A Designer Renovates Her Tudor-Style Forever Home

Hi, house and home. I'm Jessica Cinnamon from Jessica Cinnamon Design, and this is my house. This is a Tudor-style house. It was built in the 1930s, so it's almost 100 years old. This is going to be our forever house. That is the plan. We want to raise our kids here. We really designed the house with that in mind. Typically, you would see just a smaller footprint of a house, and this house just felt so spacious already. So that was a very big push for us to try to buy this house while the kids are young and create this life that we can enjoy. When we started the space planning, to be honest, I knew right away how I wanted the main floor to lay out. Most people would put the family room at the back of the house, but because of the way the house is situated, we're slightly perched up on a hill. We have big, mature trees at the front. We do get a lot of privacy at the front of the house, so the family room takes up most of the front. We've placed our dining room in the center, and we've kept it more of an open floor plan, and then the entire back of the house, we've turned into the kitchen. In the family room, I actually designed a custom sectional sofa, reintroducing the curves, and I also designed these really cool, organic-shaped ottomans, which the kids love. I mean, as a family, we like to sit on the couch and put our feet up, but I wanted something, too, that the kids could play with. They can move them around. They already are sitting on the ottomans and playing on the coffee table, so it's a multi-purpose piece of furniture. The fireplace wall in the family room, it has the original location of the fireplace, but we did do a major upgrade. We've got a new fireplace insert, and I've designed something that feels a little more contemporary, introducing some of the curves. We selected a beautiful marble that's encasing the fireplace, and then the rift-cut oak above, and I've introduced bronzed glass dividers, just to give you a little bit more detail and more texture. The dining room light fixture, it's the Mui Flock of Light. It was inspired by fireflies, and I grew up in the Midwest, and honestly, I have such amazing memories of playing out in the fields with the little lightning bugs, so that light fixture, I knew I wanted from the beginning. When you turn it on, it just has a very soft little glow, and it really does look like fireflies in the dining room. These built-ins in the dining room, we use them in a lot of different ways. I mean, one, they have the stone countertop, so we use it as serving, but also one cabinet is mostly kids' toys. If you open up most of the cabinets on this main floor, they're our kids' toys. The dining room, it's beautiful leather cabinet doors, but you open up the cabinet, it's full of family board games. Not serveware, but games, because, I mean, let's be real. We want to hang out down here, so I want all of these things accessible. I just don't want to be looking at them if we're not playing the game. I want it to be able to go away somewhere. When we started designing the kitchen, all I knew is I needed as much storage as possible, and to be honest, half of my cabinets are not full yet, but that is okay, because I know as we grow, we're going to get more things, but I needed a large island. The kids are always in the kitchen, so having a big island was one of the key things that we wanted to incorporate from the very beginning. The island in the kitchen is just shy of 12 feet long, which is a very large island, and we've used natural stone here, so I have a leathered natural quartzite in the main area, and then I have a honed marble on either end. Now, connecting the two materials, we wanted to make it feel intentional, so we've introduced a metal inlay that is helping join these two materials together. Typically, what you see over an island are big, beautiful hanging pendant fixtures, and because the house, it's so visually connected, all of the different rooms, I didn't want another hanging pendant. I have something beautiful in the dining room, and we have another sculptural pendant over the breakfast table, so over the island, I really did want something that felt more permanent and more architectural, so we opted for these canister lights instead of something that is hanging down. All of the appliances are integrated, and we really wanted to try to make sure everything had a place, and everything could be hidden behind doors as much as possible, so you'll notice the custom metal hood has the integrated hood fan inside. We have our fridge-freezer column also integrated, dishwasher integrated. Everything is just seamless and clean lines. One of the things that was on my wish list for my dream kitchen was a smart station sink, and I love it because I have the strainer, and I get the cutting board, and again, everything I can do right here, and the sink is large, so I'm able to wash dishes and wash my veggies at the same time. Does your kitchen always look this tidy? My kitchen always looks this tidy. No, I'm just kidding. We do clean up every single night, only because I wanna make sure it's clean in the morning when we wake up for that morning rush of school, but again, having ample storage, I can just hide things behind the cabinets, but I did clean up for you guys today. We always dreamed of having a built-in breakfast nook. We've incorporated storage below, and I designed a custom bronzed glass table. It's got an ellipse shape, which just makes it a little easier to get in and out of, especially for the young one, and we really wanted something interesting above, so we did a textured wall covering. It's a little graphic, and it is pulling all of those different tones that we have throughout the main floor in that area. Keeping with the original architecture of the house, we actually left the staircase where it was. It was a little bit of that charm I felt like was endearing and welcoming when you walked in, so we've integrated storage all along the bottom of the staircase, and it's nice because it's low so the kids can reach. I'm trying to encourage them to put their own things away. That's the goal, and as you walk further down, we have a much larger walk-in closet below the staircase. The one drawback we had is that there's no connection from the garage inside the house, and you don't have that typical mudroom, so our foyer really is our mudroom, and I've extended the tile going down the hallway just so it's easier to clean up, and there's all that storage where we can just put things away and hide it. The powder room I tucked just beyond the foyer. It is definitely the jewel of the main floor. I have a natural marble stone integrated countertop when we did these beautiful wall-mounted gunmetal faucets, and I've integrated a drawer for the storage and designed a custom floor pattern that's comprised of three different natural marbles as well. I know this sounds silly, but I did not want any black in my house, and I know a lot of people come in and they say, oh, I love your black windows. No, they're not black, they're iron ore. I wanted it to feel a little softer, so you'll notice with the plumbing fixtures and some of my light fixtures, we've done a gunmetal finish instead of the black. Again, it just is a little softer, a little bit warmer, and then we've introduced some of the patinaed brass as well and the key elements throughout the house. On the second floor, we do have four bedrooms, and we also have three bathrooms. The principal bedroom, things were very asymmetrical up there, and we had to come up with a creative way of designing more custom built-ins, and what I've done is I've introduced the curves, again, just trying to make it a little softer so you don't have those harsh corners. The millwork also is so interesting with the lacquered framing and the textured panels with the gunmetal hardware. That room, when I walk into the principal bedroom, you feel like a big hug. There's textured wall covering, and now that it's done, I mean, we honestly barely ever wanna leave. There was a fireplace in that room when we purchased the house. We got a new insert, but we did keep it in the same location, and I've designed just a stone mantle that goes around something a little more contemporary with the dark oak paneling above. On all of these more architectural windows, we've actually incorporated the blinds. I didn't wanna take away from the trim work of the windows, so what we've done is we framed the walls out, and you'll notice that the motorized blinds are tucked up in the wall behind the casing. Most people, when they visit, they're not expecting the ensuite to be that large, but after I've designed so many custom homes for our clients that I've seen over the years what works and what doesn't work, and having all that space in the bathroom with the soaker tub, we have the steam shower, the double vanity with the makeup area in the middle, it has everything you could need in there, and it's funny because now, even though the kids have their own bathroom, they just wanna use our bathroom because we literally all can fit in there at the same time. It's worked out really well. My daughter's room is located over the garage. Originally, the ceiling heights were much shorter, but when we were doing demolition, we realized that the roof rafters were so tall, so we really wanted to take advantage of that, so we vaulted her ceiling, and it's such a sweet, sweet girl's room. We did a beautiful mural wall covering behind her headboard. We've given her a little piano nook. These dormers were originally here. The curved on the corners were here, and when we did demolition, we had to reframe everything, so I took it out, but I loved it so much, I put it right back in, so we've reintroduced these curves, and by framing these windows out similarly to how they were originally, we were left with this very deep closet area, so I wanted to introduce some hidden storage. We added subtle paneling detail and touch-latch doors behind. This storage is great for your seasonal items. It's great for suitcases. Tuck them away, close the door. You don't even know that it's there. We've also designed a very simple closet for her along one wall. Now, because she's so young, I didn't know what storage she necessarily would need right now, so we've just done very simple furniture placement inside, but from the outside, it all looks finished. On this side, I have actually put this bookcase on casters so I can wheel it away and access the storage behind here as well. My other daughter, her room, also very sweet. That room was an original bedroom where it's located in the back of the house, but we did integrate custom storage for her in there. She does have a smaller room, so I felt like we did need to make sure that we gave her a lot of storage. Right now, that's full of toys, mostly. When I designed the guest room, I was definitely thinking of my in-laws and my family because they do visit often. We probably are having visitors every month and a half, so that room definitely gets its use. It is a slightly smaller bedroom. However, I have given them their own en suite, and we've designed a very small cabinet for them, very hotel-inspired. I really wanted to incorporate a closet space where you can put your suitcases below, and you also have additional hanging space for no matter how long you're staying. Because it is my personal house, I did try a lot of new details. We did a lot of custom metalwork, spindles for the stairs. I have a custom metal surround on the fireplace, and we've integrated it in the hood. We've done a lot of different joint details, cork miters. I have interesting detail around the window in the kitchen with the stonework, and on the island in the kitchen, I've designed this oversized waterfall, a faceted shape on the end of the island that really becomes an art piece in itself. It was a journey, I'll say. Because this house was our forever house, my husband and I had a really hard time making the decisions because we knew these decisions, we were going to live with for a very, very long time. And I joke because I think I am the worst client I have ever had. But it was worth it at the end of the day.