Room to Grow
Samantha and Pete Ventimiglia like older homes and are not afraid of remodeling, having completed renovations on two homes in Chevy Chase. More recently, they completed a yearlong overhaul of a classic 1940s Georgian Revival in Bethesda’s Kenwood neighborhood in 2012, before they moved in. “We enjoy taking houses with good bones, updating them, and making them our own,” Samantha says.
In the first phase of the Kenwood renovation, they updated four of the six bathrooms, overhauled the kitchen and removed a wall that separated it from the dining room. “It made the house much more livable, but we were still missing that large family room,” Samantha says. Five years later, their three children, now 15, 13 and 10, were getting bigger, having more friends over to the house and outgrowing the small den they all used for TV viewing.
In 2017, the Ventimiglias embarked on the second phase, working with Jones & Boer Architects and Mauck Zantzinger & Associates, both based in Washington, D.C. Opening up the back wall of the kitchen created room for an 18½-by-21-foot family room addition. Three pairs of arched French doors added architectural character and lead to a new terrace, where they keep the grill.
Interior designer Marika Meyer of Bethesda responded to the clients’ sophisticated sense of style with a soft palette of grays and whites, and touches of blue. Pulling the furniture grouping away from the walls created a gracious space and highlighted the windows, doors and artwork. “We used large-scale furniture that would ground the room and be comfortable for a family of five,” Meyer says of the ample sofas, deep armchairs and 5-foot-square cocktail table. She likes to include something with a little patina in an otherwise polished room, so the gray wash finish on the table was subtly distressed. “You are not stressed if the table is distressed,” she says.
Meyer works with many families, so she’s always thinking about how the upholstery will wear. She used durable indoor/outdoor fabrics on the sofas, and the chairs were stain-treated. “Even in a neutral palette like this one, you don’t have to worry about spaghetti sauce,” she says.
The Ventimiglias often use the large kitchen table to host dinner parties for friends and family, and the entertaining always spills into the family room and onto the patio. “The house is so much brighter, open and more livable now,” Samantha says. “It feels like a completely different home.”
