Its location made visiting family members convenient, and it had a swimming pool.
Those were the main criteria that attracted Mike and Marta Foster to their new house in Bexley. The rest of the house, as it existed then? Not so much.
The Fosters came prepared with some fairly extensive home remodeling experience and professionals at The Cleary Company to assist. Today, the home bears almost no resemblance to its former self, and it checks every box the homeowners could have wanted.
Nashville natives, the Fosters targeted central Ohio after both of their children and their families ended up in Bexley for career reasons. Mike and Marta were focused primarily on geography and a first-floor master suite when they found the house, which wasn’t even on the market yet.
“When it did go on the market, finally, and we were able to see the pictures of the inside, it had an indoor pool,” says Marta. “And we’re swimming pool people.”
When it came to renovating, they were focused on functionality and finding the best use of the house’s structure. The Fosters started working with Cleary in spring 2020, a year before they even moved. Cleary had the chance to strip the house down and get a clear picture of what options were available.
The house needed substantial work. Extensive wallpaper, huge oil paintings, crystal chandeliers, extensive gilding, massive decorative wall tiles and Carrara marble floors all contributed to a vibe that Laura Watson, the Cleary designer in charge of the remodel design, diplomatically describes as “aristocratic.” By contrast, the Fosters wanted more of a rustic feel. And the structure undoubtedly appealed to them, even if the dated decor didn’t.
“It was the cat’s meow in 1958,” Marta says.
The entryway was redesigned to make a statement as soon as someone enters the house. At the center of it is a spiral stairway – a feature seldom installed by the team at Cleary, though they jumped at the challenge. It replaces a stairway that, though ornate, took up an enormous amount of entrance space.
“You could barely walk through there to get from point A to point B,” Watson says.
The view from the entryway is pretty impressive, too, since Cleary tore down an atrium at the back of the house and added a family room with new wood beams in its place.
“You walk in the front foyer and you get an awesome view of the backyard straight through the back,” says Cleary project developer Robert Raskin.
Previously, the formal dining space was very compartmentalized. Cleary opened up the space between the formal and casual dining rooms, installing an eye-catching chandelier, which goes well with the Fosters’ new wood table, and painting the ceiling beams black.
The fireplace in the formal dining room received new, wood-look tile on the bottom and alterations to its firebox. A second fireplace in the new family room has a brand-new gas insert, while the living room fireplace gained a mantle and TV mount.
“Each fireplace is unique to the room,” Raskin says. “They’re all very different, and they all fit within the spaces they’re in.”
Extensive home remodels usually include new kitchen islands, but, once again proving the exception, the Fosters’ house has two. The seating island has a combination of quartz countertops and a walnut top, tying it in with the bar right next to the kitchen. Large format tile appears throughout the kitchen as well as the mudroom and much of the first floor, and the kitchen itself now runs the length of the entire house, from back to front.
The bar was preexisting, but Cleary made some major revisions. It already had a bank of windows, so the company put shelving in front of those to reflect light through the bottles. On top of that, the space now includes wine storage as well as reclaimed Northern Wide Plank siding – appearing on panels, as well as in the floors where it’s typically seen – to highlight the couple’s guitar collection.
“They’ve got so many great entertaining spaces, (but) they never wanted to go far to get to that bar,” Raskin says.
The Fosters arranged for the library to be converted to a room for their grandchildren to study and play. It’s right next door to the bar area and serves as a transition space between the master bedroom and family room. The couple even added wallpaper consisting entirely of maps to encourage creativity.
“They actually installed that wallpaper themselves over one weekend,” Raskin says.
Then, of course, there’s the pool. Or, more accurately, the pools.
The house came with an indoor swimming pool – a major bonus for Marta, who was once a competitive swimmer. The couple’s daughter-in-law was too, and the whole family enjoys swimming.
That said, the indoor pool needed serious work. Much of the room’s structure was rotted and rusting. Cleary installed a new humidification system, thoroughly cleaned the tile, substituted a seating area in place of a kitchenette, replaced the sunken hot tub with an elevated one, and added new lighting as well as a passage to the outdoor pool area.
The outdoor pool is an entirely new construction, further broadening the house’s swimming options. Cleary is working to design a pavilion that will go atop part of it. The Fosters knew the combination of two pools and five grandchildren meant a lot of wet feet padding through the house, so they made sure there was tile all throughout the first floor – almost 4,000 square feet worth, in fact.
The project reimagined the home almost in its entirety. Additional work included overhauls of the master bedroom and bathroom, a second spiral staircase from the bar to the basement, and a new driveway configuration.
Garth Bishop is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
