That it was an earth home was unusual enough, but then there were the turtles. Hundreds of them.
Topped with approximately three feet of earth and covered by dirt on three sides, a large part of the home`s interior had been turned into a network of atriums that was home for turtles. They dozed on tree stumps and rocks that had been cemented into the floor, splashed in the fountains, crawled around the perimeters of the atriums and probably crawled into other parts of the house, too. It was almost primeval.
The mailman still likes to talk about how he delivered those turtles, along with the bills, junk mail and letters. Those turtles came from all over the world; they were really something, he says.
The turtles and their owners moved out a couple of years ago, leaving a house with unique potential–and a distinct smell of turtles.
The house, built in 1980, sat empty for almost a year. There were no buyers for an earth home whose living/dining area was dominated by three atriums, connected by streams, little waterfalls, ponds, tree stumps, rocks and greenery. Real eastate agents showed the house, but there were no takers. — — —
Enter the Rifkinds: Holly and Seymour and their two children, Aaron, 3, and Ryan, born in February.
Seymour Rifkind is a very precise person.
He has short-term goals and long-term goals, and when he and Holly married six years ago, they set up a five-year plan.
Everything was going almost exactly as scheduled–even a little ahead of schedule–until it became time to buy a house. They couldn`t find what they wanted; and that, for Seymour Rifkind, was very frustrating.
”We looked for two years. It got to the point where I finally said,
`Okay, we`re never going to find what we want; let`s buy property and build.`
”Then, out of the blue one day, our real estate agent said, `You know, I`ve got this house, and it`s sort of crazy, but I`ve gotten to know you and you might just like it.`
”I walked in, took one look and said, `Yes, we want this house.` ”
Holly wasn`t quite so sure.
”It was beige and brown and cold looking. And those three different atriums and all the dead tree stumps. . . . I kept visualizing kids tripping over tree stumps.”
The Rifkinds are doers, however–doers with imagination. She`s a graphic artist, and he`s good on the business end; together they own a thriving graphic arts business. And together they transformed this onetime turtle haven into a warmly comfortable home.
Change that to: a warmly comfortable and extremely out-of-the-ordinary home.
Those three atriums have been consolidated. Walking through the front door, the first sight that hits the eye is a pair of tall ficus trees reaching toward the skylights, surrounded by green plants that are lush but not overwhelming. A low fountain bubbles quietly on one side.
Looking at the exterior of the house from the front, it is not immediately evident that this is an earth home. The front faces south and is mostly glass, giving maximum benefit of light and sun. Although the house is covered with earth on three sides and the top, more light floods into the interior from skylights that emerge from the grass covering the top of the home.
Because the house is built into the earth, windows obviously can`t look to the outside. Instead, almost all the rooms have windows that open onto the atrium. The Rifkinds open their bedroom window at night to the low sound of the fountain and the subtly pungent smell of foliage.
The only room that is not banked with earth is the family room, which is almost a separate wing of the house and has a door leading to an outside patio.
The atrium, reaching 20 feet to the skylights, and all the white paint that has replaced the browns and rusts eliminate any sense of claustrophobia that might come with knowing the building has been dug into the earth. The feeling instead is of lightness and air.
Achieving this sense, this feeling, wasn`t easy.
”When we moved in here, we thought we probably wouldn`t change the
(three) atriums for a couple of years,” Seymour says. ”But every time I walked in, I got angry at how it looked. So one Saturday morning, about three months after we moved in, I woke up and thought, `We can`t go on with these atriums like this.` I went and got a sledgehammer and started breaking up all those bricks (that bordered the atriums).
”Holly woke up and came out and said, `What are you doing?` There was no turning back at that point.”
Rifkind is a soft-spoken man, but he gets excited when he talks about breaking up those atriums.
”I can`t begin to describe the thousands of pounds of tree trunks I took out, all sunk in concrete,” he says. ”Those turtles must have had a ball, going up on all those trunks and then diving into the different ponds. I kept thinking about that while I was digging all that stuff up.
”All the poured concrete . . . I got a 60-pound jackhammer, and that didn`t do it. So then I got a 90-pound air compressor. And I had to get a huge, huge engine that would give the power to break up all that concrete. There was a long time when I didn`t see any light at the end of the tunnel. Holly was pregnant, we had a little one, everyone was sick and everything in the house was covered with at least an inch of dust by the end of every day.
”I went to bed crying every night. I thought I had made a terrible mistake and I was putting my family through a terrible time. And I couldn`t see the end.”
Had he been a fixer-upper before?
”Sometimes I hung pictures. That was the extent of what I had done.”
He was wheelbarrowing all the concrete chunks, rocks and tree stumps around to the side of the property. ”I think it was about the 10,000th trip that I realized I had created a visual nuisance, which is one way to put it. So then I got a dumpster, and had to shovel it all into there.”
It was finally done–torn out, that is.
And then the question was how to make that space tasteful and peaceful. A few houseplants are one thing. But an interior atrium is quite another.
”We went to several (landscaping) places and didn`t get the right feeling,” he says. ”We were getting frantic again, because we had ordered carpeting and it was coming soon. We had one last name on our list; that was Kenny (Kenneth Gallt of Foliage Design Systems, Lombard), and that was the jackpot.”
Gallt says, ”The Rifkinds` philosophy was they wanted it simple. They wanted to include those basic elements of water and fire, and they wanted it easy to keep.”
The finished atrium is about 15 by 20 feet. All the ponds and streams were eliminated, and water is limited to a little bubble fountain. ”Water is nice, but if you have too much and it`s too loud, people are going to be running to the bathroom all the time,” Rifkind says.
A fireplace is in each of the living spaces on either side of the atrium. The Rifkinds can see both water and fire from the front hallway, the dining room and the kitchen as well as either side of the living room. The bedrooms are on the perimeter of the atrium, their doors and windows opening onto the greenery.
The baby was born while the work was still underway. White carpeting was laid, carefully contoured around the atrium. With help from Winnetka interior designer Debbie Isaacs, comfortable seating arrangements were placed on either side of the atrium.
Now Holly does most of her artistic work at home, and Seymour goes to work without worrying about the air compressor waiting for him at home. The outrageous dust has disappeared.
They`ve been there just about a year now. Their real estate agent recently sent them a note, congratulating them on the one-year anniversary and saying he`d like to come over and see what it looks like now.
Seymour surveys his home and smiles. ”Where else could you get all this openness and light inside a house?” he asks. ”And where else can you have a patio party on the grass that grows on top of your house? We can even sled down the sides of the house in the winter. We`re going to stay in this house a long time.”
