During the seven months of dust-choked chaos of their Andersonville home renovation, Scott Lauth and Ramiro Vargas often dropped in to check on the progress and dream. Walking through the vintage 3,200-square-foot building’s debris-filled rooms, they mentally laid out their furniture, debated color choices and looked forward to the day they could finally move out of the condo they had rented as a refuge during construction.
That day came three weeks earlier than they had planned when their temporary digs sold unexpectedly, forcing them to decamp to one of the construction zone’s few inhabitable spaces, a bedroom where they shared a single mattress with their then-4-year-old daughter, Natalia, and Siamese cat, Yoshi.
“We would cover the mattress with plastic when we went to work,” Vargas recalls. “It was emotionally exhausting.”
When the couple were house shopping, buying a fixer-upper was not their original intention. But the home’s expansive double lot and brick four-car garage convinced them to tour the property just days after it was listed.
Originally built as a two-flat in 1911 and later converted to a single-family dwelling, the home also boasted a side yard that Lauth, an account executive at HGTV who has a degree in landscape architecture, looked forward to cultivating.
“It’s so much wider than a lot of the homes that we saw,” Lauth says. “Something about the bones of this house just felt so right the first time we walked in.”
Lauth and Vargas, a human resources executive, decided to buy the property just hours after touring. To help with the renovation, they hired Hudson Home and began working with decorator Greg Jagmin.
“It had a ton of potential,” says Jagmin, who founded his own firm, Greg Jagmin Associates, in 2008. “They wanted to keep as much of the vintage charm as they could without it feeling old.”
Although Jagmin was excited about the possibilities, the home needed a complete renovation. The rooms were small and the layout choppy, and many of the original oak moldings had been painted turquoise. Despite the earlier conversion, it still felt like a two-flat in some ways, most noticeably in the second-floor master suite, which still had a built-in hutch identical to the one in the dining room directly below it. The dated kitchen and bathrooms would also need to be replaced before it would look like the ideal home they had described to Jagmin. Lauth and Vargas’ budget concerned Jagmin, but he believed he could help them realize their vision.
“I’ll do as much as we can with this budget, but you’ve got to trust me,” Jagmin recalls telling them. “Give me your wish list, and I’ll try to get everything in.”
Starting at the front entrance, Jagmin designed small changes to make the former two-flat feel more like an actual home. To better connect the foyer to the living room, Jagmin had the door between the spaces widened and the doorjamb removed.
“Anything that makes a room feel grander I’m all for,” Jagmin says. “Most of the time that involves tearing something down.”
Demolishing a wall separating the foyer from the front stairwell also helped to better incorporate the second floor into the home, and removing another wall between the kitchen and family room created an expansive great room.
“I like there to be a sense of space when you walk from one room to the next,” explains Jagmin. “You have to follow the light.”
To that end, Jagmin also replaced a set of bay windows in the family room with Juliet-style balcony windows that offer a more expansive view of the side yard, had a new window added over the kitchen sink and replaced many of the can lights that riddled the ceiling with a combination of under- and over-cabinet fixtures, and pendants and lamps.
“It felt like a runway,” Jagmin says. “You want some overhead lights, but you also need task lighting and lamps to create moods.”
Relocating the back entrance by several feet and replacing it with a set of glass double doors also lets more light into the newly enlarged space and left enough room between the kitchen and dining areas for a custom-designed cabinet that matches the new mocha-stained maple kitchen cabinets. Natalia, now 9, often does her homework at the newly created peninsula, which has limestone countertops to match those Lauth and Vargas chose to replace the dated Formica that had been in the kitchen.
At first they worried about the porous material staining over time, but as their project became a home, they began to appreciate it for the same reason.
“In Italy, people would pay a lot of money for this patina,” Lauth says.
The addition of lighting also helped to modernize the shelves in the original dining room hutch. The couple debated tearing the cabinet out altogether, but Vargas convinced Lauth that they should keep it, although they removed molding around a niche in the wall above the cabinet where they display art.
“I really wanted to maintain some of the features of the house,” Vargas says.
Ultimately they split the difference and decided to rip out the hutch in the bedroom directly above the dining room. Removing it gave them space for a set of French doors that leads to a walk-in closet they created by co-opting one of the bedrooms.
“We sealed it up from the hall and opened it up from our room,” Lauth says.
The couple’s master bedroom has an adjoining sitting area and access to a small deck atop the front porch. Originally the bonus outdoor space was accessible only from the master bathroom, but Jagmin persuaded them to move the exterior door to the bedroom.
“It was a really awkward bathroom and the worst part of the house,” Jagmin says. “They didn’t want to spend money on the door, but it had to be moved.”
Moving the door to the bedroom created more than enough space for a large, sunken tub, a glass-enclosed shower and double sinks. Niches in the wall between the walk-in shower and the double vanity provide storage for towels and toiletries.
“I think the master suite really encompassed what they wanted,” Jagmin says. “It’s a big room, but it gives them privacy as well, and it’s so functional with the way they live.”
Although they finished the project in 2005, Lauth and Vargas are still fine-tuning their home. Last summer, they had the brick exterior tuck-pointed and discovered that moisture had compromised the brick and that the entire front stairway needed to be replaced.
“We had to tear the entire front porch off of the house,” Lauth says.
After the new porch had been installed, Lauth and Vargas had their front vestibule wallpapered in a neutral geometric print that matches the new predominantly chocolate mosaic tile flooring, which they chose to blend in with the dark stain they used on the original hardwood floors.
Not content to rest on their laurels, Lauth and Vargas have begun debating the merits of converting the basement into extra living space. Vargas isn’t sure he wants to take on another big project, but Lauth’s mind is once again filled with visions of what could be.
“We can talk about homes and renovations and makeovers all day long,” Lauth says. “It’s really become a passion of ours.”
