When homeowners Carly Zuba and Andrew Rima moved from the city of Chicago to the suburbs with their two young boys, they started looking for historic homes they could fix up in the charming town of Evanston. The couple soon realized they needed more design freedom than an older home could offer.

Pivoting from a renovation to new construction, the couple engaged architect Beth DeBaker and builder Tom Kenny of Scott Simpson Design + Build. At the top of Carly and Andrew’s wish list was a design-forward entertainer’s kitchen. “We spend ninety percent of our time in the kitchen,” says Carly.

Carly—an attorney turned interior designer—dreamed up the unconventional idea of incorporating a servery window opening the home’s kitchen to the outdoors. “I had seen servery windows done before in warmer climates, like in California, but I had never seen one in the Midwest,” she says. Undeterred, she took the idea to DeBaker and Kenny, who quickly found a fit in Marvin Ultimate. “I’ve been putting in Marvin windows for thirty-four years,” says Kenny, who sourced the large, push-out servery window—a custom offering from Marvin. “One of the advantages of using Marvin is this creative advancement and always designing new things, and we really had the opportunity to take advantage of that here.”

Along with the other Marvin windows selected, the window’s rich black frame and clean lines help unify traditional and contemporary design elements. “I knew that I wanted a more streamlined, narrow-frame window to complement our drywall returns and more of the modern features within our house,” says Carly.

The expansive awning window connects the kitchen to a screened porch, where friends and family can gather. The quartzite kitchen counter fluidly becomes an outdoor bar with casual stool seating (“the first place that our friends like to hang out,” says Carly) where food and drinks can be passed through. “It gives the kitchen this really cool indoor/outdoor feel,” she says. “So whenever we have it open, it kind of feels like I’m cooking in an outdoor kitchen, which I absolutely love.”

While the frigid climate on Chicago’s north shore makes it impractical to spend time outside during much of the year, the family makes the most of the space on warm and mild days. “The servery window is definitely my favorite spot within the home,” says Carly. “It’s just something that you don’t see very often, and it’s a design feature that makes this house very unique.”

Read more at dwell.com/marvin.

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