Project Name: Sandy Toes, Sun Kissed Nose
House Plan and Interior Design: Pascale de Fouchier Interiors
Stylist: Limonata Creative 

A Family Legacy
The client, Baltimore native Amy Baum, got approval from her father and siblings to bring new life to their family’s summer headquarters in Rehoboth Beach. “They wanted a place easy to live in and easy to take care of, without giving up on the design,” says Baltimore-based interior designer Pascale de Fouchier.

The main request was to reflect the spirit of Baum’s mom, who loved the house but had passed away a few years earlier. “We didn’t keep much of Amy’s mom’s furniture…but what kept coming back to me was an idea of her genuine smile and the impression that she was light and uncluttered,” says de Fouchier. “That’s what I tried to carry into the design: lightness, brightness, clean and welcoming lines.”

Calm and Carefree
“There was really a need for calm throughout the house, so it was important that each space was in harmony with the others,” says de Fouchier. “Like the kitchen and dining room—they are facing each other with open arches, so it felt important to not disrupt the visual flow.”

She treated each room like an extension of the nearby ocean, mixing pastels and neutrals. “Imagine you are walking along the shore—waves, pebbles, fog, clouds, declination of blue and pinkish skies, umbrellas, sailboats decks and sails.”

An Oarsome Idea
“From the start I knew I wanted to have a wall display more than wall art,” says de Fouchier. “When I was visiting an antique shop in Annapolis, there was a pair of oars that just hit my eye, and I knew that was it. They were already sold, but I kept the idea and looked for vintage pieces.”

Since most of the bedrooms are close to each other, she wanted them all to feel similar but different. “Heavy cottons and linens bring a feel of richness, while remaining low-key.”

The list price is the opening bid for an Online auction to be conducted by Alex Cooper Auctioneers in conjunction with Hubble Bisbee Christie’s International Real Estate beginning on Thurs., Oct. 5th and concluding on Tues., Oct. 10th at 11 AM. Pre-Auction Offers are strongly encouraged.

11915 Park Heights Avenue features a grand and exquisite luxury estate home nestled in the picturesque Greenspring Valley, gracefully connected by a bridge that traverses a babbling stream. Designed by the esteemed Architect Vince Greene, this majestic abode was masterfully crafted by JP Builders, with interiors meticulously curated by the renowned Jay Jenkins/Jenkins Baer, and lighting by the gifted Bob Jones. The verdant landscape surrounding this residence was artfully created by Bob Jackson.

Recently expanded and renovated, the home is impeccably maintained, boasting finishes crafted with the finest materials, including hand-scraped walnut floors that exude warmth and character. With six bedrooms, five full and four half baths, and a guest annex/private office complex, this home offers an array of luxuries fit for any lifestyle. Upon entering, guests are welcomed by a grand two-story marble foyer that flows gracefully through classic columns to the living room. The stair hall is adorned with open curved staircases and a wide portal that leads to a formal dining room with a natural stone floor and French doors that open to a charming deck.

The kitchen, a stunning addition, features natural stone floors, quartz counters, and top-of-the-line appliances that elevate the culinary experience. The great room is a haven of comfort, with a cast stone fireplace, coffered ceiling, and built-in surround sound, while the cozy den is perfect for intimate gatherings, with its fireplace, archway to the bar, and French doors that open to the enchanting pavilion. The main level also includes a home office with built-ins, two powder rooms, a laundry room, and an oversize 3-car garage.

The sumptuous primary suite on the second level is a sanctuary of relaxation, with its marble spa bath and two custom-fitted dressing rooms. Four additional bedrooms, one with a sitting room, three baths, and a second laundry room complete this level. The walk-out lower level features the sixth bedroom and bath, two exercise rooms, and a large bonus room. The attached three-level guest annex/private office complex offers many opportunities for use, while the large 2013 pavilion with its fireplace, dining, and seating areas is perfect for outdoor entertaining. The pavilion flows seamlessly to patios and gardens, including a covered porch off the kitchen with a cooking center, creating a harmonious connection between indoor and outdoor living. This estate is equipped with state-of-the-art systems, recent updates and renovations, tremendous open-air parking capacity, and professionally landscaped, partially wooded 5.53 acres adjacent to Caves Valley Golf Club.

For more information, and to view other listings, click here:

ue and Thom Rinker, age 74 and 75 respectively, were feeling very isolated in their condo in Baltimore County. “We were ready for a change,” says Sue.
“My mother had lived at a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) for 20 years and some of our friends had moved to that type of community. We really liked what a CCRC offered.”

According to seniorliving.org, a CCRC (also known as a Life Plan Community) delivers independent living and an amenity-rich lifestyle with access to onsite, higher-level care should a resident’s medical needs progress. The levels of care usually include independent, assisted, memory care, and skilled nursing as well as rehabilitation therapy on the campus. This continuum of care ensures residents that they have the comfort of remaining in the place they call home and the peace of mind that comes from knowing their future care is figured out.

“We wanted a CCRC so our two children who live in the area wouldn’t be burdened with our future healthcare,” Sue continues. “But for now, we are healthy and wanted lots of great amenities.” The Rinkers, who live at Blakehurst in Towson, say that it’s like living at a five-star resort.

Robin Somers, CEO of Broadmead, a Life Plan Community in Cockeysville, says, “Today we are seeing many of our residents coming in younger. Rather than in their 80s, they come in their 70s.”

Elizabeth O’Conner, director of marketing and sales at Blakehurst, adds that not only are residents younger, “they are very active.”

Without the drudgery of home maintenance, doing daily chores like cleaning and meal planning, and even trying to get the COVID-19 vaccine booster, there’s time for residents to be physically active and explore myriad intellectual and cultural opportunities. But for those who prefer to spend time alone or with a few friends, there’s that too.

A fitness center ranks high on must-have lists for incoming residents. In many CCRCs, residents will find state-of-the-art equipment, classes including yoga, tai chi, and aerobics, and a heated pool. Sometimes there’s even a juice bar and a spa for manicures, pedicures, and massages. Parker Williamson, 81, is an avid sailor who lives at BayWoods of Annapolis, a waterfront community. He says, “I exercise every other day, but don’t like group classes, so the personal trainer worked up a routine just for me.”

“Today’s residents want individualization,” remarks Somers.

Sharon Krulak, 79, is a new resident at Blakehurst. She’s also an artist who works in mixed-media. When the Krulaks were looking at Blakehurst, she told O’Connor, “I need a room to do my art. And they made it happen.”

At Broadmead, two residents who were trained and experienced beekeepers had a conversation with the Broadmead executive director, and the Broadmead Apiary was established in 2013. Today, there is a group of six residents who are involved. Throughout the year they inspect the beehives, feed the bees sugar syrup, and harvest the honey into jars for sale.

Usually, CCRCs have councils, committees, and their own governing body where residents can make things happen. “At Blakehurst we have 43 residential-run committees,” says Sue Rinker. “Thom is on the residents’ board and I’m on the refurbishing and jigsaw committees.”

CCRCs have concerts, guest speakers, and some arrange continuing education through Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (university-based education specifically for people 50 and older) or nearby universities. At Broadmead, they recognize artists within their community and in the greater Baltimore vicinity by having exhibits, programs, and educational outreach. This April, the Broadmead Art Council will host an exhibit of the works of Herman Maril, a Baltimore native known for painting seascapes, interiors, and landscapes. These exhibits and lectures will be open to the greater community.

Other amenities usually include endless clubs, beautiful walking trails, gardens where residents can plant vegetables and flowers, a movie theater, a library, woodworking, a beauty salon and barber shop, card and poker rooms, billiards, bocce, and a resident computer and business center. Some communities have a croquet court, a putting green, and pickleball. As most CCRCs welcome your four-legged family members, there are even dog parks. And in keeping with making life effortless, some places will deliver your incoming packages right to your door. The list of concierge services goes on, including scheduled transportation to grocery stores, shops and more. At Edenwald, a CCRC in Towson, a bus transports residents to cultural events and attractions like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff, a string quartet at Shriver Hall, and plays.

Cuisine plays an important part in daily life. The number of dining venues depends on the CCRC and so do the plans they offer. Many have a grill, café, bar, and outdoor dining. CCRCs pride themselves on having an excellent chef, offering plenty of choices on the menu, high quality ingredients, and dining experiences resembling a great restaurant.

In this area, all CCRCs are close to vibrant cities—Annapolis, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. As Parker Williamson, resident at BayWoods, says with a laugh, “What’s great is we can visit Baltimore and D.C. and take advantage of all they have to offer, but we don’t have to live there.”

The Guide to Regional Continuing Care Facilities & Senior Resources

ASBURY METHODIST VILLAGE
201 Russell Ave.
Gaithersburg, MD 20877
(301) 216-4001
asbury.org/asbury-methodist-village

ASBURY-SOLOMONS ISLAND
11100 Asbury Circle
Solomons, MD 20688
(410) 394-3000
asbury.org/asbury-solomons

BAYLEIGH CHASE
501 Dutchmans Lane
Easton, MD 21601
(410) 657-4900
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/bayleigh-chase-easton

BAYWOODS OF ANNAPOLIS
7101 Bay Front Drive
Annapolis, MD 21403
(410) 268-9222
baywoodsofannapolis.com

BEDFORD COURT
3701 International Drive
Silver Spring, MD 20906
(301) 598-2900
sunriseseniorliving.com/communities/bedford

BLAKEHURST
1055 W. Joppa Road
Towson, MD 21204
(410) 296-2900
blakehurstlcs.com

BRIGHTVIEW SENIOR LIVING
Multiple locations
(888) 566-8854
brightviewseniorliving.com

BROADMEAD
13801 York Road
Cockeysville, MD 21030
(410) 527-1900
www.broadmead.org

BROOKE GROVE
18100 Slade School Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860
(301) 924-2811
www.bgf.org

BUCKINGHAM’S CHOICE
3200 Baker Circle
Adamstown, MD 21710
(301) 804-2159
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/buckinghams-choice-adamstown

CARROLL LUTHERAN VILLAGE
300 St. Luke Circle
Westminster, MD 21158
(410) 848-0090
clvillage.org

CHARLESTOWN RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
715 Maiden Choice Lane
Catonsville, MD 21228
(410) 405-7683
ericksonseniorliving.com/charlestown

COLLINGTON EPISCOPAL LIFE CARE COMMUNITY
10450 Lottsford Road
Mitchellville, MD 20721
(301) 925-9610
collington.kendal.org

EDENWALD
800 Southerly Road
Towson, MD 21286
(410) 339-6000
edenwald.org

ELIZABETH COONEY CARE NETWORK
1107 Kenilworth Drive, Ste. 200
Towson, MD 21204
(410) 323-1700
Elizabethcooneyagency.com

FAHRNEY-KEEDY
8507 Mapleville Road
Boonsboro, MD 21713-1818
(301) 733-6284
fkhv.org

FAIRHAVEN
7200 Third Ave.
Sykesville, MD 21784
(410) 892-1946
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/fairhaven-sykesville

FRIENDS HOUSE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
17340 Quaker Lane
Sandy Spring, MD 20860
(301) 924-5100
friendshouse.com

GINGER COVE ANNAPOLIS LIFE CARE
4000 River Crescent Drive
Annapolis, MD 21401
(410) 266-7300
gingercove.com

GLEN MEADOWS RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
11630 Glen Arm Road
Glen Arm, MD 21057
(410) 592-5310
presbyterianseniorliving.org/glen-meadows-retirement-community

GOODWILL RETIREMENT VILLAGE
891 Dorsey Hotel Road
Grantsville, MD 21536
(301) 895-5194
goodwillhome.org

HARMONY AT WALDORF
11239 Berry Road
Waldorf, MD 20603
(240) 270-2759
harmonyseniorservices.com/senior-living/md/waldorf/berry-road

HERON POINT OF CHESTERTOWN
501 Campus Ave.
Chestertown, MD 21620
(443) 214-3605
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/heron-point-of-chestertown

HOMEWOOD AT FREDERICK
7407 Willow Road
Frederick, MD 21702
(301) 644-5600
homewoodfrederick.com

HOMEWOOD AT WILLIAMSPORT
16505 Virginia Ave.
Williamsport, MD 21795
(301) 582-1472
homewoodwilliamsport.com

INGLESIDE AT KING FARM
701 King Farm Blvd.
Rockville, Maryland 20850
(240) 557-8791
inglesideonline.org/ingleside-king-farm

LEISURE CARE: THE LANDING OF SILVER SPRINGS
13908 New Hampshire Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(301) 388-7700
leisurecare.com/our-communities/landing-of-silver-spring

LUTHERAN VILLAGE AT MILLER’S GRANT
9000 Fathers Legacy
Ellicott City, MD 21042
(410) 465-2005
millersgrant.org

MAPLEWOOD PARK PLACE
9707 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 571-7444
maplewoodparkplace.com

MARYLAND MASONIC HOMES
300 International Circle
Cockeysville, MD 21030
(410) 527-1111
mdmasonichomes.com

MERCY RIDGE
2525 Pot Spring Road
Timonium, MD 21093
(410) 561-0200
mercyridge.com

NORTH OAKS
725 Mount Wilson Lane
Pikesville, MD 21208
(410) 484-7300
northoaksseniorliving.com

RIDERWOOD VILLAGE
3140 Gracefield Road
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(301) 701-4076
ericksonseniorliving.com/riderwood

ROLAND PARK PLACE
830 W. 40th St.
Baltimore, MD 21211
(410) 243-5700
rolandparkplace.org

THE RESIDENCES AT VANTAGE POINT
5400 Vantage Point Road
Columbia, MD 21044
(410) 964-5454
vantagepointresidences.org

OAK CREST VILLAGE
8800 Walther Blvd.
Parkville, MD 21234
(410) 405-7419
ericksonseniorliving.com/oak-crest

ORTHOPAEDIC ASSOCIATES OF CENTRAL MARYLAND
Six locations in the area
(410) 644-1880
mdbonedocs.com

RECORD STREET HOME–HOME OF THE AGED
115 Record St.
Frederick, MD 21701
(301) 663-6822
recordstreethome.org

THE VILLAGE AT AUGSBURG
6811 Campfield Road
Baltimore, MD 21207
(410) 834-4143
thevillageataugsburg.org

THE VILLAGE AT ROCKVILLE
9701 Veirs Drive
Rockville, MD 20850
(301) 424-9560
thevillageatrockville.org

WECARE
1852 Reisterstown Road
Pikesville, MD 21208
(410) 602-3993
wecarepds.com

WILLOW VALLEY
600 Willow Valley Sq.
Lancaster, PA 17602
(717) 464-6800
willowvalleycommunities.org

When the coronavirus pandemic lockdown started in spring of last year, professionals in the architecture, interior design, and construction world braced for a major drop in business. But after an initial slowdown, most report not just being busy, but overwhelmed.

That’s because, for those people with the wherewithal, it was time for the big home renovation.

“It went crazy,” says Gavin Scherr, president of Scherr Contracting. “Most people have never spent that much time in their home before. For the first time, people weren’t just thinking about their house aesthetically, but asking, ‘How do we all function in this house together on a permanent basis?’”

In the warm summer months, spending on exterior projects soared as homeowners heeded advice to limit entertaining to small groups outside, escalating demand for decks, patios, fences, and even pool houses. Plenty of people also caught up on deferred maintenance—the broken door or crooked gutter that had been a mere nuisance pre-pandemic became an intolerable eyesore. The demand, combined with COVID-related supply-chain challenges, was so intense that it created a lumber shortage, raising prices 170 percent, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.

And once some schools announced they would not return in-person, the home-improvement people got even more emails and calls.

“There was a huge increase in basement, kitchen, and even bathroom jobs,” says Scherr. “People were looking at any space that wasn’t being used muched, even a screened porch that could be enclosed into an office or a recreational space, as everyone was trying to find more room.”

And with the movement toward work-from-home, as well as school-from-home, the importance of a home-based office space took on new meaning. With families suddenly flung together, it wasn’t uncommon to have two parents working from the dining-room table, older children doing Zoom school at a kitchen counter, and younger children suddenly in need of a school space that could be overseen by an adult. Home became loud and crowded.

“People would tell us their dining room table was filled with their third grader’s schoolwork when they were trying to work,” says Gina Adams, of Delbert Adams Construction. “So we found ways to make life easier for them within their home. Office nooks were a solution—a desk in an area that may not have had one before was an option.”

Adams says they tucked workspaces into architectural niches, landings, and unused bedrooms. One of the cleverest solutions they created was a “Murphy bed”-style desk that could be pulled out when needed and stored behind a wall after office hours.

“Everything was being used by more people, so there was a lot more wear and tear, particularly in the kitchen,” she adds. “We made changes to accommodate more users.”

Not every change was driven by practicality, Adams says. Some people simply wanted to make cosmetic changes, including things like soaking tubs, a touch of luxury that’s private at a time when privacy is in short supply.

Indeed, with multiple family members on Zoom, bickering kids, and dishes from three meals a day piling up, lockdown life can become unbearable. So perhaps that open floor-plan that was so fabulous when you bought the house becomes a lot less appealing.

This, says Sheryl T. McLean, principal of McLean & Tircuit Design, has compelled some clients to take a hard look at the rooms they rarely use, especially the dining room.

“Suddenly they needed that space that they only use at Christmas and Thanksgiving,” she says. “Many clients put up doors and added built-ins to their dining rooms and sunrooms—and those changes are permanent.”

Another design change she believes has staying power is the shift from the mudroom being a dumping ground to an official “receiving station.”

“In the past, the mudroom is where you took off your shoes and left the backpacks,” she says. “During the pandemic, it became a staging area for receiving groceries and deliveries to be wiped down, a room that could be disinfected…I think sanitation is burned into our brains now, and the expansion of the mudroom works well, is a good idea, and is a way to further protect your home.”

Those lucky enough to have outdoor space expanded into their yards, not just with patios and decks, but also with actual structures such as accessible dwelling units, “She Sheds,” and tiny houses. These flex spaces could be used as an office, quarantine quarters, a homeschool meeting spot, or another place for some sanity-saving privacy.

“Little personalized nooks have become so important, and I think that’s a trend that will stay,” says McLean. “Clients are looking for a space away.”

If there’s one lasting impact that Ashley Ingraham hopes to see from the pandemic, it’s that people will think before they acquire more belongings. As owner of Home Perspective, which does home organization, estate cleaning, and moving assistance, she’s been booked solid since June as homeowners came to terms with all their stuff.

“I got so many calls from people saying, ‘I’m so overwhelmed, I need to get organized,’” she says. “After two or more months of quarantine, everyone is looking at their space differently and re-evaluating it. There’s a calmness that comes from organization and people are looking to create home spaces that are stress-free.”

“People realized they had too much stuff they aren’t using and not enough of the things they did need,” she says. “If you made it through three months of quarantine and never baked bread, I think it’s safe to say you don’t need the bread maker.”

And then there’s the whole remote job thing: Ingraham says that having a long-term solution for working from home is very different than having a desk at home where you maybe sat occasionally to pay some bills or do the taxes. Certainly no one was set up for months of home school, either. Efficiency, storage, clarity—these needs became top of mind.

Her clients now also want organized pantries and storage areas so they can see exactly what they have and what they need to put in their Instacart—or to make that trip to the store as quick as possible. Clients are willing to jettison the things they aren’t using to find room for the extra toilet paper or the craft supplies. They’ve faced the areas of the home they could once avoid and reclaimed them for schoolrooms or for privacy.

Ingraham, too, has seen the impacts of social-media scrolling.

“I have so many clients that are younger than what I normally have who have spent six months binge-watching The Home Edit on Netflix and scrolling though Instagram and now want aspirational closets,” she says.

At some point, about 660 million vaccine doses from now, some parts of life will return to normal. Still, professionals believe many of the impacts COVID made on home design will last.

“I think everything is going to be different,” says Ingraham. “People see that working from home is a viable option and people have re-evaluated the way they live.”

Scherr says that after months of isolation, people want to gather again at home.

“We’re seeing growth in additions because people want a home that’s more versatile, that has places for family to stay and spend time together,” he says.

Hopefully, the coronavirus pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime event, all our designers agree, but it will be a while before we shake off the concern that something else could be just around the corner. Regardless of what the “new normal” is, we’ve forever deepened our relationship with our homes.

“People have been walking around asleep in their own homes,” says Sheryl McLean. “Now they’re aware of what they have.”

You read a lot about downsizing, age-restricted developments, and retirement communities, but there’s another reality at work regarding seniors and housing: Surveys show most older homeowners really don’t want to leave their homes of 30 or 40 years.

So then how do you make your home safe and functional when you know that, sooner or later, you may lose mobility or suffer declining health?

Actually, it doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking, says Joe Smith, a partner for 17 years with Owings Brothers Contracting, which has won numerous industry awards for construction and design—it’s about a lot of small, relatively inexpensive, changes to the home. (More on those in a bit.)

But first, there’s another trend he sees going on that could be an alternate answer to aging in place: Let’s call it “Living like The Waltons.”

“We’re seeing more cases of ‘merged living,’” says Smith, “where the multigenerational house will be adapted for use by the parents, the grown children, and the grandchildren to live together.” And in some cases, it’s the parents bankrolling changes to a home to accommodate the whole brood.

That sometimes means more major projects like additions, or renovating a walkout basement as living quarters, while trying to keep the spaces separate enough to preserve some privacy.

“It’s important, though, to make sure changes don’t have a negative impact on any future sale of the home—and that’s where you really need professional design,” says Smith.

But in cases where only the seniors will be living there, the changes needed are much simpler.

You might consider ramps at entry points, and handrails in key spots, for instance. “My own Dad uses a walker, so I’m really sensitive to things like this, or considerations like those patio stones or pavement lips that might trip someone,” says Smith. Other changes often include things like low-threshold sliding-glass doors (so there’s no metal lip across the floor to stop a wheelchair), wider doorways, grab bars, or levers instead of doorknobs.

Jeff Rubin, president of the modestly named Baltimore Handyman Company—he’s actually a career design-build expert and an architect—agrees grab rails are essential.

“You really need ADA-approved grab bars in showers, bathtubs, and similar locations,” says Rubin. “The bathroom is probably the most dangerous room in your home. Slips and falls can be extremely dangerous or even deadly as we age.”

“We also recommend upgraded lighting,” says Smith, “so the homeowners will see transitions in flooring. We try to avoid transitions in flooring [those little half-inch step-ups you could trip on], but you might want different-colored flooring to make the transitions visible.”

Equally important are smoke and carbon-monoxide (CO) detectors, says Rubin. “As we age, we become even more vulnerable to fires becoming life-threatening because of a lack of mobility, health issues, or diminished eyesight or hearing,” he says. “A proper system is composed of 10-year sealed-battery smoke detectors and CO detectors—especially if your home has any type of combustion appliance such as a gas furnace or oil burner. They should be on each level of your home, in hallways at bedrooms, and in each bedroom. The detectors must be interconnected and, if possible, hard-wired into your home’s electrical system. Detectors that have a flashing light upon being triggered can assist those who have diminished hearing.”

Another must, says Rubin, is a personal alert system so that, in an emergency, you can contact the police, fire department, or other emergency services.

Also consider kitchen tweaks, from reworking the height of the sinks and appliances to making sure cabinets are accessible, Smith adds. And in the bathrooms, think sit-down shower stalls and hand-held shower heads.

“Not everything, such as elevators, has to be a major project,” says Smith.

“There is new elevator technology, but it’s an expensive undertaking. And how do you access it on each floor? Sometimes they have to be boxed additions on the outside.”

What’s more, an elevator is likely unnecessary since chair-lift technology has gotten a lot better, he says.

“But the bottom line is no one wants their home to look like an infirmary, so that’s where an architectural sense comes in, to make the changes subtle,” he adds. “And fortunately, there are a lot of new products now that don’t look cold. It’s actually very rewarding to come away from one of these projects and know that you didn’t make it look institutional—you made it look good”

A POSTSCRIPT ON PROJECTS

We read lots of guides on aging and canvassed home-building and senior-living experts to find more tips, and came up with no shortage of ideas:

Clear the excess: Any unnecessary furniture or rugs should be removed. “The more space you allow in each of your rooms, the better. Make sure there are clear pathways and plenty of space to walk in without bumping into anything, especially in the rooms you spend a lot of time in.”—seniors blogger Kristen Hicks at senioradvisor.com

Create at least one no-step entry into the home: “It’s definitely a good idea to have at least one of these. But there’s a host of related issues that go beyond the construction work. Outside, you’ll probably want a covered entry to protect you from the elements. And you need good drainage since the doorway will be level with the walking surface just outside the door. Once inside, you’ll need space for maneuvering. If it’s too complicated or expensive to create a no-step entry at an existing doorway, think outside the box. Could you turn a window into a doorway to enter a larger area or turn a small or underused room into a new foyer? A fringe benefit could be making the living room less of a hallway.”—Louis Tenenbaum, 8 Things to Consider Before Remodeling to Age in Place

Pocket doors may make mobility between rooms possible: Not only will
the door be out of the way when opened, the hinge will prevent any catching on wheelchairs. “For your existing home, you may merely need to widen some doorways, and pocket doors may be useful to you when a swinging door just won’t work.”—Senior Home Remodel magazine

Ditch the traditional tub: “A senior opting to age in place also should consider home modifications for the bathroom, particularly the bathtub. One option is to replace the bathtub with a walk-in shower, which provides much easier (and safer) entry and exit than a bathtub.”—Assisted Living Today

After hauling it upstairs from the treasure trove that is my family’s basement, I dusted off the wobbly wooden desk that once held the old Dell computer I used to write my 10th grade paper on symbolism in The Catcher in the Rye.

Now, a decade later, it’s become the desk that serves as my headquarters for working from home during the COVID-19 crisis. With my dad’s help, I tightened a few screws, gathered supplies I swiped from our Harbor East office before we evacuated, and positioned the desk facing the window in the corner of my childhood bedroom—with a prime view of the old backyard playhouse my sisters and I begged my parents to let us fingerpaint when we were kids.

As surreal as it was, I had moved back home. Everyone in the world was shifting their routines in response to the coronavirus, and after six years of living independently as a single twenty-something in Baltimore City, my pivot moment was returning to the four walls in my parents’ Owings Mills house that saw me through all of the angst and emotion of my adolescence. If there’s one certainty in such an uncertain time, it’s that a crisis like this makes you seek out the comforts of family.

My room had the same red and pink walls that I’d left behind, covered in collages made from J-14, Seventeen, and Teen Vogue magazines. The wall near my closet was still plastered with ticket stubs from every movie, play, and concert I’d likely ever been to—including Avril Lavigne at the old Bohager’s in Fells Point when I was 9, middle school screenings of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and John Tucker Must Die, and my 2006 command performance as Mrs. Van Daan from an eighth-grade production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Perched on a shelf was the pink lava lamp my parents gave me on the night we moved into our two-story Colonial when I was 8, likely to soothe my fears about being in a new place. There were Polaroids, photobooth strips, graduation tassels, and seashells collected from summer vacations in Wildwood, New Jersey. And, of course, the pièce de résistance, a DIY wall mobile made out of blank CDs scribbled with song lyrics in black Sharpie (the clichéd, but classic “Don’t Stop Believin’” being one of them), that still dangled over my bed.

For all intents and purposes, my room is exactly the same. But coming back to it, and being isolated within it, has triggered a surprising flood of emotions as an adult.

Be forewarned: If you’re lucky enough to return to your untouched childhood bedroom (fortunately my parents chose my younger sister’s room to turn into an office), it can be a stark reminder of those awkward teen years. But it’s also a great way to reconnect with yourself and look back at how far you’ve come. I wish I could tell the reserved girl who sat on the floor cutting up magazines—which were filled with glamorous photos of teen stars posing in outfits I could only dream of pulling off—to take pride in her creativity and have confidence in her own thoughts and ideas.

Growing up as a classic middle child (to this day, my parents still lovingly refer to me as their “Steady Eddie”), my unwavering mission in life was to go with the flow. When conflict arose with my friends or siblings, I assumed the role of the pacifier rather than risking someone—heaven forbid—not liking what I had to say. When my sisters would fight over who got to hold my mom’s hand when crossing the street, I’d give in and hold her pinky to spare us all the drama. Even when I first landed an internship with Baltimore magazine, I was intimidated by everything—from the copy machine to the all-staff sheet cake celebrations in the conference room. It was always easier for me to hang back than to speak up.

But now, after years of being away from home, I’ve found my voice. I’ve had those sobering life experiences that throw you into the deep end, regardless of whether you’re ready for them. Things like suddenly losing a loved one, navigating financial woes, or ending an unhealthy relationship.

To put it simply, I’ve grown up.

So, sure, quarantining at home with my mom, dad, and one of my two sisters (the other lives a few miles away near Mt. Washington) feels a bit like a regression. I suddenly lack motivation to empty the dishwasher or take out the trash. And my older sister, Melissa, and I often revert to our teenage selves in our recurring back-and-forth about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom.

But I know I’m not alone. Millennials across the country have been hunkering down with their parents as a way to combat isolation and stay healthy. Many are also moving home out of financial necessity in the wake of furloughs and layoffs. I’ve been lucky to have a place to take refuge.

When the coronavirus hit, I quickly realized that the Hampden rowhome I shared with three roommates (including the couple who owns it) wasn’t going to be ideal for quarantine. I didn’t even have a desk there, and my cramped bedroom didn’t allow much space for one.

Luckily, one of my mom’s favorite phrases has always been, “You know this is always your home.” As cheesy as it sounds, she’s right. Before moving to Hampden, I spent two years in Federal Hill living the college 2.0 lifestyle that I had longed for having commuted to Towson University. It was fun while it lasted, but that place never felt like a home. And while my roommates in Hampden were lovely, it really was their home—I just rented a room. To be honest, I’ve only ever felt the true comforts of home in the one where I grew up.

In such surreal times, it’s been nice to cling to that familiarity. My family and I have found solace in cooking for each other, taking up new hobbies like doing puzzles and making latch hook rugs, and hanging around the fire pit together. I have also loved seeing our suburban neighborhood in full bloom, and hearing more birdsongs than car horns for a change.

Over time, I’ve gotten over the embarrassment of hopping on Zoom calls against the backdrop of all the pink paint. And since we’ve managed to work on different levels of the house, my mom, an elementary physical education teacher, can lead virtual rounds of “Red Light, Green Light” with her kindergartners while I edit stories about Governor Hogan’s latest mandates. All of the hours spent plugging away in my room have allowed me to appreciate it for the time capsule that it is.

Looking around my room, it becomes more and more clear to me that the woman returning is far different from the girl who left it. As evidenced by all of the relics—kind of an archaeological autobiography—I’ve always known what I liked, but I never really understood who I was until I got out in the world and came back. In the six years since I’ve been gone, the peacemaker learned to speak freely. The reserved teenager learned to embrace opportunity. The shy intern grew into a digital senior editor.

The wobbly desk is now sturdy. Maybe I’ll take it with me to my next place.

The view from the kitchen window into Kirsch Jones’ backyard is not what you’d expect in Charles Village, where rowhouses typically have postage-stamp-sized yards.

His vista reveals a lush sanctuary anchored by a water garden teeming with colorful fish. It’s a vision Jones had when he moved into the neighborhood in the 1980s—a peaceful refuge from the concrete urban jungle, with the sounds of water babbling in a fragrant, floral setting.

So, he began digging up the tiny yard to create a 1,600-gallon fish pond with stone waterways, a biological filter, a stream, a waterfall, and a mixture of perennials and tropical annuals. “It adds a lively oasis in the middle of the city and supports a diverse bird population,” Jones says.

“This backyard is like, ‘ahhh!’” concurs Jones’ friend Nancy Perlman. “The most Zen place I know. I swear it’s almost like being in church, but way better. It’s like the secret garden.”

Such reactions are the reason people create water gardens, bringing the landscape to life with the movement and sound of water and the animals it attracts, says Tim McQuaid, general manager at Cockeysville’s Valley View Farms, which has an extensive water-garden section. Of course, there’s some work and expense—between $500 and $3,000 for a self-install.

Where to begin? Well, you’ll need a source of electricity at the pond site. Then, McQuaid recommends a variety of materials. If you want to avoid concrete, you’ll need a layer of sand at the bottom of the garden excavation, a water-garden liner and liner fabric to protect the liner, plus fieldstone and flagstone to anchor and cover the liner and make it look natural.

If you want that waterfall action, you’ll need black waterfall foam, which seals the gaps between the rocks in your waterfall so the flow won’t be lost between the stones. Add to the list a pump, filter, and tubing, plus a shovel-handled steel tamper, used to compress soil or to create a raised area for a waterfall.

Next, you need a plan: Use a rope to lay out the shape. Now it’s digging time, requiring three levels: the rock shelf at four to five inches, a shelf—like a step—at nine to 12 inches, and the bottom at 18 inches or more.

“Cut the side walls of the water garden at a slight angle,” McQuaid says. “This will add support to the walls, so they don’t collapse. It’s also important that the ground outside the pond slopes away, so water from outside doesn’t come in.”

After the sand cushion has been placed on the pond floor, line the walls and shelves with liner fabric and install the liner. The pond should be finished by placing stones, known as coping, around the edge. Presto, it’s a pond—making your backyard, like Jones’, the most Zen place you know.

When Paul and Claudia Zohorsky bought their Ellicott City home in the 1990s, it was a practical decision: The house had the bedrooms and closet space they needed for themselves and their seven children. For years, the focus of the family’s life was just that—the kids. Think school, carpool, sports teams, the works. But when the youngest child left for college, Claudia knew it was time for a change.

“With extended family and grandchildren coming back, this house was still a good space for us, so we decided to hunker down and retire here, but I wanted everything to be beautiful,” she says. “The emphasis was on our new stage of life.”

While there are no longer all those children tromping the halls every day, the home still needed to work for visits from the Zohorskys’ grandchildren. That calls for plenty of seating—there are two separate seating areas in the family room, for example—and the couple wanted everything to be comfortable.

“The livability of the house is real, it’s not a museum,” she says. Zohorsky selected interior designer Kelley Proxmire to craft this new, beautiful space. Proxmire is a family friend and the two women share a love of color.

“I love Kelley’s aesthetic,” says Zohorsky. “I came from the North Shore of Long Island, where there was that bright, pink-and-green preppy style…I didn’t want it to be all monotone or restricted in its sensibilities.”

“I love color, it’s just fun and happy,” says Proxmire. “But I love for color to flow.” In addition to making sure color transitions worked from room to room, Proxmire says she tried to keep large pieces neutral and use color on accent pieces. That way, as tastes change, it will be easier to update the space.

Similarly, custom wool rugs in soft neutrals ground each room. Proxmire loves the statement fabrics can make, and a good example is the Lee Jofa coral fabric in the dining room. That was inspired by the pattern of Zohorsky’s fine china.

“I love the dining room,” says Proxmire, noting the beautiful wallpaper above the wainscoting and the custom 72-inch round table, one of three custom pieces in the room commissioned from Shoemaker Country in Ellicott City.

Shades of coral emerge in almost every other room, from pops of color on throw
pillows in the more subdued library to the downright exuberant wallpaper in the
mudroom.

“That wallpaper is my favorite,” says Zohorsky of the bright textiles from
Thibaut’s Caravan collection. “I love the sense of freedom of it.”

The pre-existing living room was lacking in architectural detail, so Proxmire conceived of the mirror-on-mirror treatment to give it a focal point. In a nod to practicality, she repurposed the Zohorsky’s pedestal dining table, dressing it as a side table, though it can still be used as an extra dining area for large groups.

At the core of the home is the entry foyer, a neutral grounding point for a house of vibrant splashes of color. While Proxmire sources most of her materials from the Washington, D.C., Design Center, she loves a good find at a secondhand shop, and she’s particularly pleased with the foyer’s table.

Made of fiberglass, the pedestal (which Proxmire topped with stone) was once a prop at the former Woodward & Lothrop department store. Proxmire picked it up at one of her flea market-style haunts.

“I love one-of-a-kind pieces, and I often find them in vintage or junk shops,” says Proxmire. “I call it ‘The Hunt.’ I absolutely love the hunt.”

A room marked more by its serenity than its vibrancy is the master bedroom.
Zohorsky recalls that she selected the blue, gravitating to a fabric sample Proxmire brought.

“[She] would bring choices and let me pick,” says Zohorsky. “Once she had a starting point in the room, she would work everything around it. It’s such a natural talent for her.”

Zohorsky describes the renovated house as a haven. She loves the library with its
arched windows and fireplace, where she has tea; another favorite is the bright, oversized ottoman in the family room, which is often where grandbabies are propped up for group adoration. And the colorful mudroom always brings a smile.

“This renovation is a gift,” says Zohorsky. “We’ve done a lot of hard work with our
family over many years, and this is like the icing on the cake.

LIVING IN THE CLOUDS

When Lisa Mason retired, she and her husband, Kip, planned to move from their home in Gaithersburg to a high-rise condo so they could spend time in Naples, Italy— where Lisa grew up—and not have to worry about the security of their untended single family house. Although the couple lived alone, “being an Italian mother, the children had to have their own bedroom when they came to visit,” says Kip of the home in Gaithersburg. “So we had to buy a big four-bedroom house for two people.”

Although they would lose space in the downsizing, moving into a condo would make traveling back to Italy easier, “so that when we leave it for six months a year, we will feel safe that our furniture will be there when we get back,” says Kip.

The couple’s search spanned condominiums from the National
Harbor in Washington, D.C., to Rockville and Old Town Alexandria. “But we just kept coming back to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor,” says Kip. “It’s just a spectacular place to live.”

After looking into waterfront developments from Canton to Federal Hill, the Masons decided on Scarlett
Place in Harbor East, a 14-story building overlooking the harbor. The couple loved its proximity to shopping, movies, and dining—plus, Little Italy is steps away across President Street. “Around here, everything is walking distance,” says Lisa. Their car spends most days in the parking garage.

It took 18 months for the Masons to chose— and close on—a unit on the water side. But the wait was worth it, they say. Their 10th-floor, one-bedroom condo provides sweeping panoramas of the harbor in every room. “I love the view,” says Lisa, who says it reminds her of her apartment in Naples that looked out over the Mediterranean Sea.

Although the couple downsized, they still entertain company. The apartment provides a perfect opportunity to watch the fireworks during their annual New Year’s Eve party with other residents of the building. And when relatives visit, the large couch in the living room converts to a comfortable bed.

“The security aspect was perfect for
us, too,” says Kip—access to the front door, elevator, and parking garage are controlled by key cards, while the front lobby is manned 24 hours a day.

The Masons also enjoy the sense of community in the building, which is home to people of all ages, from professionals to other retired couples. Despite the fact that they have lived in 13 different locations during their years together, Scarlett Place feels like home. “This is the place I like the most,” says Lisa. “It’s more like where she grew up,” explains Kip. “I would go to Italy and come back, and this is home to me now.”

SOLUTION: Scarlett Place
COST: Condos start at $235,000.
FEES: $.50/square foot monthly.
THE PLUSES: Easy walk to shops and restaurants, close to city cultural attractions, water views, 24-hour front desk, attached secure garage, indoor pool, fitness center, and meeting room.

OPTING FOR A CCRC

After his wife died in 2010, Ned Jarrett lived by himself in their rancher set on two acres in Owings Mills. “It’s a pretty lonely existence when you live out in the country,” says Jarrett. When he had a mild heart attack two years later, Jarrett decided it was time to sell the home and move to a senior living facility. “I found out I wasn’t as indestructible as I thought I was,” says the 83-year-old. And he was tired of living alone, anyway.

With the assistance of his two sons, Jarrett began looking into Baltimore-area senior communities in the fall of 2012. Although still in good health, he decided to make the move sooner rather than later. “I didn’t want to become a burden on the boys,” says Jarrett.

After comparing medical resources offered by various retirement complexes, as well as activities and amenities, Jarrett settled on Blakehurst in Towson. After about six months on the waiting list, Jarrett moved into his onebedroom apartment in June 2013.

“I never thought I’d live in an apartment complex, but that’s where I am,” says Jarrett, acknowledging the

sometimes challenging transition for those used to single-family homes. But what he lost in space he regained in the community. “There are people around all the time. In the halls, everybody says, ‘Good morning,'” says Jarrett. An alumnus of Gilman School’s class of 1949, Jarrett also reconnected with former classmates also living at Blakehurst.

With a plethora of activities to choose from, there’s something to suit all personalities, from iPad training to golfputting competitions. “I learned how to play croquet,” says Jarrett. “I never thought I would.” Blakehurst also gives residents the opportunity to keep many hobbies they may have enjoyed in their prior homes, like gardening and woodworking. Jarrett adds, “If you’re bored, it’s your own fault.”

While some senior homes have a reputation for ho-hum cuisine, that’s not the case at Blakehurst. “The food is absolutely phenomenal,” says Jarrett. “You never hear anybody complain.” With flexible dining times and multiple facilities, meals don’t get repetitive. And family and friends can join residents for dinner or drinks as part of their monthly dining budget.

Jarrett tells friends considering a move to an over-60 community to check out the medical facilities and consider how the various medical plans fit into one’s budget. Beyond that, “it depends on what your health is, what your lifestyle is, and what you’re willing to give up,” says Jarrett. “I gave up a living room, a hall, three bedrooms, two baths—all of which I had to pay taxes on, heat, and

clean. I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Most of all, Jarrett values the relationships he’s made through the community. “You meet new friends,” says Jarrett. “It’s been a very pleasant experience for me.”

SOLUTION: Blakehurst (CCRC)
COST: Entry-fee pricing begins at $291,000 for a single-occupancy, one bedroom unit.
FEES: Monthly fees start at $3,000-5,000.
THE PLUSES: On-site health center, two dining facilities, housekeeping, laundry service, Wi-Fi, pool, putting green, woodworking and art studios, croquet courts, billiards and game room, fitness center, and salon, plus activities including iPad classes, professional lectures, opera and concert excursions, day trips, and volunteering.

A CRUISE SHIP ON LAND

Jude Kotarides and his wife, Carole, never planned to move from their 25-year home in Perry Hall. Yet things changed in 2005 when a volunteer job brought Jude to Bulle Rock Golf Course in Havre de Grace. Once the avid golfer stepped foot inside the Bulle Rock community’s welcome center, he was immediately enamored. “I got an overwhelming feeling that I wanted to live in this community,” says 61-year-old Kotarides. “I called my wife, Carole, and told her that we should move if we could get our house sold. She was flabbergasted.”

But her initial shock turned to agreement, and she acknowledged that the Residences at Bulle Rock was a perfect solution. The Kotarideses moved into their new three bedroom home in the spring of 2006.

Although the couple didn’t reduce square footage with the move, they now have a master suite on the first floor—something important to them as they age.

A mix of home types make up Bulle Rock’s 27 neighborhoods, each named after Triple Crown horses and venues. The two story, 37,000-square-foot residence center includes a gym, indoor and outdoor pools, spa, and game rooms. Kotarides likes to compare the amenities to “a stationary cruise ship” with lifestyle director Kathy Harper as the “cruise ship entertainment director,” organizing events throughout the year like luaus, talent shows, and movie nights.

Although the Bulle Rock community is vast, living there fosters a sense of fellowship. “I’ve met so many new friends here that were around our age,” says Kotarides, who sits on several community boards and is involved with the golf club that helped plan a first annual summer golf tournament in which Bulle Rock’s neighborhoods play each other. “You get the chance to meet a lot of different people,” says Kotarides. “When I lived in Perry Hall, I might know a couple of people on my street. We might have 20 or 30 neighborhoods here, but they’re all in Bulle Rock so you meet a lot more people that you couldn’t really get to know in a standard neighborhood.”

For Kotarides, Bulle Rock’s location adjacent to a world-class golf course and the Chesapeake Bay lets it live up to its slogan, “Life imitates vacation.”

“I have no interest in a vacation home,” says Kotarides. “It is the only place that I have ever lived where, after a vacation, I am not sad to come home, but instead enjoy being back.” And now, the Kotarideses are joined by their daughter, who recently moved from New York into a neighboring Bulle Rock community. At Bulle Rock, Kotarides has found his forever home. “I pinch myself living up here,” he says.

SOLUTION: Residences at Bulle Rock
COST: Single family homes start at upper $290,000s.
FEES: $333 monthly homeowners association fees.
THE PLUSES: Five-star golf course, indoor and outdoor pools, billiard and game rooms, spa and sauna, fitness center, ballroom, lawn maintenance and snow removal, and Silks Restaurant at Bulle Rock. Activities include tennis club, gardening club, book club, winetasting club, various committees, golf leagues, kayaks, and fishing.

A COMMUNITY BEHIND THE GATES

Although David Dukehart isn’t retired, the 57-year-old financial adviser had his eye on the future when he moved in 2013 to Rockland Ridge, just off the Jones Falls Expressway in Brooklandville, a new gated community of what will eventually be 72 stone villa-style townhomes.

Dukehart sold his five-bedroom house on one and a quarter acres in Phoenix, partly because he wanted an improved quality of life and more convenience. “I also wasn’t going back into a big home like that because I wasn’t sure of the marketplace,” says Dukehart. “For me, this is the right place for now.”

While he enjoyed his former home, he sees moving to a community like Rockland Ridge as something those nearing retirement and looking for a residential community should do

sooner rather than later. “I am enjoying a smaller home in a neighborhood townhome community,” says Dukehart, who has found a sense of community in the neighborhood’s social events. “Don’t
wait until the last minute. Move while you can really get engaged with your community and your neighbors.”

Living in Rockland Ridge gives Dukehart a sense of freedom, especially when it comes to travel. Not only does the location on the Falls Road corridor allow for easy access to the expressway, the location is close to downtown Baltimore while avoiding Baltimore City taxes. “Not paying the city taxes is really critical—especially when you’re saving for retirement,” he says.

Tucked away in a lush, wooded enclave, Rockland Ridge feels miles away from the hustle and bustle of nearby communities and is just minutes from the trails of Robert E. Lee Park. “We don’t see traffic up here,” says Dukehart. “I can come and go with ease and travel without worry.”

Dukehart’s three-bedroom townhome, while slightly smaller than his previous home, has a spacious 2,500 square feet of living space. “I think the whole idea of first-floor living with the opportunity

to still have guest- room capabilities is really wonderful,” says Dukehart. “And to have a full basement with walkout into the backyard is an added bonus.”

For Dukehart, moving to Rockland Ridge was like returning to his roots. “I grew up three blocks from the old [Memorial] Stadium in a townhome,” he says. “That’s where my start was. And now I’m back to it.”

SOLUTION: Rockland Ridge
COST: Townhomes start at $575,000.
FEES: $215 monthly homeowner fees.
THE PLUSES: Snow removal, lawn maintenance, two-car garage, and controlled community entrance gate, plus quick access to I-83 and convenient both to Baltimore City and Towson-Lutherville- Timonium shopping.

Baltimore is a city of book clubs. I’ve been in my own book club for at least 10 years (who can remember any more!) Our “Book Club Has No Name” started in July 2005 (we have records with every book and meal and an admin who keeps track of it all. Thanks, Em!) We have thirteen members and usually have about 10 ladies at every meeting. Our ages and professions range, as do our zip codes—which stretch from the city to the county—and our book choices. Everyone gets to take a turn selecting a book and the accompanying restaurant. (My last pick was in May, “White Houses” by Amy Bloom. We met at the Bluebird Cocktail Room, steps away from Roosevelt Park.)

We’ve read countless books, eaten at a million different restaurants, and consumed a lot of wine. We always discuss the books. But we also talk about kids, spouses, jobs, and traveling. We’ve gone on yearly retreats, including last February when we spent a weekend in Philadelphia discussing “Lincoln in the Bardo” and having a private tour of the Rosenbach, visiting the Lincoln room at the Union League of Philadelphia, eating brunch, doing yoga and drinking wine (I hear those were Lincoln’s favorite pastimes). My ladies are wicked smart, big-hearted, and insightful. On the third Tuesday of every month, you better not try to make plans with me.

I am so excited for the book club entertaining guide in the new issue of HOME.

And I was so happy to read all your book club experiences.

Enjoy.

Katharine Schildt Scrivener

I’ve loved books and reading for as long as I can remember. After majoring in English in college, I fell into a massive reading slump. A few years later I decided to create a separate Instagram account dedicated to books, both as a way to reignite my love of reading and to talk about books with like-minded individuals. I ended up finding a community full of smart, caring, supportive, and book-obsessed people—it’s by far one of the most welcoming and accepting corners of the internet. Growing this account has helped me improve my photography and social media skills and has served as a wonderful creative outlet.

It’s an enormous amount of fun to connect with people across the world—they’ve introduced me to books and genres I might not have otherwise tried before. A few times a week, I share what I’m currently reading or the books I’m eagerly anticipating. I’ve been able to develop relationships with other readers, as well as people in the publishing world. I think reading is important because it teaches empathy, which is vitally important, especially today. Reading is cool again.

Tracy Hall

It started five years ago with a post in a neighborhood Facebook page asking if people would be interested in a book club, with the first 10 people to respond being included. While some of the members have changed over the years, we are still going strong and have developed lifelong friendships. We take our books seriously, setting a minimum time of 90 minutes for discussion. Hosts rotate, providing a spread of (usually) cheese and wine. The sessions usually last far longer than the 90 minutes, however. Sometimes because of the books, sometimes simply because of the camaraderie.

Each holiday season, we have a party and white elephant book exchange, where we give a book that we personally loved and want to share with others. Sometimes we pair it with a bottle of something that fits the theme. We have also started the tradition of having a book club retreat every year, where we rent a house somewhere drivable, plan to discuss two books, have amazing food, and enjoy a relaxing weekend together. One of the books is always something that has been turned into a movie, and we have a viewing party after the book discussion. As expected, that usually prompts more discussion!

I have never been luckier than I was when I was one of those first 10 all those years ago.

Nina Therese Kasniunas

What can I say about my book club? Over the years they have become some of the friends I treasure the most. We came together initially with various vulnerabilities that only could be revealed to strangers over time through the discussion of books. It might have taken us a year or two to realize that we had shared so much with each other that we could share with very few others. That is the special aspect of sharing a reading and discussing it with others—you are able to open up while discussing a book in a way you are unable in ordinary conversation. It is definitely an avenue into otherwise very difficult discussions.

Through our book club, we have read all types of genres of books, but seemingly have read a fair share of books gravitating toward some aspect of justice—racially, economic, or otherwise. The discussions have not always been easy, but we have always known that we could take on difficult issues and still be friends no matter how intensely we disagree. Rare are the books in which we all agree in our assessment of how good it was, although we have encountered a few in which all gave the highest praise.

There was an election during which we surprisingly found out that we weren’t all liberal Democrats. (Although, truth be told, had we thought about it all that much we wouldn’t have needed those declarations during that election or had been so shocked by them.) We have socialized outside of our monthly meetings when we can, although as very busy adults that is difficult to do. One of our most fun weekends is the one weekend during the summer where we take off to an Airbnb somewhere nearby for a book club retreat—which among other things, includes a lot of time for relaxing, reading, and talking about books.

We tell each other often how lucky we are to have one another, but as much as we say it, I feel I need to say it again—my book club friends are treasures almost as precious as the time book club gives me to read for pleasure.

Becky McClellan

We started after I posted to our neighborhood Facebook page asking if anyone wanted to start a book club and we went with the first 10 people to reply.

I think what’s most special about our group is the randomness of our members and the great friendships that have evolved over a love of reading. The only thing that really united us at the start was living in the same neighborhood. We’ve got men, women, Christians, agnostics, straight, gay, with and without kids, and a variety of occupations. Seven of our original 10 are still part of our group and a year ago we recruited three additional members (again from our neighborhood Facebook group). Sure, we drink our fair share of wine, but our gatherings truly are about the books full of lively and respectful discourse.

We meet monthly, rotating as hosts and read an eclectic mix of books (typically nominated in genre categories and voted on by all, but most recently we had each member choose a book of their choosing).

Another great experience has been our weekend retreat that we started two summers ago where we relax, read, discuss two books and watch a corresponding movie, and have fun together.

Jess Gill

On February 21, 2014, a girl posted on Facebook in the Canton Neighbors group asking if anyone was interested in starting a book club with her and her roommate. The post caught a lot of attention, including mine. A few of my football teammates and I had tried to start a book club a few years back, but only three of us took it seriously and the rest were there for the drinks. We disbanded, but I still missed talking about books.

So, I responded to the thread, and the original poster, Rachel Warm Allshouse, messaged me asking for some advice/feedback. Because the Facebook thread had gotten so unwieldy, I decided to create a Google spreadsheet where people could sign up and indicate their areas of interest: fiction, non-fiction, romance, memoirs, historical fiction, self-help, etc. I would then try to organize the interested folk into groups based on common interests. I also added my two teammates, since I knew they missed our sort-of book club, as well.

Rachel and I split the spreadsheet up into three groups and thought it made sense for us to be in the same group since we had talked via Facebook a bit at this point and our interests were similar. Rachel and her roommate were a pair, my football teammates and I knew each other, but none of us knew anyone else. An email exchange between the eight girls in our group led to our first meeting at Chesapeake Wine Company on Thursday, March 6, 2014—where we decided on the structure of our book club. Incidentally, during this first meeting, two of the girls discovered they grew up in the same town and lived across the street from each other, but had never met before.

The rules: one book each month, hosts would rotate by month, and everyone contributes food and/or drink. Our very first book was “The Interestings” by Meg Wolitzer, and Rachel and her roommate hosted at their house.

Nearly five years later, we’ve added a few and lost a few (mainly due to moves), but are still going strong. We’ve met 53 times and each year, we have an anniversary meeting where we purely socialize and enjoy each other’s company. (See attached photo from our last anniversary meeting, where we did a book swap!)

We’ve mostly met in houses, but have also done book club on a boat, in the park, and in a few restaurants. I think we would all unanimously agree that book club on a boat is our favorite way to meet—and we also marvel that what was originally a group of strangers now get along so well that spending a full day together is a total blast.

We celebrate birthdays, babies, job transitions, career successes, house purchases, engagements, marriages, and major life changes. And yes, we talk about the book at length. I don’t think we have a collective favorite, but that’s part of the fun—we all have such different approaches to how we read and interpret the book that it makes for a lively discussion every time.

We’ve each formed relationships with the other girls in the club, which is just another fabulous perk of book club. I leave book club each month feeling so happy to have spent the evening with a group of positive, funny, smart, and engaging women. I can say that I personally have traveled internationally with a girl I met through book club, celebrated several birthdays with these former strangers, and attended the wedding of another girl I met through book club—Rachel’s.

Really, book club is one of the best things in our lives—and we have pretty good lives.

TL;DR: Facebook and Google docs sometimes brings people together in an extraordinary way.

Amanda Shapiro

I’ve been a reader ever since I can remember. I would always talk about new bestsellers with my friends and enjoyed frequent outings to Barnes and Noble. So naturally, I started my own book club. The club, Lit Chicks, was started with about 11 people in 2014. We are now up to 14 members and meet monthly, alternating houses. Sometimes instead of meeting at our houses we meet out in different locations.

We have read about Asian cultures and held our book club at various Chinese and Japanese restaurants. Other times, we have met at the movies when we read a book that comes into the theatre. We usually pick our books together as a group at the end of the book club. People bring suggestions, and we check them out on Goodreads and decide together.

Once we pick a book, I always try to reach out to the author to see if we can Skype with them. So far, we have talked with Lisa See, Jane Green, Renee Carlino, Amy Impellizeri and Martha Hall Kelly, just to name a few. We have even had one author, Liv Constantine, come meet us at book club. Some of our favorite books are: “Lemongrass Hope” by Amy Impellizeri, “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn, “The Nightingale” by Kristen Hannah, “The Light We Lost” by Jill Santoplo and “This is How it Always is” by Laurie Frankel.

Typically, we meet at 7:30 at someone’s house and chat for a bit while enjoying wine and snacks that usually go along with the theme of the book, if possible. After snacking, we head to the couches and go through some questions I bring that are usually printed from a book club guide online. It’s been a great four years with the Lit Chicks and I can’t wait for more exciting books and great chats.

Molly Burger

When I was 7 months pregnant with my first child I saw a post on the Southeast Baltimore City Kids listserv seeking members for a new book club. Most of my college friends were no longer in Baltimore and I was looking to make some new connections with other city moms. That first meeting, there were probably 20 women stuffed into a Canton living room eager to meet other book lovers, but as the months went on, our numbers dwindled. Many women, including the organizer, moved out of the city or to another state.

It’s now been nine years since that first meeting and there are five of us who are still meeting monthly. We realized long ago that going out worked better for us—we all had small children and hosting dinner at home during the week was purely aspirational. Now I think of it as a book/dinner club. Each month one of us gets to pick the book and make the reservation. We’ve rarely repeated a restaurant.

Sometimes the book is discussed briefly, maybe we all loved it but there wasn’t much to discuss, or it was so bad nobody finished it. Other times the book sparks great conversations. One surprising favorite for us was “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel. It was the first graphic novel for many of us. I remember we met at the old Bottega space on Maryland Ave, and we had the best discussion lasting all through dinner in that cozy, candlelit space. We’re looking forward to seeing the play at Center Stage next year. Over the years there have been new babies, loss of parents, job changes, end of a marriage, a cookbook published—all discussed monthly along with the book, among a group of wonderful women.

Stacie Kovens

Most of us in the group have never been big joiners or eager to be a member of a formal organization, yet the synergy of this group of women reflects something essential about who we are, so we’re drawn to it. At the heart of it is companionship. Reading is not inherently a social activity, but books give us a reason to duck out of the traffic of our lives and get together for a respite.

The group expanded as friends invited friends, although some members were picked up on a bus or as acquaintances on a hunch that they’d fit in. We gather every other month for a potluck, catch up on lives, and discuss together what we’ve read on our own. We tend to it and do our part to keep it going because what we get from it is special. It’s reliable—a tradition of our very own creation that anchors us. We forgive each other for falling short sometimes and not meeting expectations (finishing the book). It reminds us that besides being responsible for day-to-day obligations we have imaginations that want to be fed by impossible worlds or accounts of other people’s lives.

As the Czarina (benevolent dictator), I select what we read and organize our gatherings. We have a Google Doc for people to enter their requests and I pick from there, typically alternating between fiction and non-fiction. Occasionally I’ll get an itch to read a certain book and we’ll tackle it. We’ve done classics, graphic novels, science fiction, investigative science, and historical fiction among others. Some of the books have been duds. Sometimes they’re masterpieces. I usually prepare questions or some sort of way to engage with the text. It’s not that we have a formal structure that we follow, but it’s helpful to have something that lets us shift from free-form chatting to reflecting on what we’ve read. Mostly we meet at someone’s house, but occasionally we’ll go out. We’ve kept it going for seven years and hopefully it’ll go on for many more.

With a weekend, some tools, and a little know-how, many homeowners can tackle a basic repair or remodeling project. As any seasoned do-it-yourselfer understands, working in your own home can be as empowering as it can be cost-efficient. There’s a point, though, when it can also be a little dangerous. 

“I had a customer once who told me that her husband was working in the attic and the roof was sagging, and asked me to come take a look,” recalls Joseph Smith, a principal at Owings Homes Services. Smith figured it couldn’t be that bad, but as soon as he arrived, he saw more than a foot of sagging in the roof.

“I took a peek in the attic and the husband had cut away all the roof trusses to make the attic into livable space,” Smith recalls. “I told them they needed to leave the house immediately and call a structural engineer.” 

Ask any electrician, contractor, or plumber, and they’re full of similar stories of project gone awry, from the guy who invited injury, death, or a house fire by splicing an extension cord and wiring it up to power his garage-door opener (he was lucky), to the homeowner who tried to fix his own roof but installed the shingles upside down and backward. And sometimes, the outcome is more than just embarrassing: A homeowner in Montgomery County died after being electrocuted while installing a ceiling fan.

Sure, sometimes a simple home update is just that—simple. But it can also turn into a monster project that sucks the lifeblood out of your wallet and schedule. We checked with Baltimore’s experts for guidelines on when the average homeowner can go it alone and when to call in a professional.

Be Honest

If you’re handy and have some free time, handling something like swapping out kitchen hardware or refinishing wood floors might be within your wheelhouse. In today’s shared economy, it’s more convenient than ever to rent tools or Home Depot pickup trucks to carry wallboard, but just because that part is easy doesn’t mean you should do it. Before you touch a tool, you need to ask yourself how far-ranging your skill set is and how capable you really are. The answer will vary from homeowner to homeowner and project to project. Installing a chair rail could safely fall into the DIY realm, for example, but if you have an old house where the walls aren’t plumb, or you just don’t have much experience with a miter saw, you could end up with a mess.

“It’s a little like cooking,” explains Dave MacLean, senior vice president at Hampstead-based Brothers Services Corporation. “We all go out to dinner and get a professional product and then you try to recreate it at home and it’s just not as good.

“There’s a learned craftsmanship that goes into properly installing trim and moulding. Does that mean only someone with years of experience can do it? No, but the nuances of dealing with uneven wall dimensions or drywall with an imperfect finish—that’s where the magic of experience comes in.”

He adds, “A lot will depend on the homeowner’s tolerance for imperfection.”

If you have a modicum of skill but need a bit of direction, reputable sites on the internet (like thisoldhouse.com) provide useful how-to videos. “YouTube has really changed the ability of homeowners to troubleshoot and fix things,” says MacLean. 

Safety First

Before you begin any project, it’s wise to know where your emergency shut-offs are—you never know when you might need them. The simple project of hanging a shelf can quickly go awry if you screw through a plumbing pipe and are suddenly rushing to figure out how to turn off the water to the whole house.

Doing something capably on your own also means following the rules of law and safety. Old homes can contain lead paint and asbestos, which must be remediated. A condominium will have different liabilities than a single-family home. And ignorance of building permits and codes isn’t a plausible defense against improper craftsmanship. If you are moving electrical lines or plumbing or adding a structure, such as a deck, it’s safe to assume you need a permit (possibly some drawings, too) and an inspector will need to sign off on the work. However, every jurisdiction has its own regulations, so contact your municipality if you’re uncertain about a permit. 

Do DIY

“There’s a certain satisfaction in doing something yourself and doing something with your hands,” says Jeff Rubin, owner of The Baltimore Handyman Company. He recommends starting simple with cosmetic projects like painting, picture-hanging, and easy, self-assembly furniture. Hanging shelves is a nice weekend project, too.

“There are also a lot of self-stick products available, like vinyl tiles and carpet squares, that are not hard to put down with proper surface preparation,” Rubin adds.

With a screwdriver, most homeowners can quickly give a kitchen or bathroom a new look simply by swapping out hardware like drawer pulls and cabinet knobs.

“Assuming some base of knowledge of tools, trim work, like wainscoting and moulding, is an impactful thing a homeowner can do with a saw, a nail gun, and some basic skill,” says Smith. “On kitchen cabinets, you can prime and paint and swap out the hardware and dramatically change your entire kitchen’s look.”

Think Before You Demolish

Who doesn’t love an open floor plan? No one, apparently. 

“Everyone wants to take down a wall to create the open floor plan that’s popular now,” says Smith. 

While this is not completely out of the realm of the DIYer, it is an area that must be approached with extreme care. If the wall is load-bearing—in other words, holding up part of the house, like an upper story—a professional is required. If it’s not a load-bearing wall, it’s possible a homeowner can take the wall down after verifying there’s nothing else important inside the wall, like duct work, electrical conduit, or plumbing.

“In my experience, there’s always a greater chance that there’s something in the wall than not,” cautions MacLean.

Don’t Go There

When it comes to areas that are for experts only, the pros are unanimous: plumbing, electrical, and roofing—and pretty much anything that involves getting on a ladder.

“Electrical is a life-safety issue, as is plumbing, if you’re dealing with a gas pipe,” says Rubin. “The downside of other plumbing work—having a leak or a pipe burst—to me the risk is not worth it.”

Even something that seams innocuous, like swapping out a faucet, could end up with a call to a professional if outdated supply lines need to be cut and the whole house water supply has to be shut down. Similarly, changing a dated chandelier for one that’s more current can seem easy, but end up downright dangerous. Fixtures that are improperly grounded are a fire hazard, as are those that overload the capacity of the electrical line. Of course, there’s also the chance of electrocuting oneself, which is a pretty good reason to call an electrician.

“It’s okay to stretch yourself a little on something that isn’t hazardous,” says Smith. “Homeowners just need to be aware of what they’re tackling and know their skills—and to get help when they no longer feel comfortable.”   

If homes could talk, a certain gray stonefront Victorian on a tree-lined block of West Mount Royal Avenue in Bolton Hill would have 135 years worth of stories to tell. After the three-story home was built in the early 1880s, it most likely housed a large, upper-middle-class family. Sometime around World War II—as families decreased in size and moved to the suburbs—it was split into apartment units. And in the 1980s, it became home to students attending the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

On a Sunday morning in the summer of 2000, Thomas Shipley and Christopher Taylor saw a for-sale photo of the beautiful 3,700-square-foot home in The Baltimore Sun. The couple was looking to trade in their rowhouse in Butcher’s Hill for something with more space.

“When we met the Realtor here and opened the front door, our hearts just fell,” remembers Shipley. “It was a disgusting mess.” Years of neglect had left an abused shell of a home, with little left of its original beauty. Tape held together cracked windowpanes, painted-over nails were hammered into woodwork, and carved initials covered the bright purple bannister. But original details that did remain—among them, dramatic keyhole-shaped Moorish windows and Palladian weight-and-pulley windows leading to the third-floor balcony—charmed the two into taking the plunge. Although they hadn’t planned on a renovation, they purchased the property from MICA in August of 2000 and moved in two months later to embark on what would be a 12-year “labor of love,” Shipley says.

There’s no trendy exposed brick or open-floor plans to be found in the home, which was restored as closely as possible to its original 1880 design. With few historic photographs or records to guide them (even the construction date of “early 1880s” is an informed guess), Shipley and Taylor used neighboring properties and magazines such as Victorian Homes and This Old House to guide their DIY project.

Original fixtures like radiators and transom window openers were repaired and saved whenever possible, or replaced with materials dating from the same era. When the kitchen’s sagging foundation forced the homeowners to replace and reinforce the floors, beams from the old Calvert Distilling Company dating from the turn of the last century were milled into pine flooring.

To reconstruct the original double vestibule front doors—which, along with the transom window, had been stolen—Shipley, a carpenter and former contractor, looked at doors on a nearby home’s entrance as a model. “I did a scale drawing of the doors and then Chesapeake Woodworking and I built those and put them back,” he says, “so they’re actually replicas of the doors that were there when the house was built.”

The rescued home’s traditional décor flowed naturally from the historic design. Often, a family heirloom or item discovered on an antiquing trip set a room’s tone. “When we found a great piece, we would put it in a box and store it,” Shipley says. “We [didn’t always know] where we were going to use it.”

The 18-foot-wide rowhouse welcomes visitors into a parlor in the front, which leads into a dining room, half bath, and kitchen before opening to the back patio. Twelve-foot ceilings, two fireplaces, and a columned archway set a traditional tone. The dining room’s medieval-era décor began with a table and chairs purchased from a shop in Ellicott City and extends to the accompanying carved wooden furniture, dark red walls, and Persian rug. The lantern chandeliers over the table were discovered by chance, peeking out of a pile of rubbish outside an old church that was to be torn down.

“As we drove by, I saw a trash pile and spotted a chandelier,” remembers Shipley. “We stopped and I bought these. There were only two that didn’t have the glass broken.”

Each item sparks a remarkable memory for the homeowners, who have a knack for sourcing vintage décor. The Estey organ in the parlor, which dates to the 1880s, was given to Shipley in 10 to 15 boxes to settle a $50 debt, and he painstakingly assembled it by hand over many months. Two crystal sconce lights discovered in an Eastern Shore junk shop turned out to be a match to the parlor chandelier they had purchased there years earlier. The mantle was discovered in an Eastern Avenue antique shop. And the rugs in the first-floor hallway were haggled for at the Grand Bazaar in Turkey and carried home in duffle bags. “Everything in the house has a story,” says Shipley. “It’s fun.”

From a seat on a leather couch in the warm and cozy second-floor den (the couch faces the wall-mounted caribou head brought back from a trip to Montana), Shipley and Taylor look through a photo album documenting the decade of work that went into restoring the home to single-family use and era-appropriate design.

“We were living out of plastic bags for years,” says Taylor.

“We would go to work in a three-piece suit and a diamond stickpin and someone would say, ‘What’s that on your shoulder?’ and we’d have plaster on there,” recalls Shipley with a laugh. “It was a mess.”

When asked why they wanted to take on such a daunting project, the couple didn’t have an immediate answer, as if renovating the home was more of a calling than a decision. After thinking for a moment, Taylor replies, “Because it’s got character. It looks like something.”

But Shipley admits it’s not for everyone. “It scares some people. But we saw it finished,” he says, likening the journey to Michelangelo’s process of seeing a finished statue within a block of marble, and then removing the unnecessary pieces to set it free.

“I always talk to the house and say, ‘Do you appreciate all we’ve done for you?’” says Shipley. “She and I have a good relationship. I know her every nook and cranny.”

Helen Norman remembers it was a cool, clear spring day 21 years ago when she and her husband, Mark Elmore, stood on a hilltop overlooking a 130-acre tract with a stone house in White Hall. In the distance, their 2-year-old son, Peter, was running through a wheat field, his blond hair ruffling in the breeze.

“Mark and I looked at each other and said ‘We’ll buy it,’” she recalls. Her mother, a real-estate agent, clearly was not happy, though.

“The house was horrible,” Norman admits. “We took a big chance. We knew when we bought the place, it would be a lifetime project.”

There are homes that are renovated in a matter of months. There are renovations that spring seemingly fully formed and beautiful from beneath dust cloths. And then there are homes where the renovations never seem to end.

The home that Norman and Elmore dubbed Star Bright Farm—based on the “star light, star bright” nursery rhyme that Elmore used to recite to Peter—would be the latter.

Built in 1850, the house had been uninhabited for several years. It had no modern kitchen or bathroom and no closets. But Norman, a freelance photographer, and Elmore, who is owner of Gaga Marketing, had been living in New Jersey, and wanted to return to Norman’s home state of Maryland.

“I grew up in an old farm house in Baldwin, eating sustainably before it was cool because that’s just how my mother lived,” says Norman, who has shot for publications including Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes and Gardens, and Southern Living. “We always knew we wanted to raise our family on a farm.”

This house realized Norman’s dream of owning an old stone structure, plus it was located close enough to her brother, Drew, owner of White Hall’s One Straw Farm, that he could use some of the acreage for organic farming.

But job one, when they purchased the house in 1994, was making the property habitable—and fast—because Norman was pregnant with the couple’s second son.

“Patrick arrived a month early, probably because I was moving an armoire the day he was born,” says Norman, laughing. “We moved in with everything but the kitchen sink, because it hadn’t been installed yet. And we lived in that adorable 1,100 square feet for 10 years.”

They chose restoration homebuilder Southfen to transform the space, but were determined to preserve many original aspects of the house. Those included historic details like the living room’s fireplace mantle, the wooden front door, and the unique, curved windows. The redesign also features a lot of built-ins that, Norman explains, “are more efficient in a small house than furniture.”

“Unless you have gobs of money, renovation takes patience and you have to be able to visualize it as being done, and that gets you through the day. If you don’t visualize it done, you’ll never get there,” says Norman.

The family moved into a guesthouse on the property while the addition was constructed. “We wanted to add on to the house, but I wanted my stone house to be the hero,” Norman explains. Wesley Burton of Burton Architecture and builder Mark Morrill expanded the house to a total of about 3,000 square feet, adding a kitchen, a master suite with a vaulted ceiling, and a basement.

“Rather than adding on and making the house enormous, we started using the outbuildings,” Norman explains.

The smokehouse is now used for storage, while the milk house is where Norman has her office and a potting shed. And in 2001, the couple completed the renovation of the two-story guesthouse, using wood beams recycled out of a barn that belonged to Norman’s parents. The guesthouse also features stone and brick floors. Most recently, a large barn was turned into a party space, featuring a poured concrete patio that includes a new kitchen garden laid out by Norman with guidance from a garden-editor friend at Southern Living.

The transition between old and new on the main house is practically seamless, thanks in part to Norman lucking into a huge haul of stone from a nearby dismantled barn, which was used in the addition and can be seen to best effect in the masonry fireplace in the kitchen.

The old part of the house is cozy with its low ceilings and petite rooms, but the addition gave Norman a show-stopping kitchen with a ceiling that soars to over nine feet high. To replicate the look of old wood floors, they bought wide yellow pine from the lumber yard, laid it down tongue-and-groove style, but then top-nailed it into place.

Then, through an editorial photo shoot she did, Norman discovered Hoffman Woodward, makers of furniture and home accessories in East Berlin, PA. Jan Hoffman helped design the striking island built by her husband, David Woodward, a piece of master craftsmanship held together entirely by dovetailing (no nails) and painted a hand-mixed peacock blue.

Then, add a 6-foot-long soapstone sink to the picture: “It was Jan’s recommendation to do a shallow sink,” says Norman, “because I knew I wanted a two-bay farm sink, but, with a deep sink, you’re always breaking things.”

Norman, who designed all the interiors herself, has no shortage of vision. She has been influenced by the interior design and fashion photography she has done over the years and is an avowed Europhile. This is perhaps most evident in what she calls the garden room, a small space with a vintage French tile floor (sourced from Ann Sacks in New York), an exposed stone wall, and an old soapstone sink. Norman lined one wall with a built-in, creamy-white hutch to display china.

Another thing to consider is that the house is on a functioning farm and needed to be durable enough to handle dirt, dogs, and boys. Not surprisingly, slipcovers became Norman’s best friend.

Norman also wanted to make the vintage and antique pieces she and her husband inherited from their parents’ formal homes fit with her more casual style. The home is a happy mix of country and chic, old and new. In the master bedroom, for example, Norman asked Manor Decorative Services to hand-stitch heavy-weave drop-cloth upholstery onto an Empire-style sofa. “I think that’s a great way to modernize a pretty fussy piece of furniture,” she says.

Norman likes the juxtaposition of Persian and needlepoint rugs against the wood floors and the informal white slipcovers on the furniture. In the dining room, a Spanish refectory table provides seating for 16 at Thanksgiving, while a new chandelier is evocative of an older time, yet thoroughly modern.

Renovating an old house is a process full of surprises that takes time and money.

“Every second of time and a lot of money has been spent [on the house],” says Norman. Now that 20 years worth of projects are winding down, though, Norman confesses she’s a little wistful. But she and her husband realized the vision they had on the hilltop that spring day in 1994. “We have created a home for our kids. And this, for them, will always feel like home.”

It’s time to do your part to crank up the seasonal cheer, whether it’s for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or just because you really, really like winter. The best way to do that? Check out these outstanding sources of holiday goodies, from lights, wreaths, and ornaments to—yes, it’s true—holiday decorations for the most diehard Ravens fans. Is this a great country, or what?

Homestead Gardens

If this place doesn’t get your inner Yule log burning, nothing will. With two locations—one in Davidsonville, the other in Severna Park—Homestead Gardens has just about everything you can imagine when it comes to holiday shopping. Besides the thousands of ornaments and dozens of trees, there’s also something the kids will love: the huge holiday model train display. For grownups, one of the store’s signature items is heirloom Russian ornaments painted with wintery Maryland scenes. Then check out the dozens of decorated trees at the Davidsonville location, ranging in themes from baby’s first Christmas to a candy-striped “peppermint crunch” theme. At both stores, you’ll find a large selection of lights, fresh and faux trees, wreaths, and countless bits of cheery seasonal kitsch. 743 W. Central Ave., Davidsonville. 410-798-5000; 522 Ritchie Hwy., Severna Park, 410-384-7966.

Kingsdene Nurseries & Garden Center

The drive to Kingsdene in Monkton, up a long, rural stretch of York Road, treats you to some of Maryland’s most picturesque farm country and will hopefully get you in the mood for the holidays. Your reward will be Kingsdene’s hand-decorated wreaths, poinsettias, and amaryllis. This down-home garden center features trees with themes for all tastes: the beach, Williamsburg, woodland creatures, rustic lodge, and white Christmas. And on the first weekend in December, Kingsdene has an open house with baked goods and plenty of hot apple cider. 16435 York Rd., Monkton 410-343-1150.

Stebbins Anderson

Established two years after the Civil War, this Towson mainstay prides itself on being more than just a hardware store. Shoppers will find many made-in-the-USA ornaments, Christmas platters and plates, and caroler holiday figurines, plus holiday-themed dish towels, cocktail napkins, and more twinkling lights than you can shake an elf at. And while you’re there, you can find gifts for everyone on your list, from the chef to the handyman to the collector to the gardener. 802 Kenilworth Dr., Towson, 410-823-6600.

Trohv

Described by its owner as “loving the old, appreciating the new, and having some grit,” this store offers some unique elements for your home. It’s the only place that you’ll likely find things like stackable nutcrackers and alcohol-scented candles (bourbon, vodka, or Champagne, anyone?). The store also prides itself on is its edibles: specialty caramels, pickles, and chocolates made locally, regionally, and in the South. Then there’s the vast array of wrapping materials and cards, ranging in tone from saccharin-sweet to edgy and risqué. 921 W. 36th St. 410-366-3456.

Valley View Farms

Warning: You are about to experience a Christmas sensory overload. There’s the lighted, faux-snowflake ceiling and dozens of handcrafted themed trees, including a wine tree, a foodie tree, a dog and cat tree, and even a military-themed pine. And don’t miss the uniquely Maryland tree decorated with crabs, lighthouses, and rockfish. The store also features a special international section with ornate, handcrafted ornaments from Uzbekistan, wooden nutcrackers from Germany, bristle animal ornaments from the Philippines, and nativity scenes from Italy. Of course, that’s in addition to the de rigueur snow globes, tree skirts, tree toppers, wreaths, poinsettias, and endless array of cut trees. 11035 York Rd., Cockeysville, 410-527-0700.

Watson’s Garden Center

Regular customers of this 60-year-old Lutherville institution know that as soon as Thanksgiving nears, Watson’s suffers a serious identity crisis, transforming from a comprehensive garden center, nursery, and greenhouse to a winter wonderland on steroids. Of course, there’s the endless selection of lights, bows, wreaths, trees, and poinsettias, but if you’re looking for something to happily clash with tinsel, there’s also the specialty Orioles and Ravens merchandise. (Look for the special Ravens tree.) And if you’re shopping for ornaments with a difference, make sure to peruse their signature European, handblown glass ornaments. 1620 York Rd., Lutherville-Timonium 410-321-7300.

Curiosity

This European-chic store in Harbor East will be a perfect stop on your holiday decoration to-do list. Curiosity has seasonal candles for those cold nights, plaid throws from Scotland for nestling by the fireplace, hot chocolate or holiday jams for Santa, and pre-stuffed stockings, plus candleholders and festive holiday linens. And if you’re looking for the perfect beacon of the season for your down-sized condo or empty nest, check out their mini Christmas trees (which also make great centerpieces). 1000 Lancaster St., Ste. 130, 410-727-6262.

Baltimore Ravens Official Online Store

If you’ve overdosed on the omnipresent sea of red and green, try another chromatic Baltimore tradition: purple, gold, and black. There are Ravens ornaments, Ravens stockings, team-themed snow globes, and even a Ravens cookie plate for Santa. Then get down to decorating while wearing a new team jersey or one of the store’s specialty ugly sweaters. A guaranteed win! shop.baltimoreravens.com

Dream House

Helping you accent your home with gorgeous accessories is apparently the mission of Dream House in Frederick. Though a bit more of a hike than some on our list, this store has beautiful throws, holiday pillows, garlands, ornaments, ribbons, and holiday trees in different color schemes. And if putting it all together at home makes you nervous, the store has an interior design service so you can get it right without breaking a nail. 102 E. Patrick St., Frederick, 301-360-0680.

Patuxent Nursery

Another source that’s a bit off the beaten path for most Baltimoreans but well worth the trip is Patuxent Nursery, which also does a metamorphosis from comprehensive garden center, nursery, and landscaping service to holiday-décor destination. It’s a big store, packed during the season with Christmas trees both real and fake, wreaths, ribbons, lights, ornaments, and accessories. 2410 Crain Hwy., Bowie, 301-218-4769.

Christmas Décor

Speaking of breaking nails, here’s another outfit that can help you put up—and take down—all that holiday stuff. The design experts at this 13-year-old Myersville-based company—which provides lighting and decoration designs and installations to residential and commercial clients in the region—will work up a plan with you and decorate your home without you lifting a finger. And when all the excitement is over, they’ll do the heavy lifting again, taking down the tree and lights. 9419 Myersville Rd., Myersville, 301-293-1900.

COTTAGE CHIC: Larry and Lorraine Miller’s home is the sweetest stone cottage, with great, simple architecture. Before they transformed the place, the rooms were very dated, stuffy, and super-traditional, which is the exact opposite of who this warm couple is.

NICE AND NEUTRAL: They really didn’t dictate much, except that they wanted the spaces to be comfortable and pretty while using a neutral palette. They have a great collection of antiques that I was thrilled to repurpose and use, but they really allowed me to use them however I thought best.

HOSTS WITH THE MOST: The first step was giving them a floor plan that would work for them. They love to entertain, so maximizing the seating was imperative. Lorraine also needed a comfy spot to write letters and open mail, so her antique desk found the perfect home behind the sofa.

CHARM MAGNET: The quaint and quiet architecture in the house was super-inspiring. The house was built in the 1940s and its cottage charm provided all the ambience a designer could ask for.

FRAME GAME: The couple has been collecting Maxfield Parrish artwork for years and had them scattered throughout the house, so I gathered them up and grouped them together above each of the console tables.

HIDDEN TREASURES: I also found these amazing candlesticks hidden in a cupboard and placed them on the mantel, where they work effortlessly alongside the other new accessories.

LOCAL LOVE: All of the new furniture, rugs, accessories, and lighting, were purchased from my store, The House Downtown. All of the seating is from Lee Industries, which fits the style of the home perfectly. The soft neutral fabrics were selected to lighten the space and provide a calm respite for reading and entertaining. Lee’s masterful tailoring of these fabrics brings a refreshing level of sophistication.

MANTEL PEACE: Their mantel is quite possibly my favorite spot in the house—I’m a sucker for symmetry, balance, and detail, and this mantle has it all. Combining their antique candlesticks and vintage photographs with a new gold mirror laid the foundation. The painted teak bowls and Chinese jade calligraphy brushes bridge the gap between old and new and add an element of surprise. Hydrangeas from Lorraine’s garden provided the final touch of color and life.

If you’re more into the idea of the great outdoors than the buggy, dirty reality, then glamping is for you. We’re talking a staycation that’s easy to set up in the comfort of your own backyard, which means you can keep all your luxurious indulgences at your fingertips. And, just think, while you’re seriously not roughing it, there’s indoor plumbing only steps away. Grab your warmest blankets, grill essentials, and that book you’ve been dying to read, and treat yourself to a five-star camping trip in your own backyard. The best part? Wi-Fi!

Plus! Egan throw ($94) at Curiosity. Nito shaped tray ($79.95) at Williams-Sonoma. Mason jar ($12) at Trohv. Copper charger ($69.95) at Williams-Sonoma. Poofs ($49) at Ten Thousand Villages. Blue rug ($39) at Ten Thousand Villages. Two wire jars ($9.75) at Trohv. GSI outdoors enamelware coffee pot ($24.95) at REI. Striped pillows ($29) at Nouveau. Gray velvet pillows ($45) at Su Casa. Mad Mats outdoor rug ($55-135) at Mud and Metal. Hang Time low table ($65) at REI. Sacred sari throw ($79) at Ten Thousand Villages. Nito beverage-dispenser base ($49.95) at Williams-Sonoma. Gathered square pillow in port ($89) at Arhaus. Barebones forest lantern ($79.95) at REI. Floral arrangements by Crimson & Clover Floral Design.

The crooked walls might have put off another buyer. Or the leaking roof. Or the bullet holes in the windows.

“It was the ugliest building I’ve ever seen,” 39-year-old decorative painter and artist Kelly Walker says of the 5,500-square-foot residential and commercial building on the far western edge of Mt. Vernon.

“It was this sketchy, bad-energy [auto] body shop that had been abandoned for many years,” Walker says. It had been renovated and converted to apartments, then foreclosed on and abandoned yet again.

The ugliest building, maybe, but Walker had always wanted a body shop, for reasons both sentimental—her grandfather had once owned one—and practical. The big bay door that fronts the “work” side of the property, for example, would come in handy when she needed to paint indoors (think giant canvases). Her faux-finishing firm, Artstar Custom Paintworks, was booming, and Walker “was bursting the seams” of her five-bedroom Hamilton home. Plus, living at work would be ideal for someone who often find inspiration at odd hours.

The property’s asking price was out of Walker’s range, her then-girlfriend hated it on sight, and there were significant hurdles to buying and renovating it. Even so, “I knew it was meant to be as soon as I walked in,” Walker says.

So she pushed ahead in 2013 with plans to purchase the property, which had attracted multiple buyers in spite of its flaws. What followed was a series of lucky breaks, starting with the city re-designating the property as residential rather than commercial, allowing Walker to secure a mortgage. More good fortune: Walker secured a loan that allowed her to outbid other buyers. And despite liens on the property from a previous owner, the title company took a risk and went ahead and closed it. Says Walker: “It was miracle after miracle after miracle with this place.”

Though she describes herself as “always creative and always weird,” Walker had, as a child, never seriously considered a future in the arts. Growing up in a small mill town in Indiana, she says, “I didn’t know that people were actually artists.” When her mother’s remarriage pulled her into a new social orbit in North Carolina, Walker experienced the trappings of wealth for the first time. “I went to cotillion, learned to curtsy and use silverware—it was complete culture shock,” she says. But by the early 1990s, Walker was struggling to fit in. “I’m gay, which I don’t think matters at all, but it was a big deal [there]. In North Carolina, you can’t be anything other than straight and narrow,” she says.

Following her favorite band to Baltimore in 1994, she found a city that was “a perfect mix of blue-collar working class, with a little Southern charm, and then this cutting edge of culture and art and wealth,” she says.

She decided to stay, taking a job as a bike messenger, where one day in 2001 she made a delivery to a faux-finishing company that would shift her life path. Peeking into the company’s showroom, Walker was awed by its columns, gold-leaf-embellished walls, and vivid mural. “It was just breathtaking. I’m like, ‘What do you guys do in here?’”

Walker soon discovered the company had an open apprentice position and, though she had no formal training, she landed the job, starting with “taping and schlepping and assisting,” and learned the ins and outs of faux-finishing. Along the way, her artistic talents blossomed.

Just a year later, Walker founded Artstar and, by 2004, she’d established herself as a subcontractor for other painting companies, often picking up the less appealing types of restorations that experienced painters avoid—“It was a good way to learn color theory and how to think on my feet,” she says.

By the time Walker purchased the Mt. Vernon property, she’d long since established herself as a decorative painter in her own right, attracting clients whose tastes run toward the “sophisticated, traditional with a modern-leaning aesthetic.” Most often, her work involves decorative plastering or using paint and plaster to “make a space feel old,” she says.

Renovating her new home allowed her to use not only her artistic talents but also “everything I learned all these years being in all these spaces and working with incredibly talented designers,” she says. With a budget of about $80,000 and the help of a general contractor she met on a job site, Walker set out to convert the space into a three-bedroom home and workspace that was “modern, clean, and comfortable.”

Job one was to correct the building’s most egregious problems, including an interior design she calls “a toxic nightmare.” Earlier renovations had left oddities that included a bedroom only accessible by ladder, too-high kitchen counters, and a concrete walkway upstairs with no barrier to prevent a hapless visitor from falling into the living room below.

In the kitchen, which lacked cabinets, Walker kept the general layout but added weathered teak cabinets from Ikea. Nearby, she updated a bathroom, easily accessible from the den, where she often meets with clients. Upstairs, Walker extended the walkway and added a low wall to create a loft for the master bedroom.

Throughout the home, exposed-brick walls, metal air ducts, and massive steel beams tie in with the building’s industrial roots, as do the concrete floors, which Walker faux-finished to mimic acid-stained concrete. New and vintage elements such as a custom-built reclaimed-wood table, two used wood-burning stoves, and old schoolhouse doors add to the coolly distressed effect.

On the walls, Walker opted for white paint instead of a decorative finish in almost every space. “It just feels so clean and big,” she explains. One exception is an accent wall in the living room, faux-finished to incorporate the natural distress of the original wall. Another is a stunning mural in the building’s entryway, hand-drawn by tattoo artist Brett Burnham, whose work is also on exhibit on Walker’s skin.

Walker also employed paint for more subtle means: A two-inch black stripe painted along the front of the baseboards visually compensates for the building’s slightly crooked walls, for example.

The finished space is so unique it’s been on the must-see list for groups of art students.

“It’s a really nice balance between the industrial elements that already existed” and the palette and texture Walker chose, says Cara Ober, an artist, professor, writer, and editor at online arts journal BmoreArt. As part of a professional development course she teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art, Ober brings students to visit studios around the city and Walker’s residence and studio is “hands down their favorite,” says Ober, who in the early 2000s held an art show in what is now Walker’s garage studio.

So far, Walker is happy with the results, even though she knows the home will always have its quirks (like a master bedroom closet that requires you to duck before entering). That’s fine with her. “I love the imperfections,” Walker says, turning to her favorite quote to sum up her experience: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. That has been the mantra for this renovation.”

If it’s a weekend in July, you can usually find Alice Moshenberg in her garden, scratching at the earth to harvest garlic or preparing seeds to plant in the fall. But by Moshenberg’s own diagnosis, she has something far more serious than the common gardening bug. “I’m a frustrated farmer, but I married a city guy,” says the 50-year-old operating-room nurse at Union Memorial Hospital. And since she can’t get enough of growing stuff, she’s now studying to become one of Baltimore City’s master gardeners, a diverse group of volunteer horticultural educators-to-be who train for 50-plus hours with agricultural experts from the University of Maryland.

Moshenberg sees the program as a way to extend her education and fulfill what she describes as an “urge” to work the land, be it a rooftop, container, or an abandoned city lot.

To these intrepid gardeners, even winter is no reason to rest. “It’s eye-opening to know you can grow something throughout the year,” says Moshenberg, who lives in Mt. Washington, a neighborhood teeming with deadly serious gardeners. “You can do root vegetables in the fall and greens like kale, celery, and tatsoi, a Japanese vegetable, that you can harvest in the snow,” she says. “In the fall, you put stuff to bed, like garlic, and sometime in July, you’ll get something.”

For Kenneth Montague, it was his postal carrier who inspired him to take the course. He was working on a shade garden in his yard when she came by with the mail and suggested he apply for the program. The next time he was at the farmers’ market, he did. This year, Montague, 73, a semi-retired lawyer, became the new president of the Baltimore City Master Gardener Association.

To accommodate people’s work schedules, the class is offered January through April in the evening. It costs $250. After completing classroom and hands-on training, master-gardener trainees must share their knowledge in the community to become certified.

“You don’t have to worry about me spending all my money on shoes or clothes, but you might have to worry about me blowing $300 in a seed catalogue.”

“You have from January to December to complete 40 hours of approved volunteer work,” says Montague, who lives in northeast Baltimore. “And that could be with anything from an environmental program to a school garden.” Once certified, master gardeners volunteer for at least 20 hours a year and continue to take classes.

Another person bitten by the bug is Woodberry resident Dave Nelson, 50, who you can usually find tending to his urban garden at the bottom of TV Hill. “We’re doing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants—four or five different varieties,” he says. “Squash is one of the easiest things to grow, as well as sweet potatoes.” Until four years ago, Nelson’s garden was an abandoned lot. And that spelled opportunity for him and his wife, Linda. The once vacant lot now yields about 1,200 pounds of organic produce a season, the majority of which is given away to local charities.

As in Moshenberg’s case, there are few parallels between Nelson’s gardening life and his work at a small tech company. “Gardening is so different from work, and one balances the other,” he says. And he and Linda took that rebalancing a step further when they enrolled in the master-gardener program together in 2013. As a result, their combined cultivating expertise is up several notches, plus they now have access to a network of other master gardeners, who can address any questions they might have.

Nelson is candid: For him and fellow experts, the gardening bug feels less like love and “more like obsession.”

“I was at a meeting with the master gardeners recently, and someone said, ‘You don’t have to worry about me spending all my money on shoes or clothes,’” recounts Nelson, “‘but you might have to worry about me blowing $300 in a seed catalogue.’”

One Baltimore City master gardener who, by day, is a couples and sex therapist, even sees a parallel between love of people and love of plants. Stephanie Chupein says she sees many similarities between her professional work and that of life in the garden. “Nurturing it until it blooms, it’s stress-relieving, your brain gets flooded with oxytocin, like when you’re falling in love,” says Chupein, who flower-gardens at her row house in Fells Point. “When I was going off to my first class, my sister said that when I get certified as a master gardener, I’ll be certified in all things birds and bees.”

Another master gardener, retired pediatrician Michael Andorsky, considers his plants “my new patients.” Although he has been gardening at his home near Park Heights Avenue for the past 30 years, he says most of his experience and information came through trial and error and the Internet. He says the master-gardener program has allowed him to continue with his love of learning. “The thing I enjoy best is when someone from the University of Maryland presents data. It’s a pleasure to see some scientific precision to demonstrate the point,” says Andorsky.

There are more than 150 master gardeners and trainees in Baltimore City, according to the master-gardener program coordinator, Naima Jenkins-El. But there is no such thing as a typical master gardener: “They are as different as our botanical friends,” she says.

On a recent Saturday morning at Lexington Market Jenkins-El—a classic example of a thoroughly urban gardener—dons a yellow master-gardener T-shirt and a smile that’s just as bright for a workshop she’s giving on growing vegetables in the city. The event is taking place in a surprisingly slick and large meeting room on the second floor of the market. Amidst the smell of fried food and the distant hum of conversation, participants ask the master gardeners lots of questions. When is the best time to water? (Answer: “In the morning.”) “How do you keep rats away from your compost?” (“Sanitation is the key to combating rats.”)

According to Jenkins-El, 43, gardening in the city’s empty lots is not as simple as claiming your land and digging. If you’re growing food, the first rule for gardening in the city is to have your soil tested. That’s especially true if there was once a house sitting on the tract, as is the case with most urban vacant lots, which may be contaminated with heavy metals like lead and arsenic.

To inner-city master gardeners like Jenkins-El, who does not have the luxury of large public, green spaces in which to work, it does not matter where you live—you can still grow something. “This year, I am growing potatoes in a bag,” she says. “I have seen things grow in milk crates. The coolest thing with urban growing is you’re only limited by your imagination.”

On a Saturday morning in Towson, about three dozen people are milling around the showroom at Alex Cooper Auctioneers, kicking the tires on the merchandise that’s about to go under the hammer. A Heriz carpet handmade in Persia from 1915, a Lalique vase, oil paintings by Antoine Blanchard, a Tiffany lamp, a jukebox, a mahogany sideboard, and a mid-century modern Florence Knoll sofa are just a some of the items up for grabs.

Many of the folks in attendance are dealers who will pick up the best buys to mark up and display in their own showrooms. But for the discerning homeowner with an eye for quality, an aversion to the homogeneity of mainstream stores, and a love of the chase, auctions are a great place to score stylish home goods—some quite valuable—and often at a bargain.

“There’s a competitiveness to it and an exhilaration you get when two or three people want the same thing as you,” says Dennis Hockman, 42, who owns a home near Catonsville with his wife, Karin. “And it becomes an immediate negotiation, where you’re trying to figure out what your threshold is versus the other person’s threshold. There’s a rush when you do auctions, because it’s not like, ‘Here’s the price tag,’ and you want it or you don’t. The price tag is always changing until the hammer falls.”

Hockman and his wife prefer eclectic décor and wanted to circumvent the pricier antique malls by going straight to the source. Through auctions, they’ve picked up an early 1800s blanket chest, paintings, pottery, and side chairs. And auctions are pretty easy to find—Hockman checks the listings in the paper, is on various e-mail lists, and has even pulled off the road when he’s seen a sign advertising an estate sale.

For first-timers, though, a real, live auction can be intimidating. Maybe it’s all that fast chatter, or the image of the hammer hovering with the sale of your precious item hanging in the balance, or the weight of the numbered paddle in your hand, but there’s an immediacy to live auctions that can really get your blood flowing.

The fast talking, called the “auctioneers chant,” serves two purposes. “It’s both to excite the crowd and to keep the sale moving,” says Paul Cooper, vice president of Alex Cooper Auctioneers. “There’s nothing worse than a sale that drags.”

At auction, there’s a ton of merchandise to be sold in a short time. Each item—or group of items—is called a “lot.” One could literally furnish and accessorize an entire home after one day at auction. With so much stuff to sell, no one is going to dally, especially for a novice. And while most reputable auction houses will do their best to authenticate and honestly represent their merchandise, there is an element of “buyer beware” when purchasing. Which is why it pays to do a lot of research prior to sale day.

The advent of sites like eBay has taken much of the auctioning world into cyberspace, but at a live sale, there’s the benefit of being able to see the merchandise first-hand, to open the drawers, turn over the vase, or sit on the chair and make sure it’s comfortable. Auction-goers are encouraged to attend preview days, which are held in advance of a sale.

If you see something you simply can’t live without and you know you’ll never see again, how much is it worth to you?

“Don’t bid without looking at something,” advises Rick Opfer, president of Richard Opfer Auctioneering. “Don’t sit in the audience and think, ‘That’s a bargain’ and buy it, because it’s only after that you’ll see the flaw that everyone else already saw. That’s probably the biggest newbie mistake: buying something without examining it.”

The preview is a good time to suss out the dealers, too. If there’s a crowd of interested people around an item, chances are it’s going to be a popular item, as dealers will only buy things they know they can resell at a mark-up. Right now, traditional furniture, such as Victorian and country styles, has lost popularity, as have crystal and hand-painted vases. The sale of silver pieces depends on market value, while mid-century modern furniture and Asian porcelain are very trendy, as are Danish modern pieces. With a little eavesdropping, you can also gain valuable intel on a piece.

The appeal of auctions isn’t just that you get to find an item you want and bid what you feel is its fair market value. It’s also a chance to expand your aesthetic. Maybe you never knew you liked hand-painted Herend figurines because you never saw them at the local mall. Or maybe you discovered an antique French carriage clock that was just the thing you never knew you needed for your mantel.

“The downside is that I might not have what you want when you want it,” says Opfer, “but it’s a forum where you’ll find stuff you may not find anywhere else. I’ve been doing this for close to 50 years, and I still see amazing things I’ve never seen before.”

When you find that certain piece you absolutely must have and you’ve examined its condition at the preview and are satisfied, it’s still easy to get swept up in the moment. “If you’re a novice, get a figure in your mind of what you’re willing to bid,” says Cooper. “Make your list of items and set your prices before, so you don’t need to make that calculation in real time. I do 100 lots an hour, which means you have a short time to decide what you’re going to do.”

As far as bargains go, price is as much in the eye of the beholder as it is in the hand of the paddle holder. If you see something you simply can’t live without and you know you’ll never see again, how much is it worth to you? If someone else wants it, suddenly fair market value is on the rise. If no one wants it, the bargain can be yours. Opfer says he’s sold things for $5 and things for $5 million. Anything that’s best-in-show in its category—whether it be a piece of brown furniture or a Persian rug—will usually grab top dollar. There are plenty of deals to be had, but “bargain” is a relative term.

“Don’t let emotion take over, this isn’t a game where you’re trying to beat everyone else in the auction by spending more than them,” says Hockman. “You’re trying to get good value on something you’re going to use.”

Most auctions charge a buyer’s premium (a service charge on top of the selling price) of anywhere from 15 to 25 percent. Money is due at the time of purchase and some auction houses require that items be hauled away that day. Alex Cooper and Opfer’s will allow buyers to leave an absentee bid and, depending on the sale, buyers can phone bid or bid online along with the live auction.

For a real, no-holds barred, wild-ride auction, the brave or the curious can head to the Crumpton Auction just outside of Chestertown. Since 1961, Crumpton has held an auction every week, selling 3,000 to 6,000 lots on sale day. Merchandise ranges from the practical (Adirondack chairs, bureaus, lawnmowers) and the eclectic (pinball machines, Lucite tables, old wagon wheels) to the downright odd (a stuffed fox). There are no phone bids, no buyer’s premiums (Crumpton takes a commission on each sale), and no preview days, though you can check out merchandise on their Facebook page. And the Crumpton staff advises you to wear comfortable shoes and be weather-prepared—if it’s raining, it will be muddy. And it’s a sale barn, so there’s no A.C.

Whether you go to browse or feel ready to pick up the paddle and jump right in, auctions are worth a visit. You never know when the grand piano, Waterford crystal stemware, or stuffed wildlife you can’t live without will go up for bid.

Plus, there will always be a story behind the purchase—and the one that got away.

“The weirdest thing I didn’t win at auction was an antique Colonial-era handmade chess and checker board,” Hockman recalls. “I saw it later at an antique store for three times the price.

“But the coolest thing I actually succeeded in bringing home was a Herman Maril painting. He was a Maryland modernist artist whose works are in the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was pretty cool to get something affordable that could have been hanging at the MOMA.”

Do I Hear $10,000?

Here’s a list of some of the auction houses in the region:

Alex Cooper Auctioneers
908 York Rd., Towson
410-828-4838

Alexander Historical Auctions
98 Bohemia Ave., Ste. 2
Chesapeake City
203-276-1570

American Heritage Auction Service
13331 Pennsylvania Ave., Ste. A
Hagerstown
240-347-4908

Baltimore Book Co.
34 Cedar Ave., Towson
410-494-1075

Crumpton Auction
2017 Dudley Corners Rd., Crumpton
410-928-3006

Michael Fox International Inc.
11425 Cronhill Dr., Ste A
Owings Mills
410-654-7500

Mosby & Co. Auctions
5714 Industry Ln., Ste. A
Frederick
240-629-8139

Richard Opfer Auctioneering
1919 Greenspring Dr.
Lutherville-Timonium
443-746-0537

Sotheby’s
660 Kenilworth Dr.
Towson
410-296-1100

Ted Frankel is the first to admit that his Mt. Vernon row home isn’t, you know, normal. “It’s who I am, so it’s not everybody’s house,” he says. “It’s an artist’s house and a comfortable house.”

As he says this, he is nestled in the corner of a fire-engine-red sofa, with a comically caricaturish bust of Lincoln and an array of bric-a-brac perched on three small tables behind him. To his right, the fireplace surround sports a colorful paint-by-numbers collage and on the walls all around is art as far as the eye can see.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever set foot in Sideshow, the American Visionary Art Museum’s (AVAM) raucous gift shop, which Frankel opened in 2004 to offer up original art, funky jewelry, novelty toys, and oddball gifts that range from the quirky to the absurd.

That he lives in Baltimore at all was a bit of an unlikely development for Frankel, a Cleveland native who for nearly four decades owned and operated three similar shops in Chicago. He’d gotten his start on a bit of a whim—the then-art director and lifelong “junker and collector” snapped up an about-to-close novelty store in its entirety when the owner refused to sell him only the items he really wanted.

Frankel soon expanded that operation, which began in just 300 square feet of retail space, and was firmly established in the Windy City when a trip to Baltimore with a friend changed everything. Visiting AVAM with visual artist Nancy Josephson (creator of the glittery mosaic bus that sits outside the museum), Frankel suddenly found himself face to face with museum founder Rebecca Hoffberger.

“She was giving a tour and stopped the tour and gave me a hug and said, ‘It was nice to meet you,'” says Frankel. “We talked for maybe two minutes.”

It was the briefest of meetings, and yet, two months later, when Hoffberger was looking to rejigger and expand the museum’s gift shop, she called Frankel. “She said ‘You’re the one,’ and I said, ‘The one what?'” Frankel recalls with a laugh. “I said, ‘I have three stores in Chicago and I’m not moving to Baltimore.'” But Hoffberger persevered and after another, longer meeting, “it sounded and felt right,” says Frankel. “I’m a very spiritual business person.”

Decision made, Frankel quickly snapped up the Mt. Vernon house, which came with the condition that it be reconverted from apartments to a single-family home.

The move was a daunting one: Frankel was adept at opening and running stores, but he had just one friend in Baltimore. “It was scary, but I wasn’t afraid,” he says. “I think fate brought me to Baltimore.”

At the museum, Frankel chose the name Sideshow for his shop, “because it’s not the main attraction, it’s sort of where the freak lives.” More than a mere retailer of quirky goods, Frankel wanted Sideshow, like his other stores, to be a reprieve from the rules of the real world, “sort of the safe space on the Monopoly board,” he says. “When I create a space, I’m really comfortable and I hope the people who come in are really comfortable.”

Bringing that vision to reality proved easier than you might think. Frankel’s signature retail setup—think old wooden fixtures and lots of little drawers “because people like to explore things”—proved ideal for the location. Filling those shelves wasn’t hard either, mostly because Frankel is always on the lookout for items that amuse or inspire, whether it’s self-adhesive mustaches, handmade jewelry, outsider art, or even squirrel underpants (seriously). The result is part treasure trove, part fever dream.

“People who really get it, go, ‘What an incredible collection of stuff—or crap,'” says Frankel, who knows that, for some people, the store, like his home, may be visual overload but adds, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Similarly, at home, Frankel would find filling the space no problem. For a person who believes “anything touched by human hands is special,” art is all around. “All I wanted was a house with good bones and I could do the rest,” he says. But the remodeling process dragged on, leaving Frankel to crash with his sole Baltimore friend for months. “Eventually, I ran out of money and trust in the contractor,” says Frankel. This forced him to abandon his plan to paint the home’s walls a bright hue and, instead, leave them neutral. “It works,” he says, shrugging. “There’s so much great art in the house, that people don’t really notice.”

That brings us, of course, to the art, which covers nearly every inch of those neutral walls, hangs from the stairwell and the ceilings, and sits atop tables and shelves. It includes mini-portraits made from sock threads of prison inmate Ray Materson, offbeat family-life paintings by Martin Mull, and jarring Matt Sesow paintings that hang on an upper floor landing. Then there’s the chandelier crafted almost entirely of spoons (and the one cobbled together from clear plastic hangers), the velvet Elvises, and the coin mosaic walls in the guest bathroom. There are even paintings and sculptures created by Frankel, though he rarely points them out to visitors. “It’s fun to see if they react to them,” Frankel says.

Whatever the piece and whomever the artist, ultimately the decision to display it in the home comes down to gut instinct. “You buy what you like,” as Frankel says. “If you’re going to live with it, you want to be surrounded by things that either inspire you or amuse you or make you happy.”

Frankel had barely gotten Sideshow up and running when his connection with Hoffberger yielded an unexpected benefit: “Rebecca set me up on a blind date with my now-husband,” he says. That would be Bill Gilmore, head of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, and a former art director like Frankel.

As he got to know Frankel, Gilmore also got to know the house—and its collection. “You can’t take it all in at once because it’s sort of like getting to know the person,” says Gilmore, whose own home-design style leans more contemporary.

“Still, I related to it. I could certainly appreciate it and understand it,” says Gilmore, though, like Frankel, he admits, “it’s not going to be for everyone.”

The two were soon splitting their time between their two homes and, before long, adding to the collection became a team effort, with pieces gathered from galleries, thrift shops, flea markets, and art school sales—locally and from the couple’s travels to far corners of the world.

On their travels, Frankel and Gilmore connect with artists of all stripes, sometimes through introductions by Hoffberger, though even their chance encounters are almost by design. “I sort of believe you should live with an open heart and open eyes—never walk down the street on the same side,” says Frankel, who recalls stumbling across a visionary artist in Cartagena, Colombia, just because, “I happened to go down the right street.” Spotting the painting of a grinning donkey and slightly suspicious-looking cow that now hangs in his living room, “I took it off the frame and rolled it and carried it home,” he says. “I pretty much always come home loaded up.”

Frankel and Gilmore have a history of charitable works here and abroad. Among other efforts, they raised $40,000 for art and medical supplies following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. But in 2013, they went a step further, creating an arts-focused charitable foundation under the umbrella of the Baltimore Community Foundation.

In 2013, nearly 10 years after they first met, Frankel and Gilmore officially tied the knot in a small private ceremony officiated by Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. A later reception at The Cloisters, where Hoffberger had first approached Gilmore with the idea of a blind date, was bigger, and in line with parties at home that Frankel and Gilmore have become known for.

“The way we throw a party is always really great food and casual, which always makes it comfortable,” says Frankel, whose annual holiday party at home draws 200-plus guests, ranging from the museum’s cleaning crew to the governor.

Like Sideshow, the home is “a touch-it house,” says Frankel, which means guests are free to explore the entire home and its works. “We have little kids that come in and they want to play with the vintage toys and that’s okay,” he says.

And while his collection often grabs visitors’ attention, it also offers a way for Frankel, who calls himself “kind of shy,” to comfortably connect with anyone who enters his home. As at work, where Frankel can often be found cheerfully filling in customers on where and how a piece was made, at home he delights in sharing the story behind the art.

“Everything has a story,” he says. “So, no matter what they point at, I can start talking about it. Hopefully, when people leave my house, they know a little bit about me.”

And it’s Frankel’s hope, too, that they’ll get something more—the chance to share the feelings the pieces invoke, the chance “to be touched by the human element.” After all, even if it’s not everybody’s art, Frankel says, “someone’s hands and mind have made it.”

Often, it’s little things that precipitate big changes. For homeowners Bruce and Corinne Gilarsky, it was two minor appliance malfunctions that inspired a complete kitchen renovation, a project that allowed them to transform the family-friendly space they’d designed 23 years earlier into a gourmet kitchen for grownups.

“Our microwave broke and the light on the oven broke and Bruce said, ‘That’s it, we’re redoing the kitchen,'” says Corinne Gilarsky.

The Gilarskys, both 56, built their home on a wooded lot overlooking the NCR Trail in Sparks when their two children were little. It had a classic layout with the sink under the windows and a butler’s pantry connecting to a formal dining room. The surfaces were fashionable for the time and durable for a young family: Think oak cabinets and white Corian countertops.

But in 2013, with the children grown and living out of town, the time was right to renovate for the way the Gilarskys live now. “We went from cooking out of necessity to cooking for pleasure and entertaining,” says Corinne. “Our goal was to design a kitchen that was part of the living space of the house and that worked with the outdoors, since we have the NCR right outside.”

The couple worked with Blue Arnold and Perry Christian of Kitchens By Request in Jarrettsville to create a new layout that maximized the view and created a space suitable for socializing and cooking. They didn’t want anything fussy with too many colors, but rather a warm feel with industrial touches. Many of their choices, like bistro seating, were informed by trends they noticed in Manhattan restaurants on their visits to New York City. But most importantly, the couple wanted to buy only products and finishes that were made in America, no small ambition in today’s reality of overseas production.

“The recession was just ending and we thought if we were going to do something extravagant like a kitchen, we should be purposeful in our spending,” says Corinne, who works in finance and consulting. (Her husband is a physician.)

Though she admits that it was tough, they managed to find almost everything in the U.S., including wood counters from a small business in Detroit, a custom copper sink from Florida, drawer pulls made by a husband and wife in Colorado, and red birch cabinetry fabricated in Maryland. Even the oyster-toned bar stools are made in the U.S.A. And, in an online auction, Bruce found the Depression-era tin sign for Grape Ola grape juice that is inset in the range’s backsplash. It is the perfect complement to the kitchen’s patriotic commitment.

The new floor plan opened the space by removing the underused butler’s pantry, and a small window gave way to three large panes that take in the sweep of the woods outside. While you can still enjoy the view from the sink, it is now set into an island. A high, narrow bistro table constructed in the Kitchens By Request woodshop out of old barn wood sits beneath the windows, creating arena seating for culinary spectators. “I envisioned the [range] as a theater for Bruce,” Arnold explains. A new, glass-front refrigerator opposite the enlarged windows gives the illusion of a larger space.

The room has no one focal point, but rather provides different places for sitting and food prep so the experience of being in the kitchen is always evolving. Similarly, the kitchen is less about color than it is about subtle textures. On the island, for example, a walnut butcher-block counter contrasts against dark granite that is wire-brushed for depth and feel. The millwork is deep, boot black, but also brushed. “The wire-brush has a much more organic feel,” explains Arnold. “We used beadboard on the island for that Americana look.”

Another example of subtle textural change can be seen in the bar. The Gilarksys didn’t want guests diving into the main refrigerator to get drinks, so a closet was transformed into a wet bar. Unlike the other granite counters that have a smooth edge, the bar has a rough, rock edge. “There are little changes you see over time,” says Arnold, “that keep all the surfaces from being flat.”

“People feel comfortable when surfaces don’t feel plastic,” Arnold adds. “There are contemporary stainless-steel appliances for the gourmet kitchen, but that’s softened with the custom bistro table in barn wood and the textured layers.”

Perry Christian drove the selection of the colors, which lean heavily on gray-green, browns, and golds. The Gilarskys bought the large Olida poster to pick up the colors in the room with a little oversized drama. The backsplash features the same tones in glass tile made from recycled beer bottles and slate. The herringbone pattern sets the inset apart while the horizontal pattern mimics the color and pattern of the stacked-stone fireplace on the opposite wall in the open-plan family room. Zoned lighting on dimmers allows the Gilarskys to highlight artwork, seating areas, or prep zones depending on their functional or entertaining needs.

The cooking couple splurged on a speed cooker pot (in the island) that Corinne says makes “the most perfect lasagna.” And the 48-inch Wolf range has a charbroiler and griddle, as well as a wok ring. Yet the couple didn’t want to look at all the culinary baggage that comes with being gourmets, so there is storage for large, little-used appliances, like the mixer and ice-cream maker, and appliance pantries for everyday items.

The renovated kitchen, with its spirited touches, contrasts with an otherwise formal home. It’s a dichotomy Corinne says she and her husband like, and they appreciate the renovated space’s uniqueness. “People say you don’t get your money back when you do custom work, but we didn’t design the house for sale,” she explains. “This house is personal to us and we’ll be here for 15 or more years.”

Having said goodbye to children as they flew the nest, the new kitchen is the perfect place to enjoy the next chapter of their lives.

Resources

Design: Kitchens By Request
Copper sink: Rachiele
Stainless steel sinks: Franke
Lighting: Hubbardton Forge
Windows: Pella
Fixtures: Kohler
Paint: Benjamin Moore “Ashley Gray”

Debbie Phelps almost always buys things in threes. That’s fitting: Her three children, including her youngest—swimming phenom Michael Phelps—are grown and living on their own, but never far from Phelps’s heart or mind.

“I carried those back from Fukuoka,” says 63-year-old Phelps, motioning to three parasols mounted against a charcoal wallpapered wall in the foyer of her harbor-front Ritz-Carlton Residences condominium in Federal Hill. The trip—to the 2001 swimming world championships in Fukuoka, Japan—had been one of her first international forays, and she’d brought home not only the parasols, but also a triumphant 16-year-old Michael, who’d broken his own world record for a gold medal win in the 200-meter butterfly.

It’s fitting, too, that those parasols are the first things greeting visitors when the private elevator doors open to Phelps’s second-floor residence. The foyer—warm, lush, and punctuated with this subtle memento—sets the tone for the whole home.

“When I walk in, I want my home to almost open its arms and wrap me up in them,” says Phelps, who moved in 2013 to her current unit from a larger space in the same development, keeping much of the same design. “I want it to be comfortable. I want it to be home.”

But in creating the space, Phelps had another goal in mind, this one tied to her family’s remarkable journey. “I want my home to tell the story,” says Phelps, sitting just steps from the foyer in a home office lined with images of the cities that played a starring role in her son’s rise to fame, including Sydney, Athens, Barcelona, and London. Around her, and scattered throughout the home, are keepsakes collected as she traveled to competitions across the globe. “It’s like opening a window to where things have been,” she says.

Though the journey began in Western Maryland, where she grew up—and where she met ex-husband Fred Phelps—the past 15 years, in particular, have been a truly instructional affair. The run-up to those years had moved the family from Harford County, where Debbie Phelps was a public-school teacher in home economics, to Baltimore County, so that eldest daughter Hilary could pursue a swimming career with the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. Phelps’s middle child, Whitney, and youngest, Michael, soon followed in their sister’s footsteps, plunging Debbie Phelps into the hectic life of a swim mom. Both daughters proved to be accomplished swimmers, but it was Michael who captured the world’s attention with his athletic feats, competing in the 2000 Sydney Olympics at age 15, nabbing six gold medals at the Athens Olympics in 2004, a record eight gold medals in Beijing in 2008, and then another another four in London in 2012—all contributing to his unprecedented total of 22 Olympic medals.

Debbie Phelps, of course, was there for it all, an exhilarating ride she details in her speaking engagements and in her book, A Mother for All Seasons. At televised competitions, when the camera panned from Michael in the pool to his mom in the crowd, she was often caught in what she calls a “DP moment,” alternately cheering and wiping away tears. Her career, meanwhile, progressed on its own upward trajectory, taking her from the classroom into administrative roles and finally to her current position as director of The Education Foundation of Baltimore County Public Schools.

Though her Baltimore County homes—first in West Towson and then in Rodgers Forge—offered family-friendly living within striking distance of the swim center, Phelps says she’d always told her children she was eventually city-bound, in search of convenience and “the energy of the city.” If she could be on the water—non-chlorinated for a change—all the better. In the meantime, she had to make do with the fountain in the backyard of her Rodgers Forge townhome that was “as close as I could get to the harbor,” she jokes.

By 2010, with her children launched in their own lives, Phelps was ready to make a move. There was no need to search: She’d known since shortly after the 2008 Beijing Olympics exactly where she’d land. Heading home from Michael’s official homecoming celebration at Fort McHenry, she noticed the brand new Ritz-Carlton Residences outside the window. “I remember saying to everyone in the SUV, ‘I want to live there someday,’” says Phelps.

Moving in—first to a garden-style two-bedroom condo and later into the one-bedroom unit she now calls home—Phelps finally has the vibrant city life she wanted, plus maintenance-free living with breathtaking water and city views. Her new home also offers a welcome sense of security and privacy. The post-Olympics public outpouring of admiration for Michael was “humbling and warm and exciting,” says Phelps, but there was no denying her family was now firmly in the public domain (a point driven home to Phelps one night as she sat in her Rodgers Forge family room and looked out the open door to see a stranger peering in). “It’s like I said to Michael recently—he belongs to the public,” Phelps says. Still, “sometimes people just need their space. I can have that here.”

It’s here that Phelps can relax on her “DP days,” a once-a-month ritual she’s adopted in recent years. “There’s no watch, my phone is on mute or vibrate, and the kids know that if they call and I don’t answer, mostly it’s a Saturday and it’s a DP day.”

Often she heads to Harford County on those days, but “there are days I can come here, and I don’t have to leave at all,” she says. “It’s always nice some days just to relax and leave your pajamas on and do nothing except watch Law & Order or football all weekend.”

It’s here, too, that the family can gather to connect and reflect on their collective experience, something they couldn’t do while Michael was in the midst of his meteoric rise. Though the family and Michael’s coach, Bob Bowman, had shared some of the same magical memories, “when we were living this, I didn’t really know how Bob felt when Michael won the eighth gold, or how Michael felt after he didn’t medal in the 400 IM in London,” she explains. And with Michael always off to the next challenge, there was never the time nor the space to reflect. “This home gives us that. It’s a place to talk through all the experiences, because, no, we have not gone through photo albums and said, ‘Remember this? Remember this?’”

When she moved from Rodgers Forge, Phelps left behind all of her furniture, in part for her niece, who’d moved into her old home, “but also,” Phelps pauses, “because it was a new chapter.” To design the space that would reflect her style, she turned to Colorado-based interior designer Lita Dirks.

“Lita said, ‘Tell me what you like.’” Phelps says. Although on this day in August, Phelps is comfortably dressed in a summery all-white ensemble, with chunky silver jewelry and peep-toed slingbacks, “for much of the year, I wear a lot of warm colors: reds and blues and greens,” she says. With that in mind, she and Dirks put together a palette for the home that mirrors Phelps’s wardrobe.

Her penchant for deep reds, plus a post-Beijing Olympics mindset lent itself to Asian-inspired touches like a crisp, lacquered dining-room china cabinet that’s flanked by a terra-cotta soldier on one side and a copper kimono statuette on the other. But there are whimsical notes, as well, like the portrait of pearl-bedecked ostrich in one of the guest bathrooms or the zebra-striped chest in the hallway.

And of course, family is woven throughout, from the 12-seat dining-room table that fits the extended clan to the three slim statues standing sentry beside the living-room fireplace. (“This is Hilary, Whitney, and Michael,” says Phelps, noting that Hilary’s statue has its eyes closed, “just like her baby picture.”)

Family also includes grandchildren Taylor, 8, and Connor, 6. And Grandma Phelps—that’s “G” to the grandkids—wanted this to feel like home to them, too. As she notes this, she points out the childproof table, perfect for coloring or playing games, but more telling is her recounting of then-4-year-old Connor’s first encounter with the three statues. As Connor began, in typical preschooler fashion, to “look with his hands,” Phelps’s first worry wasn’t about losing an expensive piece of home décor but instead that, “he’ll be so upset if it breaks.”

Even the kitchen is, in its own way, part of the story. Sleek and functional, it’s the kitchen of someone more excited about the new restaurant at the Ritz than the latest culinary gadget. Though her children are endlessly amused by the notion of a home-economics teacher who doesn’t like to cook, Phelps is happy to cede the kitchen to her daughters, who visit often. “That is not my forte,” says Phelps with a laugh.

In moving into her current unit, Phelps transferred much of Dirks’s design, tweaked with the help of Rita St. Clair Associates to add color, especially on the walls, and to conform to a new layout. Eight months in, Phelps was still revising when an Asian-inspired trunk in the window of Harbor East’s Arhaus caught her eye. “That’s when I met Debbie,” Phelps says of Arhaus interior specialist Debbie Shepard. “I said, ‘I want that piece!’”

As the two walked the showroom floor and chatted, “we just clicked,” says Phelps. The trunk is now featured beneath the parasols in Phelps’s foyer, its taupe-painted finish complementing the neutral shades in the parasols. And Shepard is a newfound friend and design consultant.

Both Phelps and Shepard declare the home a work in progress. In the near future, they’ll add a sitting area to the bedroom to capitalize on the stunning water view and a large, round table beside the kitchen to accommodate the growing family. But the biggest need is for display space, says Shepard. Tucked away in storage, Phelps has “some great treasures to work with from her travels,” and her life, says Shepard. “They have sentimental value. We really need to have some of these out so she can enjoy them.”

Phelps has designs for her life outside the home, as well, of course. In 2016, she’ll reach the 40-year milestone as a public educator. She is “not by any means ready to stop working,” she says, though her next move is still up in the air. “I’ve often thought about going back and getting my doctorate,” she says, noting it would be more for self-satisfaction than anything else. “And, I don’t know, maybe another book.”

However her future pursuits unfold, they will be closely tied to family, including Michael, though the public focus on the champion now is not what anyone expected, after his DUI arrest in September, which prompted the swimmer to seek treatment and delay his return to competitive swimming.

“As a parent, it is very disappointing,” Debbie Phelps said in an e-mail response to us following her son’s arrest, which occurred after this interview. “But I am proud of him for taking responsibility and support his decision to focus on himself right now.”

And while nobody knows where Michael’s career will go next, Debbie Phelps’s role remains unchanged. “We’re just going to support him like we always have,” she says.

No matter what, the Phelps family will always have each other—and a place to gather. “You raise your children with wings to fly. I feel like I’ve given them wings to be successful,” Phelps says, edging close to a DP moment before breaking into a smile. “But it doesn’t mean you can’t all hang out together.”