Angie Arkfeld says her builder’s style was traditional compared to her contemporary tastes. However, she liked the open template of a particular villa already underway, and she loved the neighborhood developing near 192nd and Pacific streets west of Shadow Ridge Country Club. So within the parameters of a set floor plan and builder limitations, Arkfeld made some important distinctions to make her new home patently hers.
“There was only so much I could do, but I changed as much as I could,” she says. Some of her ideas weren’t structurally feasible, but her bold approach helped her get key features she wanted. “I would ask the builder, ‘Can I do this?’ I tried to kind of go out of the box with everything.”
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One big box—or rather, frame—Arkfeld stepped out of was windows and doors. She modified the shape and positioning of many of her windows, such as placing them in groups of three squares in a series next to a staircase, and using several horizontal styles high enough to need no coverings. “I have to have lots of light,” she says.
Her front door is a playful lime green and her gray interior doors are painted with white lines to create a modernistic, multi-panel effect. The unique features evident from the outside are subtle, Arkfeld says; her house integrates nicely into the neighborhood, but she’s been amused to discover that its custom elements have prompted several people moving into the development to ask the builder about those options.
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Arkfeld rolled the color wheel right out of the box with dashes of chartreuse, teals, and magenta throughout her home’s interior. “I’m not into tans…I love color and I’ve always had color,” she says. “And I had a lot from my previous house I wanted to use.”
The primary factor behind moving into a new home may have been downsizing after a divorce, Arkfeld says, but that didn’t mean she wanted to start from scratch. Art and furnishings were transplanted from her previous house, mostly pieces she picked up from boutiques and home decor stores over time simply because they appealed to her. She’d always enjoyed moving pieces around and swapping them out from time to time in her previous home—r“just to give it a new look or feel here and there,” Arkfeld says—and finding new places for everything in the new home was a challenge she enjoyed.
The blue-and-green color scheme was carried over from her previous home and extends to new rooms, such as the lower level bar. “I like my backsplash with its teal tile,” Arkfeld says.
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Some decor elements couldn’t be directly transferred, so they were reestablished in new ways, such as brushed metal fireplace tiles that echo some metallic accents she liked in her previous home.rA designer friend, Janine Dunn, suggested bringing magenta accents into the picture, including dominantly in the powder room and as a focal point of Arkfeld’s oasis of a master bedroom.
“I knew I wanted a black wall somewhere and we ended up putting that in my bedroom behind my magenta headboard,” Arkfeld says. The rest of the room is painted gray and the white beams of the coffered ceiling stand out against the black ceiling surface. She recently re-covered two chairs her grandmother bought as a teenager in 1952 and created a comfortable sitting area with a sentimental touch.
r“I love spending time in there,” she says. A master closet she doesn’t have to share adds to the appeal.r
“My closet at my old house was very small and that was one thing I knew I wanted to change in this home. I love clothes, shoes, and jewelry, and I wanted a nice-size closet. I had [the builder] build in shelving for shoes, sweaters, et cetera, and also a bureau in the middle for my jewelry,” she says, adding that the closet is so roomy, “I also put a little desk in there because I have no office space here.”
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Arkfeld’s fondness for accessories extends to fun and contemporary lighting fixtures throughout the home, many of them ordered online and all selected with care. “They’re like jewelry in a house,” she says. “It adds so much.” A wireless home sound system is another personal enhancement that she appreciates every day, Arkfeld says.
The modern kitchen has mitered quartz countertops and unusual champagne-colored cabinets. Arkfeld says Dunn talked her into the color, but she loves it.
r“I don’t see anything like them and everyone always comments on them.” The kitchen is also her favorite first-floor vantage point. r
“Everything is so open,” she says, making it easy to cook for guests or chat with her teenagers (Ava, 15, and Jaden, nearly 17) or 20-year-old daughter Sydney hanging out nearby. “I can oversee everything.”
Heading into the family’s second summer at the home, Arkfeld says it was an adjustment at first leaving a busy neighborhood to live on a property backed by trees. However, an expanded deck with sectional seating has become a lovely, peaceful space. “I’m very social and I love people,” she says. “But I do love sitting on the deck and looking out at the birds.”
This article was printed in the July/August 2019 edition of OmahaHome. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
