Elaine Markoutsas

''TODAY`S MASTER bedroom is like a sanctuary,'' says John Durbin of nuHaus, a firm that specializes in audio-video installations among other custom cabinetry and design services. ''People go there to...

WHEN THE Near North graystone was built in 1887, it was, no doubt, a gracious single-family home. Converted to a six-flat, possibly as early as the `30s, the building had...

SUSAN AND DAVID Heller were expecting their first child when they bought a Victorian single-family home in the city that required a bit of remodeling. Interior designer Bobbi Packer, her...

WHAT THEY had was a mid-1950s split-level ranch home in the north suburbs that was made of brick with tongue-in-groove cedar vertical siding. What they wanted was a modern shingle-style...

AS THE CHILDREN OF Mel and Bobbie Adess got older, the need for more family room space increased. So a garden room was expanded and a media/ entertainment unit was...

INTEGRATING THE INDOORS with a lovely outdoor space was the goal of a garden-room addition to a home the owner describes as ''Colorado contemporary.'' What makes it unusual is that...

THE MOST COMmon question by visitors to the house that Tim Fox and Larry Wahls built is, ''What was this before?'' Indeed, from the street the rectangular block of Dryvit,...

IF IT WEREN`T FOR THE super location, high above Michigan Avenue, the condominium probably would not have been so appealing. To recapture some of the charm and warm ambience left...

LAURIE CARVER and Jim Lee were married one year ago in the French Normandy north-suburban home they had purchased a week before the wedding. Before they even settled in, they...

THE THING SANDRA and Howard Mandell knew when they moved from their north-suburban home to a Near North highrise was the kitchen in their new condominium wouldn`t work. Stylistically and...