Emily Larkin’s Fairytale Tudor Could be Our Favorite on The 46th Annual Lakewood Home Tour

It was daunting to decide which home to feature out of the six incredible houses on the upcoming Lakewood Home Tour. They are all magnificent, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s truly a stellar tour this year.

However, when I got a sneak peek at the fairytale Tudor owned by interior designer Emily Larkin and her husband, Ben, it tugged at my heartstrings. 

From One Fairytale Tudor to Another

Emily and Ben used to be my neighbors. I wrote about their Hollywood Heights Tudor when they decided to move to Lakewood. I know how hard it was for them to move, but they found another wonderful Tudor, a 1926 Dines and Kraft in Lakewood.

The backyard studio sealed the deal for the couple as, like most of us now, Emily bases her company, EJ Interiors, from home. They moved in knowing they would be tackling a significant renovation soon. However, it’s always a good idea to see how a house functions for your family before renovating. In the interim, Emily did a mini remodel, staining floors and painting kitchen cabinets to make it more of their style while they thought through the renovation. 

Emily and Ben needed a second floor, so capturing the attic space was essential. They also wanted a large family room but wanted to honor the original spaces and layout as much as possible. So, they turned to a professional who understands how to bring a historic home into this century correctly.

A Masterful Restorer of Historic Homes

Carol Gantt, the owner of Gantt Construction Consultants & Designers, has been restoring, renovating, and creating additions to historic homes for decades. I’ve never met anyone that can solve problems, create solutions, and still manage not to lose an ounce of a home’s character in an updating process like Gantt can.

The first thing she did was invite them to see a Tudor she was working on in Hollywood Heights. Oddly enough, it was recently on their neighborhood home tour. Owners Chuck and Sandy Hintze also wanted to capture their attic space, so Carol showed Emily and Ben how she was managing to fit in an office, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and an open sitting area under the roof of a historic Tudor and still adhere to a ton of conservation district restrictions.

“A lot of times, people just put something there to add as much square footage as possible, and it ends up looking awkward,” Gantt said. “Emily is an interior designer, so it was fun working with her. She was interested in keeping as much originality as possible and open to adding in a bit of quirkiness.” 

“We wanted to keep the roofline in sync with what was there. The roof’s steep pitch is part of the fantasy style the architects were going for in the 1920s and 30s, so it’s a critical part of the look. You can fit rooms in an attic space, but they will be funky. You will see the steep pitch, you won’t have a flat ceiling, and that is sometimes hard to communicate to people. As an interior designer, Emily understood that. These rooms can be very charming, particularly for a child.”

Gantt did not move the front roof line but did add to the back. “I wanted to make sure we did not add anything too big or out of scale, Gantt said. “The main challenge with these homes is keeping additions in scale.

The new nursery is tucked under the roof and is one of Gantt’s favorite parts of this fairytale Tudor. She also added a bit of quirkiness, replacing a round vent in an attic gable with a window.

“On the other side of the front, a part of the roof had a decorative bump-out stained glass window,” she said. “You could not see it unless you were in the attic. We tucked the footed tub in there and now it’s a focal point of the bathroom.”

Emily wanted to eliminate the galley kitchen and create a family room. “We opened up the kitchen, the breakfast room, and the back bedroom and bumped it out a bit,” Gantt said. That created the longed-for open-plan kitchen and family room. 

Climbing The Walls

Interior designers always source items we’d never imagine were available, but Emily really went the distance in her dining room, finding a true classic. The Schumacher Hydrangea Drape wallpaper was created by legendary movie set designer Hobe Erwin for the staircase at Tara in Gone With The Wind. Schumacher purchased the archives and released this one in four new colorways!

Emily’s favorite part of the house is Ben’s study.

“It was a random room off the living room,” she said. “I painted it Mozart Blue by Benjamin Moore and matched it to the darker blue hue in the dining room wallpaper because the study is in the background, and you see through to it.”

“The door to the study is in the dining room, which is unusual, but there is precedent for it,” Gantt said. “We also added a door off the first staircase landing. You go up three steps and are on a landing. On the other side are two steps down into his office.”

Of particular note is that if the Lakewood Conservation District Expansion plan is passed, this fairytale Tudor will be protected for future generations to appreciate.

You can see the Larkins fairytale Lakewood Tudor at 6926 Westlake Ave and all of the other beautiful homes the weekend of November 12th.

Tickets are available for pre-sale now at LECPTA.