Anyone who ever has gutted a home has war tales to tell. But Mark and Patti Schaefer’s story reads more like an adventure. As DIYers, to save money (though not necessarily time), they went all in — he as architect (he’s a principal at MRSA in Chicago) and general contractor, she as foreman, with plenty of sweat equity and battlescars to show. There was his injured arm from loading 70 wheelbarrows full of debris into a dumpster; her sore back. They demolished, they refurbished, salvaged brick, chipped away mortar.
It was a bit like an archeological dig, too, as they peeled off layers from the 44-by-44-foot, three-story brick industrial loft building in Evanston they had decided to call home. They found remnants of what used to be: Harness rings still on the wall from the building’s days as a two-story stable, dating to early as the 1880s. Straight pins in wall joints from a former life as an upholstery shop. A 1900 building permit (which cost $10 at the time), showing the addition of a third floor. And a 1,000-pound lift, which came in handy for transferring construction materials, including pavers for a three-season room at the top.
Most recently, there was Charlie’s Transmissions, which was forced to close in the 1980s, when the area was re-zoned. Though a developer had purchased the property, it remained vacant and barely touched. Until Mark bought it.
That’s when the real journey began.
When then-fiancée Graf saw the place for the first time, her gut reaction was not exactly an endorsement. “I wanted to run,” she says. “The roof leaked, there was pigeon poop and squirrel stench. But I could see (Mark’s) vision. I had to really drink the Kool-Aid. And believe it’s all gonna fit.”
Mark had done this sort of thing before, with another adaptive reuse conversion in the same suburb. So she trusted him.
They replaced all windows and doors with low E glass, put in radiant heated floors beneath neutral Italian porcelain tiles; added two-foot-thick insulation above the ceiling on the third floor and used compact fluorescent lighting. Though the goal was to make everything as energy efficient as possible, Mark ceded to the original brick, opting not to insulate and cover. “It was too much of an aesthetic,” he says.
Here’s how the 3,800-square-foot space lives: “I flipped it upside down and put all living space on the third floor,” says Mark, “because that’s where the light and views are. Master bedroom suite and bedroom media/den are on the second floor, and a garage/shop for me on the first level. I hate to use the term man cave, but….”
There he houses a collection of cars (eight, including a 1967 Chevy stepside pickup and a 1993 Lancia Delta Integrale) and five motorcycles.
“I call it a garage with an attached house,” says Patti, only a little tongue in cheek.
As far as furnishing the lofty interiors, they came at it from different perspectives.
The house Mark grew up in on Long Island was rich with mid-century originals. “It was the ’50s and my parents (his father was a space planner) had Paul McCobb, Charles Eames and Charles Breuer pieces. When we traveled to Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, I acquired a taste for a European modern aesthetic. I like clean design. Architecture of subtraction rather than addition. The intersection of planes and surfaces rather than overwrought detail.”
Patti’s world was a late ’60s-built suburban house in Downers Grove, furnished with chintz and overstuffed furniture. Her vision of the kitchen started with a vintage Chambers-style stove, which she imagined with cherry cabinets and granite countertops.
Instead, the two lucked out and snapped up an entire contemporary Varenna kitchen on sale at Poliform, a showroom near the Merchandise Mart. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding me?’ “says Patti. It was clean and modern, not what I would have picked. And the more I saw it the more I loved it. It fits perfectly in the space.”
“It was one-stop shopping,” says Mark. “Literally, it came with the knives and spices in the drawers, sink, faucet, cooktop and hood.”
The rest just fell into place, a blend of warm mid-century modern with an Italian accent. The two added a few pieces to Mark’s inherited collection, a pair of (Richard) Neutra reproduction chairs and an old pallet coffee table made out of industrial skids that the two bought at a furniture accessory store in Michigan.
They had perhaps the most fun designing the bathroom, where they went nuts ordering from a Lacava catalog of sleek Italian bathware. They decided to play a bit with beefier scale subway tiles in a mustardy yellow for the guest and ocean blue for the master. The design turned out so well, the couple entered a competition and ended up winning first prize — cash plus a trip to Cersaie, the international tile show in Bologna, courtesy of Ceramics of Italy.
For all of its architectural hipness, it’s more than a cool place to show off to friends.
“What I like most about the house and living in it,” says Patti, “is that it’s very quiet. Very solid. Unique. I feel special in it. It’s a beautiful home to live in. It’s zen.”
“Other than Patti? What I love is that it lives small,” says Mark. “It’s spatially very open, but at the same time it feels….how shall I put it? Homey.”
