The exceptionally well-crafted Kfoury house, which is beautifully integrated with 21 acres of gently undulating land, has a comfortable, casual feeling. After winding along the curved driveway, past a paddock bordered by white fences and a pond that attracts Canadian geese, inside the English country house-style residence, you find wide-plank wormy oak floors, custom-designed mahogany and cherry doors, exquisite stone from four continents, plus a very friendly, relaxed feeling.
“My favorite feature in the house is its earthiness. I feel like I’m always connected to the outside. The brick and stone floors and the old plank wood make me feel like the house is part of the landscape,” Nancy Kfoury says.
As an equestrian, she adds, “It’s definitely the kind of house you can walk through in your riding boots and not worry about roughing up anything.” Jorge and Nancy Kfoury didn’t want anything too formal, because they don’t live that way. “We have five ice hockey players in the family,” Nancy says, including Greg, 22, Geoffrey, 20, Robbie, 19, and J.J., 16.
A Simple Pond
“All my kids played hockey, so I was determined to play,” says Nancy, a physiological psychologist, who learned. “After I started, I told Jorge I would love to have some kind of pond with some pipes to make the water freeze during the winter so I could skate. And this is what I got,” she says in amazement, gazing at her spectacular 18,000-square-foot ice rink. It’s large enough to merit its own Zamboni, could easily accommodate an Ice Capades performance, and has been used for lots of team parties, including lacrosse and soccer celebrations. Greg used to host the University of Richmond hockey team for its “team bonding” weekend each year before he graduated last May. The team and coaches would all come up and spend an entire weekend.
Skating on Thin Ice
“The funniest thing was when we first built the rink, before we ever got on the ice,” Nancy says. “We were celebrating our anniversary and Jorge had planned a romantic dinner which was all set up in the rink lobby, which was still under construction at the time.” The Kfourys were going to share a couple of bottles of great wine, have dinner, then take the inaugural skate.
“We were sitting staring at the ice, thinking how pretty and shiny it looked, especially after two bottles of wine, when suddenly we realized that the blue line looked wavy instead of straight. We both jumped up and ran downstairs to the ice where we realized it had been melting down during our entire dinner!” They spent the rest of the night working out the kinks and getting the ice back up and running.
Since then, the Kfourys have had many great pickup games in this rink and Nancy’s women’s hockey team has had challenging scrimmages. Some of her hockey friends happen to be design experts, too. Nancy consulted Karin Grasso, owner of Karin Grasso, Home & Office Design, for interior design suggestions. Another hockey pal, Emily Seiler, owner of Fabric Accents by Emily, helped with the draperies.
Respecting Nature
Jorge, the owner and founder of Jefferson Millwork & Design, the company that did the millwork for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and scores of stately law firms in the area and across the country, collaborated closely with his business partners Mike Corrigan and Mark Howe, plus Mark Sullenberger, president of Custom Design Concepts Architecture + Interiors, to design and build the Kfoury estate.
“One of the most unique things about this project was the site,” Sullenberger says. “Jorge wanted to place the house where there was an old farmhouse and he wanted to save three large black walnut trees and three 150-year-old oak trees.” After hiring arborists to designate the tree protection areas, Sullenberger was left with a narrow plot. “We tried to weave in between these existing tree roots, so the house rambles along and bends at 45 degree angles,” he says.
Speaking of roots, Jorge and Nancy traveled to Scotland and England, where her mother’s ancestors lived, when they were planning the house, and their home reflects this British heritage. For instance, subtle glen plaids, argyles, and pure wools are used in the furnishings. Scottish “kiltie” chairs sit in the great room, and ivy creeps up the stone and over shutters outside.
More than any other feature, however, the extraordinary craftsmanship distinguishes the 9,600-square-foot residence. The grand sweeping staircase, for instance, was a feat to build. The torqued banister, which came from a single huge log, took almost three weeks alone. “We used 110 steel bar clamps on wormy oak that we’d wet down twice a day and bend sideways and then twist ever so slightly so the banister would match the three-dimensional curvature of the stairs,” Jorge says.
While standard walls are 4½” thick, many walls at the Kfoury home are 9” to 11” thick. And all doors have a Sound Transmission Coefficiency (S.T.C.) rating of 45, which means they help keep loud noises quiet. HEPA filters purify the air throughout the house to 90 percent efficiency. “An average electronic air filter cleans with about 10 percent efficiency,” Jorge says. Even the fire alarm, a Life-Safety System, is exceptional. “The whole system is tied to our lighting system,” Jorge explains. “Whenever a smoke detector is activated, the system will light a path out away from that sensor.”
Pastoral Views
Entering through the mahogany front door of the Kfoury house, a guest almost feels a magnetic pull through the foyer to the great room where soaring ceilings of stained cedar and a wall of French doors and windows beckon. The connection to the land is perhaps strongest here.
“Jorge and Nancy wanted as much light as possible and didn’t want anything to obscure their views,” says Grasso, who designed handsome glen plaid draperies topped with wool cornices that add texture and softness to the room without blocking the windows.
The Kfourys purposely designed a great room instead of separate living and family rooms. “This is not our first home and we knew we would not use a formal living room,” Nancy says.
Endless Summer
Jorge, who used to be a springboard diver, doesn’t have to give up his passion for swimming when the temperature drops. In addition to a sparkling outdoor pool that offers lovely views of rolling hills, their paddock, and beyond, the Kfourys have an indoor pool in the owners’ suite. This Endless Pool is 8’ x 15’, simulates river current, and is sometimes referred to as a swimmer’s treadmill. Jorge swims here a few times a week. The couple uses a luxurious kitchenette, which has a rare and distinctive granite countertop, adjacent to the pool area to have coffee almost every morning.
Superior Components
In fact, extraordinary stone from Europe, Africa, and North and South America runs throughout the house. The foyer, for instance, has a warm, creamy travertine that was sanded to a bullnose finish on all four edges of each block to replicate an older English home. The butler’s pantry has a mossy green granite with iron streaks. Jorge “book matched” the green granite for the kitchen island countertop. “I took a slice off a giant block of granite, then had the slice right next to it cut, too,” he says, explaining how two pieces flow together seamlessly.
The spacious kitchen features dream appliances including a double Sub-Zero refrigerator/freezer, Wolf stove, Miele dishwashers, Fisher & Paykel drawer dishwasher, Waterworks fixtures, and Rocky Mountain Hardware. When Jorge launches his newest project, Linden Springs, a luxurious condominium complex in Reston, VA, he’ll integrate this same level of superior quality throughout those units.
Using Fallen Trees
Jorge’s home office, which includes built-in cherry bookcases and paneling, motorized window shades, and a stone fireplace, also features a mantle made of wood from trees that once stood in front of the US Capitol. The wormy chestnut beams in his ceiling are more than 130 years old and came from a barn. In fact, most of the wormy oak and wormy chestnut used throughout the house came from fallen trees retrieved from local creek beds and forest floors.
In addition to her distinctive mantle, which is also made of fallen trees, the fireplace in Nancy’s office features unique bas relief artwork on the iron fireplace doors. “Nancy really loves buttons, so it started with the concept of sewing with buttons,” says Cianne Fragione, who created metal assemblages to adorn the doors. In addition to buttons, she encrusted them with African oyster shells, bits of ceramic she hand painted, Victorian buckles and tiny purses, and broken chunks of a porcelain chandelier. She made similar one-of-a-kind fireplace doors in the great room.
With all of its unique characteristics, the ice rink, indoor pool, and state-of-the-art smart house features, the Kfoury home offers perhaps the best luxury of all – a feeling of comfort.
Take Note
Linden Springs
Jorge Kfoury used his exquisitely crafted house as a laboratory for amenities he’ll feature in Linden Springs, an ultra luxurious condominium complex he’s launching in Reston, VA. While the 5.5 acres of land near Reston Town Center could have been zoned for 100 condos, Linden Development, Kfoury’s company, is limiting the number to 43 condos in the same square footage to create a most exclusive environment. The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Trail and the Reston Trail intersect on one of the property’s corners. Boxwoods that are thought to be 125 years old will be preserved after the ground breaking, which is planned for November.
“We think we have the largest and oldest holly trees and other specimen trees in the state of Virginia,” Jorge says, relishing the property, which also features a gazebo near a pond. The condominiums will range from 1,800 to 4,700 square feet with most averaging 2,900 square feet. Features that most people would consider luxuries, such as Sub-Zero refrigerators, Miele dishwashers, Miele washers and dryers, Fisher & Paykel drawer dishwashers, Waterworks fixtures, and granite countertops, will be standard at Linden Springs. These luxurious new units are expected to be complete by early 2008.
