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FeedHarvest Home
By Carla Waldemar
Photo by Susan Gilmore
They had been renting a place on a tucked-away street between Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake after returning from a sojourn on the East Coast. The family had fallen in love with their neighborhood’s unpretentious, eclectic mix of residents and homes, not to mention proximity to the lakes and a thriving restaurant and theater scene. Jim and Cindie also wanted to raise their daughter in a true urban environment. They already had decided to make the area their permanent home.
Soon after they called to tell the seller their intentions, the phone rang. It was the next-door neighbor calling back: “Don’t you want to see the inside first?”
The house, a 1962 rambler, was ugly, Cindie recalls, “but we’d lived in 12 places since we’d been married, and every single one was awful until we fixed it.”
First they painted its white exterior a dark tone and planted climbing vines, inspiring an architect who lived across the street to sprint over and say, “I can’t thank you enough! And I don’t even know you!”
But inside it remained, well, ugly. And its footprint was ill conceived. It was, however, solid and well-built, says Jim, who knows good construction when he sees it. (He owns Smart Associates in Minneapolis, which designs restaurant and commercial spaces.) The home needed a total overhaul, and because of the lot size, this meant building up rather than out.
Jim designed (and redesigned and redesigned again) a dream house that corrected the room flow, added an entire second story, and expanded the rear deck. The remodel was so major that it required the couple and their teenage daughter, Casey, to move out for six months, and yet so deliberately subtle that visitors exclaim, “It looks like it’s been this way forever.”
This is a family of dedicated urbanites, so building a McMansion would have been anathema. “We didn’t care about the number of baths and bedrooms,” Cindie insists. Instead, she documented two priorities: “It had to have a front porch because ever since my first trip to New England when I saw pumpkins decorating porches, I wanted one,” she says. “And it had to look like a New England farmhouse: very simple.”
Jim had his priorities, too. As an avid cook and restaurant designer, he craved a bigger, better-equipped kitchen. He also wanted an overall floor plan that encouraged guests to circulate during the frequent fundraising soirees for nonprofits and political causes that he and Cindie love to host.
An existing fireplace smack in the middle of the ground floor anchored an otherwise blank slate. Jim removed an entryway closet to enlarge and enliven the living room, then converted the adjoining family room to a dining room.
The new kitchen sits at the rear of the house in a space formerly occupied by a bedroom. Windows look across the picturesque yard to the Kenilworth bike trail, another urban element the Smarts embrace. Both Cindie and Jim have theater backgrounds (and Casey frequently appears in Children’s Theatre Company productions), so spot and track lighting was deemed essential. So were small-paned French doors leading to the deck—another of Cindie’s requirements, as was the beadboard. “I wanted lots of New England beadboard—the front porch, the guest bath, the kitchen ceiling—wherever I could, before they cut me off,” she laughs.
Susan Gilmore
She inventoried their kitchenware before moving out and, with the help of floorplan software, found a new place for everything before unpacking. “It was fun!” she declares, explaining, “Organizing is what I do.” (She heads Smart Legal Assistance, a Minneapolis paralegal firm.)
She and Jim eschewed standard look-alike cabinets, preferring more eclectic storage possibilities. “We didn’t want a suburban home where all the cupboards matched,” Cindie explains. Instead, an antique German armoire holds dishes; an above-stove rack claims Jim’s frying pan collection, and another vintage armoire houses a cache of ironware. Moveable storage carts can be stowed under a steel-topped breakfast counter. A new basement pantry and wine cellar—nicknamed “the grocery store” by Casey’s friends—holds everything from canned goods to partyware. The result is a “put-together, as opposed to planned-together” look, as Cindie puts it.
Jim’s second “must” was a two-story library to welcome books that had been lingering in rental storage for the past 15 years. Upstairs, a balcony wall of the new guestroom/office overlooks the lofty space, situated in what was once daughter Casey’s bedroom. (She chose a new suite in the basement instead.) More French doors lead from the upper-level owners’ bedroom to the sun porch, an addition that quickly became a favorite place to sip coffee and peruse the paper.
The vast shower stall in the master bath is clad in floor-tile samples that Jim collected from more than 200 projects over the years. This, he points, is a casino in LA, this is Chiang Mai Thai. The shower floor slants downward, a trick observed at Le Parker Méridien hotel in New York. An old English file cabinet (relating to Cindie’s profession, Jim explains) now holds two sinks.
The project, undertaken by a commercial contractor, was finished in six months. Unlike many a renovating couple’s recollection, “This was so unstressful,” Cindie claims, “because we knew it wouldn’t go as planned.” Explains Jim, who’s dealt with his share of unmet construction deadlines: “For instance, we changed the stairway position as the carpenters stood by. We had fun. We didn’t worry about resale. We’re the ones who are going to enjoy it!”
Today they share that enjoyment with the hundreds of guests who attend parties and fundraisers in the home. The whole house is put to use—tables and chairs are even set up in the upstairs bedrooms and sun porch. Jim takes care of all of the cooking, including creating a party menu around pumpkins for the annual Pumpkin Party, which may include stuffed pumpkins and martinis featuring the ingredient of honor. Held shortly after Thanksgiving, the party also gives the chef a chance to use leftovers creatively in one of his legendary soups.
Cindie’s passion for pumpkins is evident in the hundreds of specimens in all colors, shapes and sizes that decorate the house. In the fall, vendors at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market even save particularly unusual pumpkins for her. And of course, a number of her most prized examples accent the front porch that just seems, like the rest of the house, to always have belonged right here.
CARLA WALDEMAR IS A MINNEAPOLIS FREELANCE WRITER WHO LOOKS FORWARD TO THE SMARTS’ PUMPKIN PARTY.
11 ISSUES (1 YEAR)
