Our Inwood Home of the Week is a Lakewood Southern transitional home at 7151 Shook Avenue. It was built by Allegiant Custom Homes and designed by one of our favorite architects, Eddie Maestri. If you enjoy cooking up a big Thanksgiving dinner, this house is going to create some new traditions that will ensure you won’t mind hosting every year!
We are always intrigued by Maestri’s designs because he brings so much to the party. Maestri travels a lot, and all those visual memories come to life in his work. This Lakewood Southern transitional is a pleasing blend of some of the design elements in locations near and dear to Maestri’s heart, including New Orleans and Rosemary Beach.
We seldom think of what challenges architects must face. The general assumption is they just draw something pretty, and poof, it’s done. Not so.
Every architect has to understand and appreciate their client’s needs and ideas. Then the location and the surrounding neighborhood styles must be considered. Shook is a wonderful hilly street in Lakewood that has an eclectic mix of homes. This particular lot is between a new, large, Mediterranean-style house and a midcentury modern home. Creating a transition between the two was critical to Maestri.
“It was also important to have it fit in and feel very Lakewood, with a lot of detail,” Maestri said.
Lakewood is one of those neighborhoods with a good deal of history. One of the early architects was Clifford Hutsell, whose designs regularly included iron gates, lanterns, and courtyards. You’d be hard pressed to design a home in Lakewood and not feel his influence. Maestri certainly paid homage to Hutsell with this Lakewood Southern transitional.
The other strong influence, mentioned earlier, is the resort community of Rosemary Beach in Florida, oddly enough a favorite spot for many Lakewood families, as well as Maestri’s. Rosemary Beach incorporates a lot of those same design elements that Hutsell favored, such as courtyards, awnings, and iron gates.
The thing that strikes you when you enter this Lakewood Southern transitional home is the abundance of natural light. There is a lot of glass in the house, so Maestri used steel awnings and deep overhangs to avoid harsh direct light. Even the garage has natural light via the transom windows, another historical note. It’s all in the details, which Maestri never overlooks.
The unique aspect of this 4,716-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-and-one-half-bath Lakewood Southern transitional is that Maestri was able to incorporate a courtyard into the design plan, something you rarely see in new construction. The courtyard brings both the historical and resort element into play, as well as creating a phenomenal entertainment space. The courtyard allows doors to be opened up on both sides of the family area for entertaining, and for walking off the turkey!
Speaking of turkey, this house has the perfect kitchen for preparing the feast. That’s because Maestri designed a rear prep kitchen behind the open-plan kitchen. The prep concept is one we love because it’s practical. We love it even more because it’s also private. That privacy means you can keep an ear on what’s happening out front while you take your entire Thanksgiving meal out of Eatzi’s takeaway boxes and slide everything right onto your fine china!
Adding to our delight is the service window between the kitchen and the covered patio. You know what this means for any family holiday? The kids eat outside, and you just pass the food through the window to them. Then, if you’re anything like us, you quickly slam it shut, lock it, and lock the door, so they can’t get in! Now that’s a holiday dinner!
Lauren Farris with the Farris McMahon Group of Compass Real Estate has this unique Lakewood Southern transitional listed for $1.599 million.
Karen Eubank is the owner of Eubank Staging and Design. She has been an award-winning professional home stager for more than 25 years and a professional writer for 20 years. Karen is the mother of a son who’s studying music at The University of Miami. An ardent animal lover, she doesn’t mind one bit if your fur baby jumps right into her lap. Find Karen at www.eubankstaging.com.
