A sunroom offers a welcoming space to mingle.
Jeffrey Alan Marks transforms a Normandy-inspired cottage into a serene mountain retreat.
A touch of greenery and vibrant color creates a unique connection to the outdoors.
Montecito-based interior designer and author of This is Home Jeffrey Alan Marks enthuses about the process (and result) of a 9,000-square-foot Aspen home he completed for a Beverly Hills-based couple. “The clients, whom I had worked with before, flew me out to Aspen to see the house and never came out until it was finished five years later,” says Jeffrey Alan Marks. “They thought I had nailed it and loved it.”
The family often gathers for breakfast in this sunlit room.
The challenge? Transforming the existing structure into a simple, inviting retreat that would accommodate the client’s significant art collection. “The home was originally built in 1910 and had the brick massing of a Normandy cottage and interior rooms that were very cramped,” recalls Marks. “We worked to open up the architecture, adding around 2,000 square feet, plus a pool and an adjoining pool house, and restructuring much of it to suit the free-range way families live today.”
In the kitchen, Marks selected rift oak flooring, Moroccan tile walls and a custom-designed French range.
Included in that process was creating an open reception hall where the original kitchen had been, incorporating a dedicated wing for the family and a separate wing for guests. “It was a sanity-saving measure, as anyone who has hosted visitors for an extended length of time can attest,” notes Marks. The primary bedroom, which was added on, gave the home additional height. There, neutral gray tones imbued a sense of calm and contrasted nicely with the natural greenery outside.
For the new kitchen, which Marks designed to be transitional, he installed rustic rift oak flooring, Moroccan tile walls and a custom-designed French range by Lacanche USA. Besides the kitchen, he turned an existing sunroom into a breakfast room with radiant heated floors inviting lingering and widespread views visible through arched windows. “It’s one of my favorite spaces in the home,” he says. Throughout all the common areas, Marks incorporated Venetian plaster walls. “It added texture and gave a warming, elegant effect to the spaces with their soaring ceilings,” he says.
The heated pool offers an inviting retreat year-round.
Incorporating art into the house to everyone’s satisfaction was a challenge. “The owner liked calming neutrals contrasted with black and white, but I am more about color,” notes Marks. “It was hard for me to restrain, so I snuck in colors where possible. It worked well with the house’s architecture and was very inviting.” He also admits to sneaking in a couple of antiques here and there to anchor the house and give it character. “It added a much-needed layer that can be hard to achieve with new furniture,” he shares.
Adjoining the house, a new heated pool and adjacent pool house add the alluring element of water to the overall mountain experience of the home, as do surrounding gardens conceived and designed by a locally based Design Workshop. “I enjoyed working with the landscape architects there,” says Marks. “The home is set on a beautiful spot of land, and they enhanced it beautifully. It was a bit more traditional a garden than the clients were used to, but it worked.”
The primary bedroom provides a serene contrast to the lush greenery outside.
“WE THOUGHTFULLY RESTORED THE HOME AND BROUGHT IT BACK TO LIFE.” -JEFFREY ALAN MARKS
Thoughtful while reminiscing about the home project, Marks, who comes out to Aspen every few months, shares, “The owners were easy, lovely people to work with, and there was complete trust. We thoughtfully restored the home and brought it back to life.”
Design Details
Type
Single-family home
Location
Aspen
Interior Design
Jeffrey Alan Marks
jeffreyalanmarks.com
Landscape Architect
Design Workshop
designworkshop.com
RESOURCES
Exquisite Surfaces
Flooring
xsurfaces.com
Chateau Domingue
Paint
chateaudomingue.com
Lighting
Urban Electric, Rose Tarlow
Una Malan
Beds
unamalan.com
Drew Doggett
Art
drewdoggett.com
Lacanche
Kitchen appliances
frenchranges.com
Erinn V.
Dublin Cocktail Table
erinnv.com
Photography by: Photographed by TREVOR TONDRO
