Space Mission

Alex and Susie Schmitt had almost given up their search for the perfect home. After months of house hunting in mid-2016, they still hadn’t found the like-new large kitchen and three-car garage they were looking for — a place with the same charm as their red-sided colonial but with more space.

“We both grew up in homes that reminded us of that period,” explains Susie, co-owner of the home-organizing service O Happy Spaces. “We like the hominess of them, the coziness of them.”

The couple’s luck changed in  September 2016 when their real estate agent informed them a five-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath Georgian colonial was about to hit the market. The 4,233-square-foot structure was modeled after the Mission House, a 1742 minister’s home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, that served the Mohicans and is now a museum. The backyard featured a picket-fenced courtyard, complete with gazebo and English-style garden planted with roses, daisies, black-eyed Susans, hydrangea, lavender, lilac and boxwood. A side yard boasted fruit-bearing apple and pear trees. At the back of the .86-acre lot were a detached three-car garage and potting shed masquerading as a carriage house with custom barn doors.

Best of all, the property was in Hudson. The Schmitts had grown to love the historic Western Reserve city over their decade-plus of living there. It reminded Susie of Poland, Ohio, the town near Youngstown where she grew up.

“They’re really small, cute, quaint communities,” the 40-year-old observes.  

Susie voiced a desire to buy the house as soon as she walked into the kitchen, a space outfitted with custom Amish-built cabinetry, soapstone countertops, apron-front garden sink, Sub-Zero refrigerator and Wolf six-burner range with grill. Alex, a partner at Ernst & Young, advised caution — until he rounded a corner and saw the 6-foot-wide wood-burning fireplace in a family room lined with built-ins, including a wet bar.

“It almost looks like artwork because it’s so massive,” Susie says. “He was like, OK, you’re right. We will take it.”

The house fit the Schmitts so well that they had little to do to make it their own. They painted the cream-colored family room a light gray to match the walls of the neighboring foyer and dining room, and furnished most of the rooms with their existing traditional pieces. Susie notes their 6-foot-long kitchen table for eight fits in the eat-in spot “like it was meant to be there,” next to an island surrounded by a half-dozen weathered metal stools and accented with striking lighting fixtures, both from the previous owners.

“We kept it practical for our family,” Susie says. “We wanted it to still feel homey.”

New purchases were limited to a Pottery Barn sectional for the family room and new furniture for the dining room. For the latter space, Susie chose a French provincial table, cane-backed chairs and console with the help of Laura Sirpilla Bosworth, president and co-owner of Laura of Pembroke’s Canton and Orange Village locations, to create a light, airy look — one not always associated with early colonial style. The weathered whitewashed finish of those pieces approximates the finish on the woodwork throughout most of the first floor, allowing it to complement rather than compete with the existing architecture.

“What I love to call it is an heirloom effect, [as if] the pieces have been passed down,” Bosworth says. “It doesn’t look contrived. It looks natural to the home.”

The dining room is used primarily when Alex entertains co-workers. “The guys and the women will sit and drink bourbon,” Susie says. “We kind of joke that it’s not our dining room — it’s our bourbon room.” The children and their friends watch TV and play video games in a navy first-floor master suite the couple converted into a living room, complete with a new gas fireplace.

“Whether it’s our kids’ friends, our friends or family, we have people at our house every weekend,” Susie says.

Most guests find themselves in the backyard during the warmer months. Outdoor furnishings, ranging from a weathered-gray concrete-topped dining table to white synthetic-fabric chaise lounges with wire-brushed driftwood-looking frames, have been ordered to make hosting more stylish and comfortable. On the covered patio outside the potting shed, Alex, who counts grilling as one of his hobbies, added a Weber Genesis grill, a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker and his newest toy: a Traeger Ironwood smoker he uses to prepare everything from brisket to pizza. The carriage house potting shed has been converted into what Susie refers to as “our party shed,” an enclosed insect-free spot where spreads are laid out for events ranging from chili or rib cook-offs to tailgates before Hudson High School football games. This spacious setup is, well, perfect for the family.

“It brings us joy,” Susie says. 

CLOSER LOOK

An abstract painting of roses hanging on one light-gray wall in the dining room fits into the decor because of its traditional subject matter and complementary white and gray colors. The artwork, from Laura of Pembroke’s Orange Village location, has special meaning to Susie Schmitt — it was a wedding anniversary gift from her mother, Rose, a cancer survivor diagnosed just weeks before her namesake Rosie, Susie and husband Alex’s 6-year-old daughter, was born.

“It is a gentle coordination in the room,” says Laura Sirpilla Bosworth,  a Laura of Pembroke president and co-owner. “That is what makes it so beautiful.”