Mike and Lindsey’s Edward Durell Stone House of Good Taste — the final reveal

It’s been a long journey through terrazzo floor restoration, cement floor polishing, custom cabinetry and more — and now it is time for the big reveal — the eighth and final installment of Mike and Lindsey’s Edward Durell Stone ‘House of Good Taste’ remodel. Mike sent us 12 before-and-after photos, plus a helpful list of resources. So without further delay, lets take a tour!

Mike writes:

It has been an amazing journey turning this house into our home. We endured many ups and downs, but we are finally settled. We find ourselves looking around and saying to each other, “ I can’t believe we get to live here!” We are thrilled with how things turned out and hope everyone has enjoyed taking this trip with us. We still have a ways to go, with two bathrooms in the planning stages and lots of landscaping work, but now we can take a deep breath, and just enjoy these next projects and the house for years to come.

We don’t want to rehash our previous installments and bore everyone, so this installment will briefly recap and focus on the before and after images. Keeping updates coming to Pam and Kate in real time proved harder than we thought. At this point, we have been living here for about 3 months and are feeling pretty settled, but there are still a ton of little details to complete.

We thank Pam and Kate sooo much for letting us share our project with their readers over the last few months. We hope that what we have shared helps others on their Retro Renovation journey, as we know other stories helped us.

Hallway (above)

The long wide hallway connecting the garage and front door is not original to the home. Originally, this space was a large breezeway, which we are certain was very cool. We wanted the hallway to feel like a transition area from the outside to the inside and create a feeling of expectation. To accomplish this, the vintage wall sconces are very similar to the ones on the outside of the house.

We decided to keep the nine large windows uncovered for the feeling of openness, and added a few planters to soften the space and bring some warmth to the space.

• Vintage EJS wall sconces
• 4” LED can lights
• Custom sized wall mounted planters from The Woody Beckers etsy shop 
• Vintage Danish benches
• Rug from Flor

Living area (above)

With the entire common living space being completely open, we defined two living areas and a dining area while keeping the large expanse under the skylight open.

We also updated the original wood paneling element with the two large closets and surrounding passage doors in walnut.

Bringing in the walnut really helped to soften the hard surface stone walls, terrazzo, and polished concrete floors.

We are very happy we opted for smooth walls and ceilings, as they help set off the stone’s texture.

• Refinished original terrazzo floors
• American walnut paneled closets
• Passage doors veneered in American walnut
• Passage door hardware (throughout entire house), Schlage.
• LED gimbal accent lighting
• Vintage Danish pendant lights
• Vintage furnishings except couch from Joybird
• Vintage doorbell from ElectraChime

Kitchen (above)

We are probably most pleased with the way the kitchen turned out and maybe a bit surprised how well things worked out. There isn’t anything significant we would have done different.

Without any major layout changes to the modest 13′ x 13′ space, we managed everything we needed and wanted.

The island will seat four adults comfortably and serves as our daily kitchen table. The decision to replace the french door with a slider, as was originally there, makes the space feel more open and larger than reality.

• American walnut cabinetry stained natural
• 3×9 ceramic tiles from Daltile — natural hues collection
• Caesarstone quartz countertops in “Blizzard”
• Cabinet hardware — Mid-Century Peg cabinet knob from Rejuvenation
• 4” LED can lights
• Vintage Danish pendant lights
• Floating Lack wall shelves from Ikea 
• Bar stools from AllModern

Bedrooms (above and below)

Only two are pictured, as the third is serving as our “catch all” from the move (we are opting not to show you our messy side ).

• Child’s room curtain fabric — Premier Prints Hopscotch Felix Natural from Fabric.com

It’s amazing the difference given the fact that the bedrooms saw the least amount of renovation work. What we like the best are the floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall curtains for the 8’ sliding glass doors. They slide on a track system tucked behind a simple wood valance and are separated in the middle so they can bunch to either side of the sliding glass door, creating a feeling of having a entire glass wall.

• Master bedroom curtain fabric — Dwell Studio Futura Dandelion from Fabric.com

Best of the rest (above and below)

Two projects we haven’t previously discussed in our installments were the laundry room and master closet, and we love how they turned out so thought we would share. The bedroom we chose to use as the master is not the room intended to be the master. We opted to keep the original master as the guest room for a variety of reasons. So our master bedroom is not very big — when you add in the closet door, bathroom door, and sliding glass door, there very little wall space for furniture other than a bed. Fortunately the closets are large so were able to build in a dresser along one side.

We gutted the laundry room (which is off the kitchen) and rebuilt storage that better suits our needs, along with a small counter top. We also added multiple outlets so this space also serves as our charging station for laptops and phones.

Mike and Lindsey: What an amazing treasure of a home — one that is so lucky that you found it!

Thank you so very much for taking all this time to chronicle and share your journey with us!

Read all of the stories about Mike and Lindsey’s Edward Durell Stone ‘House of Good Taste’