Looking at Jen and Lee Odess’s Bethesda, Maryland, home from the street, you’d never guess what’s hidden from view. “Everyone walking by stops and stares,” Jen says. They cock their heads a bit, taking in the home’s irreverent, modern facade, but she doesn’t mind. In fact, it’s all by design.

“It’s crazy cool,” she says joyfully. “Nobody realizes what’s back here, and nobody needs to because it’s just for us.” Step through the entry and you’re met with 3,200 square feet of lofty, open-air space designed by architect and friend Colleen Healey and built by Cabin John Builders—a team the couple had in mind before they ever found the plot.

After a two-and-a-half-year stint in Florida, Jen, a former design-industry caterer turned tech executive, and her husband, Lee, returned to Maryland knowing they wanted to build something unique. They were willing to rent as long as it took to find out what that was, Jen says, but luckily, they didn’t have to wait long.

Just six months into their new lease, Jen happened upon a narrow pipestem lot with a dilapidated carriage house and sent it to Healey right away. It was perfect, Healey thought, with its quirky shape and structure. “It was also something they could get a good deal on,” says Healey, “plus it had loads of potential that only the right client and the right architect could realize.”

Due to its size and orientation, the land sat idle on the market for three months. While it didn’t attract most builders (who are often enticed by curb appeal), its discreet frontage was perfect for the Odesses. “We took this thing that no one else wanted and turned it into the most special space,” Healey says excitedly of the custom-built home. “We could really spread out and command the site.”

The first step was assessing the existing structure, which was largely in disrepair. “Tacked on the back was a 1970s addition that was rotting and falling down,” Healey says, but the carriage house itself (parceled off from a larger lot next door) was made of sturdy stone. It was charming and in good condition.

Before: Exterior Facade

Healey planned to integrate what she could of the stone facade, including the original circle window and garage door opening. “Let’s take off the part that’s falling down—it’s just not usable,” she remembers saying in conversation with the Odesses. “But we’ll keep this original structure. We’ll take the roof off of it, put a new, higher, lofted roof to bring in light and add volume.”

Today, the small portal window and eight-foot-wide garage door echo the original building’s form. The structure retains nearly 65 to 70 percent of the original carriage house walls, which form the exterior of the expansive kitchen-living-dining space.

After: The New Facade

When it came time to break ground, Healey and Jen decided on an L-shaped floor plan with ample indoor/outdoor space, large areas for gathering, infinite natural light, and a focus on an existing (and flourishing) red wood maple tree on the property. “I had my head around an L-shaped house that centered around an outdoor space,” Jen says. “I wanted a lot of windows, floor to ceiling.”

Before: Exterior

After: Exterior

The panels, viewable from the outdoor dining area, align vertically between windows and feature saturated shades of merlot, mustard, red, teal, and acidic green. “We played around a lot with what those colors might be,” Healey says. In the end, they chose to reflect the colors of the maple tree’s changing foliage, “except for the blue,” Jen points out, which was added to balance the collective group. The teal shade reappears on a panel by the front entry, too, giving visitors a visual hint as to what may await them inside.

After: Red Wood Maple Tree

“The house reflects my family and what matters to us. It wasn’t meant to be anything else except for total joy and a work of art.”
—Jen Odess, resident

Inside, a vast indoor/outdoor living space encourages entertaining and togetherness. “I knew they would entertain heavily,” Healey says of her sociable clients, so she advocated for flow and hard-wearing floor and countertop materials. Polished concrete underfoot and impervious black granite are “extremely durable, forgiving, and economical,” she says. Plus, both Jen and Healey love the combination’s visual simplicity.

On the far living room wall, decorative oak slats draw the eye to (and through) a light-filled gallery with private spaces beyond. “There is a concrete wall behind it,” Healey says. “We drywalled over that and put the slats over the top. Because a lot of that wall had to remain, we added texture to it. The slat element just gave it more character.”

Before: Interior

After: Interior

Jen’s lighting choices are on full display throughout the home. Her favorites include The Big Bang fixture by Foscarini installed above the living room sofa, which was on her wish list for many years. “It looks like an outer space cosmic collision,” she says. “I’ve only seen it in commercial spaces, but I’ve been madly in love with it for a decade.”

Clean-lined fixtures over the dining table and simple tube-style pendants in the kitchen coordinate with each other perfectly. “I love lighting,” Jen says emphatically, noting that all of the home’s fixtures came from Illuminations, a lighting store in Washington, D.C.

Now that they’ve moved in, the Odess family enjoys the outdoor patio and its connection to the dining and living area the most. “I think the patio is my most magical space,” Jen says. “The view from the patio looking up at the colors, looking at the gallery is stunning, and the tree popping up over the gallery is magic to me. I can’t believe this is my piece of art and I get to live this dream every day.”

Jen loves to cook, and relishes the opportunity to host loved ones. “I love to have people over, relationship building—all of that,” she says.

The living and dining room boasts double-height ceilings with skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows, and expansive sliding doors, which can fully open to transform the room when it’s time to host a gathering. “We’re able to have people outside, then open the doors and you replenish food inside,” Jen says. “We’ve had a series of gatherings—the house continues to entertain well.”

In the evening, the home is lit softly, Jen says, due to dimmers installed throughout the home. “It’s lit in an ambient way, and not in a bright way,” she says. “Whereas during the day, you rarely have to turn a light on because the whole house is naturally lit.”

At the end of a day, Jen feels a sigh of relief turning into the gravel drive, viewable from the sink in the couple’s kitchen. “The house reflects my family and what matters to us,” she says, before exhaling. “It wasn’t meant to be anything else except for total joy and a work of art. I wasn’t going to buy just anything—we were going to wait until everything lined up.” No matter how long it was going to take, she says, “it was worth holding out for.”

More Before & After:

The Tide Turns for a Washed-Up Coastal Home Near Vancouver

Fresh Finishes Bring a Bay Area Eichler Into the Future

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Colleen Healey Architecture / @colleenhealey_architecture

Builder: Cabin John Builders / @cjbonline