Mark your calendar—the fifth annual AIA Homes by Architects Tour is September 22-23 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. This tour features architect-designed homes, new and remodeled, throughout the Twin Cities, greater Minnesota and western Wisconsin, including one particularly creative home renovation here in Edina, designed by Meriwether Felt of Meriwether Incorporated.
Known as home No. 3 on the tour map, this lovely property is located at 4234 Scott Terrace. The tree-lined street and fancifully landscaped lawn set the stage for this Craftsman bungalow built in 1919. This house still exudes plenty of its historical charm.
The homeowner has lived at this address since 1985 and overseen three previous home renovations. This latest project is the bucket list of every little tweak and improvement that will at last make this property the perfect home for a garden enthusiast.
Enter Meriwether Felt, an architect who specializes in residential additions and remodels, specifically tailored to her clients. She says her work is always reflective of the homeowner’s interests and she’s particularly drawn to character-driven projects. This particular project—a 1,000-square-foot remodel/addition of the main floor and lower level—hits the mark with its unique details and creative spaces designed perfectly for an avid gardener.
The transformation begins in the dining room, where double doors once led out to the backyard pool. Those doors effectively made the dining table a catch-all for kids and guests going in and out. Felt’s design replaced those doors with an oversize window seat for the homeowner and guests to relax and enjoy the backyard views throughout every season. The dining room walls were recovered with grass cloth wallpapaer in a color that pulls in the turquoise of the pool as well as the custom stained glass set into doors now flanking the dining room. The addition of a unique wooden orb pendant chandelier returns the dining table to its role as an elegant focal point instead of a drop spot for jackets and bags.
Then slide through the left flanking double doors and discover the brilliant multi-purpose creation of green room/dog washing station/mud room/pool shower. This terrific space opens to the landscaped yard, patio and pool.
Green and white Walker Zanger floor tiles, small enough to supply some grip when wet, visually maintain the home’s ’20s-era style. The perimeter of the tiled floor is outlined with a decorative bronze trench drain. An integral sink and counter made of zinc create a potting station under south-facing windows, complete with custom overhead grow lights that can be raised and lowered for seedlings.
Hand-glazed Sonoma wall tiles and a handheld shower wait just behind sandblasted and powder-coated panels, providing easy access to dog washing or a post pool rinse. An adjacent powder room is similarly equipped with fixtures that look as if they could be original. This location is ideal for dripping swimmers to dash inside for a bathroom break.
The entire addition, with its accessible lavatory, is also conveniently connected to the home office and dining room. This sets up the home perfectly for one-level living should the homeowner ever desire to convert the office into a master suite.
The modern conveniences of this renovation don’t end on the main level. Meriwether Felt also designed lower-level laundry/craft/storage spaces with outside access for toting flower pots in and out with the seasons or fetching fresh towels for pool parties.
Like most basements, this used to be a dark dumping ground for storage. Now it’s been freshened with chartreuse walls, soft-white wainscoting and dusty purple painted concrete floors. A southwest window allows light and breezes into a room specifically made for creative crafting projects.
Felt says she especially loves details, the accomplishment of piecing together the puzzle of meeting all of her client’s needs in limited space. That’s been supremely executed in this renovation: The results are elegant, convenient and modern, yet the whole project feels like it could have been part of the home’s original design. This is a great accomplishment and surely a result of Felt’s local awareness. “Edina has done a study of bungalows in the Morningside area so they can start to build a support system for the preservation of some of our older homes,” she says.
So print a tour map and explore Meriwether Felt’s labor of love in Edina or venture to some of the other unique architect designs carefully crafted by these talented members of the American Institute of Architects Minnesota.
