Age-in-Place Design Combines Style, Convenience & Comfort

Planning for retirement has meant more than just investments and savings for Gail and Bobby Baker. Their vision began at home, literally. And in looking ahead to their future, they were inspired by the past, trading their Labadie two-story for the family’s weekend riverhouse in Villa Ridge.

It had been a country getaway from the city for Bobby’s family since the 1980s, but with a little planning and a lot of sweat equity, the couple reimagined this tri-level floor plan as an age-in-place dream home, where they can safely live independently for longer.

The transformation wasn’t quick or easy though. They began by tearing down one side of the house and rebuilding it from the ground up.

This allowed them to add some luxurious amenities, like heated floors, as well as an open layout with wide hallways and zero thresholds, including in the master bathroom shower. Other age-in-place features are levers instead of knobs on all of the doors, a custom hood over the stove in the kitchen, and a base cabinet with a spring-loaded mixer lift station.

If you think an age-in-place design means boring and industrial, scroll through these photos by Jeanne Miller Wood (or her video at the end of this post!), and think again. Nowhere in this renovation did design and style take a backseat to comfort and convenience.

Combo of New Pieces & Refab Finds

As many of you already know, Gail is one of Union Furniture & Flooring’s design center experts who helps customers select flooring and tile for their projects. It’s a fun job that allows her to be creative, but she rarely gets to see the finished outcome — and certain never like this.

Gail and Bobby selected a natural color hardwood throughout for the main floor, which includes the dining room, family room and kitchen, and flows into their master bedroom and closet/laundry room. In the bedrooms on the split-level side of the home, they installed a wool carpet by Godfrey Hirst with a low pile that allows Gail to place area rugs on top of the carpet for a layered look that adds more color, texture and interest to the space.

All of the tile used in the kitchen, bathrooms and around the fireplace in the family room came from Union Furniture, as did the quartzite countertop in the kitchen. And one unusual touch Gail and Bobby added is using shower sills as window ledges instead of traditional wood, which can show wear and tear easily.

In the master bathroom, they opted for larger floor tiles, 24-inch squares featuring a small geometric pattern, and an oversized shower with a concrete floor and ceramic tile on the walls. A narrow window toward the top of the exterior wall provides natural light and a wooded view, creating a feeling that you are outdoors. Lighting is a combination of can lights to provide brightness, when needed, and decorative sconces that offer a spa-like ambiance.

The doors throughout the house came from Refab, a salvage yard in St. Louis that works in collaboration with “local nonprofits, community groups and the government to promote the collective re-use of our built environment . . . by deconstructing buildings otherwise slated for demolition . . . and refabricating building materials.”

Gail and Bobby sanded and refinished all of the doors, and for the pantry, they also cut them down to size and frosted the glass.

The furniture is a mixture of new pieces from Union Furniture and family heirlooms, as well as functional creations, like filing cabinets that they added wood tops to for use as dressers in the master closet.

One of the most fun and unexpected features of the home is outside hanging in the gazebo. Gail and Bobby call it the “root-e-lier,” a chandelier made from the root of a felled tree the Bobby found down by the river. They washed it, bleached it, cleaned it up, and wrapped a strand of lights around it.

The couple has more plans for improvements to the outdoor space, including adding a stone fireplace to the patio off the master bedroom. Because with a location like this — with greenery and views in every direction — no matter how beautiful the interior is, there’s no better designer than Mother Nature.