Sep. 19—ROCHESTER — In their Craftsman home in southwest Rochester, Shane Grivna said “there’s a million little details.”
Like the four tiles with trees and people enjoying nature representing their family. Or the hand-scraped white oak floors, “period specific” light fixtures on the main level, a built-in bench in the foyer and cloud lift designs in the wood pieces. Many of the ideas came from Arts and Crafts movement magazines and books. The movement in the late 1800s to early 1900s focused on artistry and details, which led to the Craftsman or bungalow-style homes.
“You just can’t find that anymore, the art of it is gone and so I think (we) just fell in love with the fact that those things always stood the test of time,” Shane said of Craftsman style homes. “They never look dated and you can just appreciate like somebody could have never touched that thing since the day it was built.”
Shane and Suzanne Grivna found a taste of the homes in North Carolina and hoped to bring in “old world craftsmanship” rather than “Monopoly houses stamped.” It was like designing a home from the early 1900s but with a build date of 2009.
At the center of their plans: family.
They chose the Mayo Woodlands neighborhood for the family-friendly values with homes in small cul-de-sacs and a park in the center. Mayo Woodlands, which is south of the Mayowood mansion on land originally owned by the Mayo family, includes the three neighborhoods of the Prairie, Forest and Village. While searching for “true arts and crafts” builders, they again weaved in choosing family with American Prairie Homes, a father and daughters team.
In about a year build, the team including John Hilla was “building everything by hand.” The double doors throughout the home are book-matched, or cut from the same wood with the pieces matching each other. The once Lakeville-based builder even stained the wood in the house.
“That was another unique thing like during the build to come here and they’ve got essentially it’s built but it’s all raw wood so you can’t really see the final, right? So you imagine all this with just like an unstained wood,” Shane said of their home at 2592 St. Peter Lane SW. “Then they come in with the magic and it’s all of a sudden it’s like it went from 2D to 3D, and usually you don’t experience that.”
As one of American Prairie Homes’ last builds, and only one in Rochester, the Grivnas love the “attention to detail” and bringing in the skills of the Craftsman style. Those details are now a legacy of Hilla’s woodworking and his love for family and friends. He died in a car crash in 2010.
A small detail, the cloud lift on doors and cabinets throughout the home, resembles the style by well-known Arts and Crafts movement architects’ Charles Greene and Henry Greene. Their designs included nods to Asian, European and Native American styles, according to the Smithsonian. At their most famous-designed home in Pasadena, California, the National Register of Historic Places describes the Gamble House with Tiffany glass windows, oak wedges and an enclosed porch. The movement’s bungalow style homes were popular in California, including a neighborhood designated as Bungalow Heaven which is about 2 miles from the Gamble House.
In all of the home’s architecturally meticulous pieces, the Grivnas say the home is also designed with functionality. Like the built-in cubbies in the mudroom, a wheelchair accessible bathroom and a Jack-and-Jill bathroom with two sinks. Suzanne also designed the laundry room with green and purple checkered floors and yellow counters to resemble the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers.
After 15 years in the home, there’s only one change they would make: add a light switch in the hallway by the kitchen.
Realtor Chelsey Graning of Coldwell Banker Realty said she enjoys the cozy, homey feel and the details engrained throughout the home. The four-bedroom and four-bathroom home is listed for $1,300,000.
“They’re (stone masons) pouring wet concrete and these guys are trying to delicately place these tiles … and they of course have no faith that it’s going to turn out. They have no idea what it’s going to look like,” Shane described of laser-cut stones shaped like fall leaves embedded on the front and three-season porches. “And the next day when they take off the edge of it, they were the proudest guys. They felt like such artists.”
While setting the home in the Craftsman style, they used “nature-oriented” paint colors for the exterior such as green with red-cladded windows. A series of stained glass pieces draw in the aspen trees with the feeling of a sunset glowing through the trees in their lower level living room.
As a family, they loved watching movies, creating art and delighting in treasure hunts for acorns and leaves in the woods. Their cabin-esque three-season porch also has a garden of wildflowers and pumpkins behind.
“We had to pick out the wood species for all the woodwork and we wanted stuff that looked really natural. Like I love all the little broken parts and then the knots,” Suzanne said of the knotty alder woodwork. “That organic look.”
As a large private park in Rochester, as Shane described, the Woodlands has more than 200 acres of neighborhood owned land. The homes are built on an east-west grid for maximum exposure to the sun, the Post Bulletin reported in 2002. Family descendants of Dr. Charles Mayo worked with Minneapolis architects to develop the neighborhoods before the land was sold in 2006.
“There’s the privacy but then having the woods and having the woods usable to just say, ‘Oh, we’re going to go back in there and hike around’ it was just really unique because you felt like you were miles and miles away from town,” Shane said.
After living in a home of many details, there’s pieces the Grivnas would love to take with them like the fireplace tiles and a Winnie the Pooh wall quote.
“It’s really just the way that they (American Prairie Homes) build stuff, it’s the attention to detail, I think that’s what we appreciated the most,” Shane said while also noting the handmade doors. “These are things that most people aren’t looking for. And you’re like when you know it’s there and you appreciate that it’s not just from a factory.”