granite countertops Arts and Crafts-style mullioned home windows all over and a porcelain kitchen ground with tumbled edges, manufactured to glance like serious stone.
“A lot of small mom-and-pop firms in the Chicago place were being element of the procedure and we preferred that,” Kaufman states.
The overall building method was all about element and character due to the fact Laura, as a landscape designer, is intensely fascinated in well being and wellness, Kaufman adds. Only nontoxic and no-VOC products had been decided on and all of the cupboards have been still left in a local weather-managed warehouse to “off-gas” for a month ahead of being put in in the home. Tile was put in on the flooring of the kitchen to superior hold up to the Christensens canine. William Morris mother nature styles look on drapes, pillows and even on the stairway runner.
Even the loos are putting with the learn bath featuring a free of charge-standing soaker tub and a roomy stall shower with a enormous sheet of colourful quartzite as its back again wall.
“The Christensens let our staff structure almost everything, from the big photo down to trivialities like the knobs on each cabinet door,” claims Kaufman. “We pooled our sources and information to make this household exclusive and the Christensens totally like it.”
Laura Christensen concurred. “We are experience like the household turned out even much better than we envisioned. A group of us contributed our special expertises and developed a superb house,” she claims. “It is so peaceful listed here and we experience like we are dwelling outside the house, even when we are inside our household.”
