Located in the refreshingly free-form Terryhill area, the home of Marilyn and Jay Cohn is as close to idyllic as one can envision on a warm July afternoon. Their garden is immaculate. Their almost 80-year-old home is immaculate. Their property is an exercise in cohesion and cooperative balance. Everything agrees and everything blends. 

The outdoor space of William and Carel Reynolds’ St. Louis-area home is testimony to the notion that you can improve on nature.

The Des Peres lake property suffered the occasional deluge from a nearby creek, and the back yard in general was a hodgepodge of undeveloped, unused spaces. After more than three decades there, the couple wanted an overhaul that would allow them to relax under the sun or the stars during the more temperate Midwestern days. 

Last year, Pat Perotti downsized from a large home to her mother’s recently vacated villa. Her villa was the same as her neighbor’s, which was the same as their neighbor’s and so on, but that was not Perotti’s style. She wanted to make her new home her own and give it a touch of her feminine class. When she decided to re-do her mother’s old kitchen, she trusted interior designer Ellen Kurtz, of Ellen Kurtz Interiors, to pull off the new look.

To the husband and wife, the master bathroom in their Town and Country home was uninspired and sometimes even unfriendly, lacking privacy and functionality for them, their four children and occasional visitors. It’s a large space, but it had no enclosure for the toilet. Two tub-side columns, while attractive, blocked a beautiful outdoor view and made the room feel close. And the overall design didn’t address potential changes in mobility.

When the Judges purchased their home in 2009, the turn-of-the-last-century Victorian didn’t need much work. That’s because Kelly’s grandparents – the previous homeowners, who’d purchased the place in the sixties – had already put in enough sweat equity to revive the once-tired stick style.