Growing up in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Andre Golsorkhi always admired the houses along tree-lined Rock Creek Road. “It’s a fairy-tale street,” said Mr. Golsorkhi, now 45. He would gape at the homes and gardens. “From the day I got my license, I was driving up and down this street.” For years, he lived in the urban heart of Philadelphia, where he worked as an executive of tech startups, but never forgot Rock Creek Road. Even when he met Autumn Oser, an interior designer who worked on physical spaces and experiences at Google, he took her for a drive.
“When we first met, he took me back to where he grew up,” said Ms. Oser, now 38. “We drove down this street, and he told me that he always wanted to live there.”
But for many years, it was little more than wishful thinking. After marrying in 2014, Mr. Golsorkhi and Ms. Oser bought and renovated a string of homes in Philadelphia, and realized they were good at it. Each time they finished one home, it seemed, someone wanted to buy it.
“People actually came knocking on the door,” Mr. Golsorkhi said, offering prices they couldn’t resist.
Discovering that they relished the process of designing and building homes, the couple became fledging developers. And, after completing a few successful projects together, they left their jobs in technology to focus on their design and development firm, Haldon House, full time.
They had just begun having children — Oliver, now 5, and Jack, 3 — when they saw a rare listing for a house on Rock Creek Road in 2022.
“We sped out here to an open house,” Mr. Golsorkhi said. “It was so flooded with people that it felt like a concert on the front lawn.”
The house was built in 1950 — it needed extensive work, or needed to be torn down — was listed “as is” for $1.2 million. That didn’t dissuade Mr. Golsorkhi and Ms. Oser, nor many of the other buyers, and a bidding war ensued.
The couple won and closed on the property that March for $1.5 million, planning to substantially rebuild both the house and the landscape around it to make it their dream home.
“We fell in love with it,” Ms. Oser said.
Over the following months, they drew plans for a new 8,500-square-foot stone house, with guidance from the architecture firm Moto. Although they planned to largely level the old house, keeping just the foundation and a few walls, they wanted its replacement to look like it had been there for decades.
“It was so important that the home didn’t feel like new-construction, and that it had that old-world charm,” Ms. Oser said.
To give the exterior a timeless appearance, they sourced natural stone in different sizes and colors for the exterior of the house. They instructed their builder, MD Contractors, to over-grout the walls by squeezing as much mortar between stones as they could, for a rustic look.
Inside, they aimed to give the interiors a similar sense of age, while adding practical elements for a busy family as well as luxurious touches for parents who sometimes just need a break.
“We’re a young couple with young kids, but we love to travel and spend time in boutique hotels and chic bars,” Ms. Oser said. “We wanted balance in our home where it feels really good to have a cocktail when the kids go down, and it almost feels like a retreat.”
Contemporary touches include a great room with a mantel-free fireplace finished in Venetian plaster and a sculptural metallic artwork by the artist Gbemi, along with a wet bar recessed into a wall by the dining area.
A sense of old-world craftsmanship runs through custom furniture and cabinetry the couple had made for the house, as well as antiques they found in nearby Lancaster, Pa.
The showpiece kitchen, for instance, has an island and work table that look as though they could have been pulled from an English country estate, as well as a hutch holding plates, which rests atop the Calacatta Vintage Viola countertop.
Upstairs, they wanted to make the primary suite function like a luxurious hotel suite. They built not only a spalike bathroom with a windowed double shower and a separate soaking tub, but also a separate lounge painted a deep aubergine and equipped with leather armchairs and a bar.
“This is where we hope to start and end each day,” Ms. Oser said, who painted an artwork for the room. “We make our cappuccinos in here in the morning, and have our drink at the end of the night.”
After beginning construction of the house and a reimagined landscape designed with Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects in the fall of 2022, they completed the project last May. The total cost, including everything from earth and stone to furniture and accessories, was about $7 million.
Although they’ve sold many homes over the years, Ms. Oser said, this time they plan to stay put: “I don’t think we’re moving on from this one,” she said.
The post Loving a House From Afar, and Then Tearing it Down appeared first on New York Times.
