For Barbara and Jeffrey Rosenberg, it took one renovation to realize they needed another.
In the summer of 2017, the couple moved into their freshly overhauled second home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and were delighted to have a house that catered to their every whim and served as an impressive destination for entertaining family and friends.
So when they returned to their primary home, a house in Delray Beach, Fla., which they bought for $2.75 million in 2005, they couldn’t help but feel a little deflated. “The minute I walked into our house in Florida, I said, ‘This house needs to be redone,’” said Mr. Rosenberg, 74, who has largely retired from a family-run real estate investment and development company he helped build. “We got spoiled in Sag Harbor.”
The 7,760-square-foot house had been designed in a contemporary neo-Classical style, and that no longer felt right for them. The coffered ceilings, the overwrought moldings, the decorative columns, the divided-light windows, the antiques — it all suddenly seemed old.
Allen Saunders, a Miami-based interior designer who had conceived a clean-lined, modern home for their son in nearby Boca Raton.
Although the couple had specific ideas for what they wanted in the food-focused spaces — an expanded kitchen, a large wine room, an Italian pizza oven in the backyard — they gave Mr. Saunders only one directive for the rest of the house: “We want to walk in and go, ‘Wow,’” Mr. Rosenberg said. “We literally said to Allen, ‘You’ve got carte blanche to do whatever you need to do.’”
Relishing the challenge, Mr. Saunders drew up plans for a down-to-the-studs gut renovation that changed the floor plan and gave the home an unapologetically modern interior with black, white and aubergine details, along with plenty of conversation-starting pieces.
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