At 52, Laura's canvases are bigger. She designs with her husband, Ralph, 54, and their three adult children in mind, but her quest for good design is a constant.
Sometimes, it's an easy fix - she'll even rearrange the furniture in a hotel room or a rented condo if it doesn't feel right. Other times, it's more of a challenge.
When they first looked at a house for sale on a quiet lane in Radnor in early 2006, it was "really awful," Laura says. Built in the 1950s, it looked very institutional, with flat lines, a hip roof, and plain windows. An angled wrought-iron railing fractured the natural lines of the house, magnified by the flat garage roof and unadorned windows.
A generator and a large walk-in freezer gave the place a "survivalist vibe," she says. But Ralph fell in love with the two-acre garden, and Laura saw potential in the property's privacy, light-filled rooms, and newly refurbished kitchen.
With Laura as decorator (she owns a franchise of the national chain Decorating Den Interiors) and working with the design team of Peter Archer, of Archer & Buchanan Architecture, and Ken Cassella, of Cassella Builders Inc., the Riedels initiated a three-part renovation that concluded in November 2009.
The first part of the project was limited: The already spacious kitchen received a few tweaks, and Laura helped her husband design a sleek, masculine media room downstairs. Then, she says, the project "kind of grew."
They knew the low-ceilinged master bedroom needed an update, which they achieved by increasing the angle of the original hip roof and adding dormers that provide light and character to the house's vertical profile.
