Beyond water and sunlight, gardeners know that time, patience and a little planning are imperative to a beautiful and healthy landscape.  They also know that sitting back and waiting for the product of their toil to spring from the soil is painstaking, especially when plantings are new and the garden requires actual years to take shape. 

Homeowner and businesswoman Robin Kruse knows a hidden gem when she sees one and so does architect Jeff Day of Jeff Day and Associates. It was Jeff’s architecture and planning firm that reconfigured Kruse’s diamond-in-the-rough ranch home in Town and Country four years ago into the bright, open family home she knew it could be.

There are a million and a half ways to go about home renovation. And some of them don’t even cost a million and a half straight out of the gate. 

For a pair of St. Louis Hills homeowners, a long-term timeline and a great deal of patience have allowed them to remodel their home from, as they tell it, “one inch to the other.” Their recently completed master bath, one of the last major renovations on the property, depending on whom you ask, is a beautiful, and textbook, example of their inch-by-inch approach to home improvement.

The 1990s may not seem so long ago, but in terms of house decor it’s an eternity, as Tamsin Mascetti of Tamsin Design Group can attest. Tamsin encountered a walk back in time with the recent redesign of client Christine Shore’s master bath. The home had undergone a refresh to most rooms, but the bathroom remained 220 square feet of anachronistic dysfunction. The interior design equivalent of the plaid flannel shirt, distressed jeans and Birkenstocks.

After enduring a two-year remodeling odyssey of major demolitions, Alex and Melissa Garza quite literally watched their dream home emerge from a pile of rubble. Transplants from Falls Church, Virginia, the couple had scoured the St. Louis listings for months before landing on the one — built, as it turns out, decades ago on a large secluded lot by renowned modernist architect Harris Armstrong. 

After a dozen or so years in her St. Louis home, Dawn Weinhardt, co-owner of Weinhardt Party Rentals, was ready to freshen up around the house, starting with an outdated master bath. A head-to-toe makeover in the summer of 2017 took the room from dim and dull to bright black and white. It’s now a modern gray-tone bathroom with a mix of just enough femme frill and mild machismo to make the space a haven for just about anyone seeking a quiet retreat.