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Liz Levinʼs journey to build her family and her home is remarkable. She took five trips to Russia to adopt her two adorable sons. She made more than 100 modifications to transform her Carderock Springs home into the contemporary space she wanted. And she accomplished all of this while working as an executive in the fast-paced field of retail.
Levinʼs quest to build a family began at age 44. “I decided I would no longer wait for the perfect partner to have kids. I would adopt,” Levin says. After several false starts in her attempt to adopt a child domestically, she turned to international adoption. Despite mounds of paperwork and red tape, plus those five trips to Red Square, she successfully adopted two wonderful little boys, Victor, now 8, and Benjamin, now 5.
The year before Victor came into her life, Levin had a custom home built in St. Louis, MO, where she was living and working. After she brought Ben home, she decided to enlarge her house from three to five bedrooms because she wanted to make “little boy bedrooms” and add another bath. As fate would have it, when that project was nearing completion, Levin was transferred back to the Washington area, where she had worked for years previously.
This time, however, with two young sons and three cats in tow (theyʼve since added a fourth feline to the family) and a new position as senior vice president and general merchandise manager of Hechtʼs, Levin didnʼt want to start from scratch again. So she bought a Mitchell & Best home before it was built, and modified the floor plans to fit her needs.
Living with Color
“I love the look of wood and color. I thought I wanted a contemporary white house in St. Louis, then decided I couldnʼt live with white,” she says. “White is very dramatic and sophisticated but I would be so afraid of it … getting dirty that I wouldnʼt feel comfortable using it every day.” With two young boys racing around the house, who would?
By contrast, Levin says, “I wanted to make this home look like you could plop down and it would be usable and touchable.” She painted it with custom-blended shades – mustard in her living and dining rooms, caramel in a guest room, bright yellow in the playroom, and purple in her family room and kitchen.
Customized Kitchen
Transforming the kitchen from a traditional model to a more contemporary space was the biggest challenge. “Usually, a kitchen has a window, and usually, a kitchen isnʼt in the center of a house,” Levin says. In the kitchen area, she converted what was designed to be a laundry room into a pantry. Then she took the space that was intended to be the pantry and had a wall of sleek honey cherry cabinets with flat panel doors built. “Turning that into a wall of cabinets gave it a more contemporary, cleaner look than having a six-panel door in the middle. It actually gave me more capacity than Iʼd have with the pantry,” she says, showing how the entire 56” cabinet doors slide out, providing access to the shelves on both sides.
“Thereʼs a lot of dead space in houses when you look at floor plans,” Levin says. For example, she found dead space at the end of the wall of cabinets and had it converted into a storage closet for her paper supplies. She also specified a counter-to-floor vertical pull-out drawer for her seasonings in a narrow space next to the stove.
Levin, who enjoys having family and friends gather in the kitchen when she entertains, had a multi-planar island built. The counter work area, which has the prep sink and a granite countertop, is table height, which is just right for her 5ʼ2” frame. The highest level, which is supported with steel braces and is black glass, is counter height. “I donʼt like when youʼre working high and the table is below you. And with me being short I like the lower counter.” Levin also accented one corner of the island with a small circular piece of black glass.
“I like steel, glass, and wood. Iʼm into very clean lines. I donʼt like carved and ornate,” says Levin, who modified the fireplace surrounds and molding throughout her house with streamlined stepped molding instead of the more traditional molding that had originally been planned.
Levin thoroughly analyzed how she would use her house before she had it built. For instance, she converted a sitting room off of her bedroom into the laundry room. That way she wouldnʼt have to traipse up and down stairs to do laundry.
Levin found many ideas for her new home in magazines and catalogs. Her large rectangular bathroom sinks, which are only 2” deep, for instance, were shown on the cover of a Kohler catalog pictured with a bowl in the center. Since she doesnʼt use her bathroom sinks for much more than brushing her teeth, Levin realized she didn’t need deep bowls. She also reconfigured Jack and Jill bathrooms slated to go between two guest rooms so she could provide private bathrooms and walk-in closets in each guest room.
In several instances, Levin had windows moved or filled in so sheʼd be able to place her furniture at maximum advantage. In one guest room, for example, she had a window closed up so sheʼd be able to place a double bed against a wall. Otherwise, it would have gone against a very low window and looked awkward. In her family room the back wall was originally designed to have three large windows, but she moved the fireplace from one wall to the center of the back wall so that sheʼd have wall space for her television. In Victorʼs room, she turned what had been designed as an open alcove into the closet and picked up more space in his bedroom.
Levin turned the lower level of her house into a huge playroom for her sons, complete with games, toys, and giant bulletin boards for each boy. She painted the whole space yellow because most of the boysʼ toys are primary colors. The effect feels like she brought sunshine into the home she built for her family.
