Over the years, the expansive spaces of this grand, old Craftsman home were unceremoniously partitioned off into separate apartments. Once again the home of one family, they sought to restore the house to its original form, with some modern adaptations.

The home’s grand rooms, while spacious, were so large they seemed to sprawl with extra square footage. To create “right-sized” rooms that felt more natural to the young family, we added functional amenities — such as the built-in buffet in the dining room, a large pantry, and a breakfast nook in the kitchen — which reduce the scale of the spaces while adding functionality to the plan.

A small addition now connects the house to the existing garage, with quick access to a home gym. The exterior spaces of the home flow from one to the next with as much care as the interior spaces, and include a covered outdoor room, decks, a firepit with banquette seating, and a private outdoor space off the master suite.

Without a formal update since the mid-century, the home held a lot of surprises waiting behind the worn finishes, and during construction, we came across most of them. The lesson in this house turned out to be that, sometimes, replacing existing details is less expensive than restoring what is there — a hard pill for the design team and homeowners to swallow.

With care, we were able to blend the old with the new in a transitional Craftsman style, restoring and honoring the period details while adding more contemporary features to support the flow and function of the home. When restoring original details to meet current needs was cost-prohibitive, items were instead salvaged for reuse.

For example, reglazing the decorative leaded glass windows to continue their life as exterior windows proved too expensive. Instead, the beautiful window panels now reside in the dining room built-ins, a piece of the home’s history in a place of honor.