For a long time, Alicia and Craig Oberg disliked their house so much they didn’t want to invite anyone over.
“We were really embarrassed,” Ms. Oberg said of the Plymouth, Minn., home.
But the 3,800-square-foot ranch, built in 1981, had a few things going for it. For one, there was plenty of room: The couple, whose twins are now 14, bought it in August 2013 for $584,000 after outgrowing their previous home. And they loved the bucolic setting, between a horse farm and a small lake, but only 15 minutes from downtown Minneapolis.
“There was a need to find a place and the lot was incredible,” said Ms. Oberg, 47, the founder of Destination directivea travel company.
“When we bought the house, we knew we would have to renovate it,” said Mr. Oberg, 47, who works in investor relations and mergers and acquisitions at a public company.
But it took more than seven years to proceed with the renovation. “We were counting our pennies,” he said.
Finally, stuck at home during the pandemic, they decided they couldn’t wait any longer. In 2021 they contacted each other Anne McDonaldan interior designer in Minneapolis who had done work for some friends.
“What I love about Anne is the depth of her work. There’s color and there’s emotion and feeling behind everything he does,” Ms. Oberg said. “I didn’t want anything shiny white.”
Even better, Ms. McDonald often worked with her father, Jim McDonald, a builder who ran McDonald Remodeling before retiring recently, so hiring her seemed like a turnkey solution.
Ms Macdonald, for her part, felt as if she had been given carte blanche. “Their disdain for this house, for me, was a green light to give it a whole new life,” he said.
With her father at her side to confirm what could and couldn’t be done, Ms McDonald embarked on an ambitious gut renovation. To create a more generous living room and maximize the view to the lake, they moved the staircase leading to the basement and created a previously flat roof. They added arched doorways and doorways, installed more windows, and updated the exterior with new fiber cement siding and a new roof.
To complete the transformation, the Obergs donated their old furniture and worked with Mrs. McDonald to find new vintage and modern pieces. The living room is now centered around a fireplace clad in Arabescato Corchia and a slim television mounted in a custom wood frame that looks like a painting. For furniture, Ms. McDonald found vintage leather chairs, a wood coffee table and plum-colored swivel chairs. And Ms. Oberg chose large artworks based on photographs by Xan Padrón to add to the mix.
In the dining room, the McDonalds removed an unused fireplace, straightened the wall and added an antique cabinet that Ms. McDonald found at the Original Round Top Antiques Fair in Texas. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s dusty pink Dead Salmon, a color that Mr. Oberg initially resisted because of its name.
“We put three samples in front of him and told him to pick the one he liked best,” Ms Oberg said. “Pick the dead salmon.”
Ms. McDonald designed the kitchen around a large island with seating on three sides, confident that the Obergs would spend much of their time there. And sure enough: “We live on this island,” confirmed Ms. Oberg, “although we didn’t before.”
They painted the kitchen cabinetry a deep green and created two cabinet-like enclosures finished in black jelly tile: One serves as a breakfast nook and a garage for smaller appliances. The other contains a bar filled with special bottles the couple has collected while traveling.
“I just came back from South Africa and brought Craig some amber denim,” Ms Oberg said. “It’s so fun to open it when people come in now, because it tells our story, in a way, based on what we serve.”
Since completing the renovation in August 2022 at a cost of about $215 a square foot, they’ve been inviting people over regularly. The interior is so attractive, in fact, that it’s earned them a little extra income by serving as a photo location for Minneapolis-based Target.
“We just feel like it really reflects us now,” Ms. Oberg said. “And that makes all the difference.”
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