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Finding Respite in a Remodeling
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The dining room overlooks the front
yard.
Finding Respite in a Remodeling
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MARCH/APRIL 2006)
SHE LOVES THE LAKE VIEW, like anyone would. And the vaulted kitchen, the rustic potting area, the big wooded lot-she appreciates it all. But Donna Howarth doesn't dwell on those features of her Barrington, Illinois, home as much as she focuses on simple moments.
Her husband, Bill, lost in thought beside the pool is watching a beautiful summer sunset.
Grandkids piling out of the car and racing to the barn to find eggs so fresh they're still warm.
The familiar memory that rushes in each time Donna enters the kitchen and sees the bust that looks like her grandmother.
You tune into these things when you're living on what feels like a decade of borrowed time. When the doctor says you're setting a record for surviving a cancer that usually kills within five years of diagnosis. When the trials of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant teach you to hang on more fiercely to the good days that come along.
The Howarths' country-style home 25 miles northwest of Chicago provides Donna with constant therapy, whether she's pondering the next remodeling project or planning what will go in next year's vegetable garden. When all your days feel like a gift, you want to spend them in a house designed for real-world living.
"We always wanted to keep that in mind," Donna says of their whole-house remodeling. "Our materials have to stand up to use. We like nice things, but if grape juice gets on the white sofa, it's not that important."
The 2,700-square-foot split-level the Howarths initially saw wasn't a place anyone would worry about getting dirty. Architect and family friend Tom Reed remembers telling the couple, "Definitely don't buy it. But Donna saw something in it that I didn't, so they bought it."
