Tracy Haller always loved Arts and Crafts-style houses. And she saw much to admire in this one in Arlington, Va., when she and her husband bought it in 2008. But it lacked some details — stained glass, wood finishes and built-ins — characteristic of the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasized simple forms and natural materials.
“It had good bones,” she said.
She and her husband, Christian Haller, are the first occupants of the house, which was built in 2006 and remained vacant for two years. They embarked on renovations that altered nearly every room. Haller remodeled with uniformity between original and modified in mind.
“It’s been designed to be in one style,” she said. “It’s very cohesive with some features you don’t see in most houses.”
In their first year in the house, they replaced light fixtures, installed wood floors and did extensive landscaping.
“Probably the biggest transformation you would see is the outside with the landscaping,” she said. “We’ve tried to make it a private oasis. … We totally changed everything except for leaving the mature hickory trees.”
Since then, they have continued to reinforce Arts and Crafts style with the addition of window seats in a bedroom, built-in bookshelves in the library, a mahogany garage door, a kitchen backsplash of handmade tile and a marble fireplace with a mahogany mantel. The most whimsical of the additions is a stained-glass window, featuring trees and a chipmunk, in the mahogany front door, which was also part of the renovation.
“You see a lot of builders doing farmhouse/Arts and Crafts-style, but they don’t always put in the nice features you would have seen in older houses,” Haller said. “Unfortunately, you don’t see that as much as I think you ought to.”
The five-bedroom, six-bathroom house is at 1144 North Ivanhoe St. in the North Arlington neighborhood of Lacey Forest. The first floor has the library, with large windows and built-in bookshelves; a formal dining room with decorative molding; and a living room connected to a screened porch. The kitchen, renovated in 2020, has black granite countertops, cherry cabinets and a breakfast nook. All the windows in the house were replaced in 2020.
The second floor has a primary bedroom suite with two walk-in closets and an en suite bathroom. That floor has three more bedrooms, with en suite bathrooms. It also has a laundry room. The lower level has a recreation room, a bathroom and a fifth bedroom, which the Hallers converted to a wine room with a full-size wine refrigerator and built-in cabinets. The two-car garage is accessed from the recreation room.
The backyard has a stone patio and an outdoor kitchen. A mahogany trellis is on one side of the house.
“Both the inside and the outside, I think, are very welcoming and warm,” Haller said. “We love that.”
$2,150,000
- Bedrooms/bathrooms: 5/6
- Approximate square-footage: 4,760
- Lot size: 6,125 square feet
- Features: The house, built in 2006 and vacant until the current owners purchased it in 2008, has been renovated in the Arts and Craft style. It has mostly wood floors, built-in shelves, a mahogany front door with a custom stained-glass window, and a marble fireplace with a mahogany mantel. There is a two-car garage with a mahogany door.
- Listing agent: Gina Wimpey and Melody Abella, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty