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 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.”

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

After: Kitchen

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

After: Backyard Meadow

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)

After: Extension (Dining Room)

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.

“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?’”

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.”

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

After: Stairs

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

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