Before & After: There’s a Hidden Meadow at the Heart of This Wabi-Sabi D.C. Home
By the time Peter Hennessy and Abigail Leonard returned to America after living in Tokyo for several years, the couple were ready to put down roots with their three children and connect with nature.
They sought a home where Peter, after working many evenings and weekends in Japan, could enjoy spending more time with the family, and they also wanted to lean into the Japanese design principles they’d come to love while abroad: natural materials, simple craftsmanship, and wabi-sabi— "this aspect of perfect imperfection," Peter says.
The circa-1917 home Abigail and Peter purchased in Washington’s Cleveland Park neighborhood came with a double lot, a pool, and a meadow filled with wildflowers and mint.
Colleen Healey Architecture rebuilt an existing addition and reconfigured the common areas to place the kitchen and dining table right next to the meadow.
The new home would also be a place where Abigail, a journalist and author, could find work/life balance while raising kids and completing her book, Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries (published by Hachette in May 2025).
While searching for a house in Washington’s historic neighborhoods, the couple engaged Colleen Healey Architecture and Zuckerman Builders to help them decide. "These houses, they’ve got good bones, but they’re all over 100 years old," Peter explains. "We didn’t want any major surprises."
The firm added a screened porch just off the dining room, enhancing the home's indoor/outdoor feel. The Yak outdoor sofa is by Boffi, the Bellini chairs are by Heller, and the rug is by Nanimarquina.
Peter and Abigail ultimately settled on a classic 1917 American Foursquare in the Cleveland Park neighborhood, with views of the nearby National Cathedral. Its original quartet of adjoining ground-floor rooms were augmented by a family-room extension in back. But like many old homes, the rest of the interior felt dark and cloistered.
"The kitchen had hardly any natural light, because it was blocked by a first-floor bathroom, which is very common," explains Healey, "and it had no view to the backyard. But the glassy room on the back brought a lot of potential."
Before: Kitchen
Before: The original kitchen was tucked away in a back corner of the house, with access to windows on only one side.
After: Kitchen
The new kitchen, part of the reconstructed extension, is incased in ample glass. The Saarinen table is by Knoll, and the hand-knotted wool carpet is by Coe & Son.
The marble-covered kitchen island has a butcher block insert that matches the walnut cabinetry. The ceramic tile backsplash extends all the way to the ceiling.
Set on a double lot, the house had a pool in back at the northeast corner of the property, and room at the northwest corner (accessed by an alley) for a new detached garage with an upstairs guest room. There was also a large yard where the kids could play, as well as a meadow beside the addition, where the pool had previously been located before the adjacent lot was purchased by the previous owners.
"There were all kinds of grasses and natural flowers and tons of mint growing," Healey recalls. "That really was the impetus for us; in my work we really try to connect indoor to outdoor."
Before: Backyard Meadow
Before: The previous homeowners relocated the pool and planted a meadow in its place.
After: Backyard Meadow
Lynley Ogilvie Landscape Design revamped the meadow between the house and its detached garage/guest room and installed a stone walking path.
The meadow is close enough to the glass-walled extension that the homeowners feel immersed in nature even while inside.
A new detached garage is topped with a guest room overlooking the meadow and pool.
Renovating Peter and Abigail’s home "was a real collaborative effort, and a learning process for all of us in some ways," Healey adds. "This is probably one of the most challenging and rewarding projects that I’ve worked on."
The architect relocated the kitchen and dining room to the meadow-facing back extension, which the was rebuilt to add more transparency. "I wanted to be surrounded by glass while at the dining table, so it would be just like sitting outside," Peter says.
Before: Extension (Family Room)
Before The home’s extension, used for a family room and breakfast nook, was not original, so it could be reconstructed in the renovation.
After: Extension (Dining Room)
The new dining area, just off the kitchen, is centered around a Time & Style lamp that Peter brought back from Japan.
Even though the living room is located in the original home, it reads as part of the rebuilt extension that holds the dining area and kitchen.
The living room now stands in the former dining room, adjacent to the revamped extension, and a new home office is located where the original living room had been. In the former kitchen, Healey designed a new mud room and informal side entrance.
In previous renovations, Healey often exposed and celebrated the bones of older buildings. They sought similar opportunities here, starting with a double-sided wall between the hallway and Peter’s office, which holds a sliding pocket door.
The design team stripped drywall from a wall in the hallway and left the wood framing exposed on one side. It now holds a metal and glass pocket door to the office. The shelves are by Vitsoe Shelving, and the silk and wool rug is by Coe & Son.
"We opened it up and realized that one of the walls was structural, but the other one behind it was not," Healey explains. "The exposed wood framing was really beautiful. The homeowner said, ‘Can we just leave this?’ And I just thought, ‘Yes, we can. Why not?’"
The renovation exposed the living room’s rafters and left their holes and rough texture untouched. The Alberese modular sofa is by Boffi.
The hutch in the living room was shipped from the couple’s home in Tokyo. The Moroccan shag rug is by Benisouk , and the Ava round low side tables are by Boffi.
In the adjacent living room, the old wood rafters, previously covered by a drop ceiling, are also exposed. "You can see the holes from where the pipes used to run," Peter says. "I had to fight the contractors a little, because they asked, ‘Do you want them cleaned up?’ I said, ‘No, I specifically want them not cleaned up.’ And Colleen got it." Upstairs, near the kids’ bedrooms, is another example: the exposed planks of the original wood wall.
Throughout the home are artworks, mementoes, and furnishings the family brought back from Japan, including tables, chairs, and little rounded Daruma dolls symbolizing perseverance and good luck. Yet they also made sure not to overfill the home with too much stuff. "It’s comfort with nothingness," Peter says. "It allows presence. When there is too much, you stop seeing anything."
In the living room, a curved partition wall wraps the walnut media cabinet.
That same curved wall, seen from the hallway. By curving the edges, Healey enlarged the doorway openings and sight lines.
The new interiors feature a simple palette of plaster walls, walnut floors and cabinetry, and Accoya wood trim. Accoya is derived from fast-growing, sustainable timber, usually pine; it’s treated with acetic anhydride, which modifies the wood’s cell structure, making it more resistant to moisture absorption and decay, and thereby rendering it suitable for indoor and outdoor use. For Peter and Abigail, the clincher was its tone.
"I think it’s a wood that more closely resembles some of the woods found in Japan," Healey says. "They kept telling me, ‘No, no, we want lighter wood, but with a hint of yellow. I would bring oak or maple; you can’t even imagine how many samples we went through. When we looked at the Accoya, Abigail said, ‘That’s it.’"
Before: Stairs
Before: Although much of the existing ground-floor interior was gutted and reconfigured, the homeowners and architect decided the original stairway should stay.
After: Stairs
The renovated stairway now has a rounded wall at its base, that matches the curved wall across from it and allows natural light from the extension's glass wall to spread into the interior.
Rebuilding the glass-walled addition for the new kitchen and dining room was the project’s biggest challenge. Historic preservation code dictated that an upstairs sleeping porch that sits over the addition couldn’t be rebuilt because it was original to the house. For months, diagonal steel beams held it in place while the glassy new ground-floor space was constructed.
Because the new addition extends further out from the house than the old sleeping porch, the designers gave it higher ceilings and a skylight, to create more volume and spaciousness. But they still had to account for the bottom of the sleeping porch at the inner edge of the room, so Healey and another architect from her firm, Blake Massie, designed a curved ceiling panel, to conceal where the structure dips down into the space, while also holding a globe-shaped lamp Peter and Abigail brought back from Japan.
A fireplace in the primary bedroom, mostly hidden in the wall before renovation, was fully exposed and partially rebuilt, brick by brick.
"Blake and I did so many sketches," Healey recalls. "But what it does with that light fixture at night is really fabulous."
Despite the addition of several skylights, portions of the original ground floor still lack brightness—but the contrast makes the new extension feel all the more vibrant, especially with the outdoor meadow, reconfigured by Lynley Ogilvie Landscape Design, coming right up against the glass.
The primary bathroom features floating walnut cabinetry set against Accoya walls.
The space recreates Peter and Abigail’s bathroom in Tokyo—down to a tub that can be programmed to maintain a precise temperature.
"We’ll be sitting at the table eating, and I’ll be looking across at my son, and it’s just like he’s sitting in the in the garden," Peter says. A new screen porch was also added, just off the dining room, extending the space and blurring the line between indoor and outdoor.
The concave kitchen ceiling panel also replicates a curve motif found in other parts of the house—a stylistic touch Healey has also applied in other projects. A stucco-and-stone fireplace in the first-floor music room (where the front parlor had been), for example, is rounded at its sides, giving way to Accoya wood edges.
On the third floor, the wall outside the kids’ bedrooms is left exposed.
And in the living room, an interior wall curves at the edges, wrapping a walnut-faced cabinet for the TV while creating larger doorway openings on either side. "We pulled it in so that you could get these vantage points into some of the other rooms," Healey adds.
The curved wall echoes the form of the back of the stairwell across the hall. Though much about the home’s interior changed, Healey and the clients decided to retain the original stairway and bannister.
In what's now known as the music room on the ground floor (previously the front parlor), a stucco-clad fireplace is paired with a stone base and a rounded surround capped in Accoyo wood.
Perhaps the most striking of the home’s exposed architectural artifacts is a brick fireplace in the second-floor master bedroom. Its base had been visible, but the rest was hidden within the wall. "They took it off, and Peter and I both just went, ‘Oh, my gosh! We have to leave this,’" Healey says.
To give the fireplace added emphasis, the project team borrowed some of the space from a third-floor bathroom to create a light well that allows more of the fireplace shaft to remain exposed.
Plants thrive in the revamped meadow just outside the dining room.
The master bath was inspired by the Abigail and Peter’s bathroom in Japan; they can simply set their desired temperature for the tub, and it’s maintained with the help of a heater and circulating pump. "This is my pride and joy," Peter says.
Since the project was completed in fall of 2024, the family has enjoyed not only the home’s renovated interior but also its extended outdoor space, where they’ve seen rabbits, hawks, and even a fox.
"I just love it more every day," Peter says. "Life and work can be crazy sometimes. And so I think over time, we’ve just been able to appreciate moments being here. Which is the whole point."
Floor Plan of Hidden Meadow by Colleen Healey Architecture
More Before & After stories:
She Pivoted a "Corporate" Apartment Into a Cozy, Wood-Wrapped Home
A Surprising Home Springs Up in a Basic Barcelona Storefront
How an Ugly Den Became an Enviable Sunken Living Room in a Texas Midcentury
Project Credits:
Architect of Record: Colleen Healey Architecture / @colleenhealey_architecture
Builder: Zuckerman Builders
Structural Engineer: Norton Consulting Engineers
Civil Engineer: CAS Engineering
Landscape Design: Lynley Ogilvie Landscape Design
Lighting Design: Illuminations
Cabinetry Design: Boffi
Additional Cabinetry: Mersoa Woodwork and Design
Plaster Finishing: Twin Diamonds Studio
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