It took 18 months, but Anne and Peter Davis have turned their 1950s-design and style property into an up-to-date showplace that marries custom with present day flair.

The couple experienced lived in the brick, a person-tale dwelling for 25 a long time and needed to do a whole renovation, but they also wished to keep the home’s traditional come to feel. With a objective of updating, modernizing and earning a several important improvements, they packed their furniture and possessions and moved out.

Working with architect Tommie Cockfield and contractor Bertel Cook, the Davises doubled their residing area while emphasizing the things that experienced bought them on the house — substantial rooms, tall ceilings and heaps of light-weight from home windows throughout the entrance and again. 

Property and Garden attribute at the household of Anne and Peter Davis Thursday June 17, 2021, in Baton Rouge, La.


The residence is fronted by a porch with seating. It prospects to the significant formal dwelling room/dining area with a hearth, hardwood floors and a broad opening that sales opportunities to the den. The bed room wing with two authentic bedrooms and a  new grasp is to the ideal of the entrance, and the new guest bedroom is to the still left of the kitchen area.

The Davises did not want an open up ground strategy, but they have been able to build a additional roomy outcome by widening the door openings and eradicating section of the wall amongst the den and kitchen area, which they had redone a couple of decades after they moved to the residence.

“You can move freely concerning the den and kitchen, but when we have corporation you can’t see the sink, you are unable to see the refrigerator from the den,” Anne Davis said.

The Davises included about six toes to the again of the den to develop move to a new learn bedroom, review and breakfast porch they added at the again of the bed room wing.

In the area of the original learn bedroom, they built a laundry home, lavatory and a butler’s pantry. On the opposite side of the property, they pushed again the garage and designed a new guest bed room.

The den normally experienced windows that appeared out on a modest patio in the backyard. Cockfield built a comprehensive wall of a lot more modern windows and a door that qualified prospects to a coated patio that wraps about from the new visitor bedroom to the new master bedroom. 

“The new prepare is in essence the very same strategy as the previous,” Anne Davis reported. “This household even now life the exact same as our old residence.”   

Over the many years, the Davises, both only young children, inherited antique home furnishings and ornamental parts from generations of their family members in Shreveport and Waterproof.

“We have applied a good deal of furnishings from both equally households,” Peter Davis claimed.

“Issues Peter and I really like,” his wife included.

At the entrance to the official dwelling room is an antique apparel armoire from Anne Davis’ grandparents. It is stuffed with a selection of Irish Belleek china from Peter Davis’ mom. In the official dining place are numerous paintings from his mother along with a framed assortment of sterling silver spoons from her travels as a youthful woman.

Relatives pieces are everywhere you go, which include beds in one particular bed room, panels from a loved ones screen in the powder room, an armoire hiding a tv in the grasp bedroom, a household dining table transformed to a desk in the study and quite a few household lamps and attractive objects.

Anne Davis’ grandparents experienced an altar in a bedroom of their household, so religious goods are placed during the house and in a specified peaceful corner of the new master bed room.

Peter Davis is particularly happy of four framed camera patents from his inventor grandfather, Carl Bornmann, who came to Alexandria from Binghamton, New York, to develop a mechanized strategy of bread output for Cotton Brothers Baking, the organization that produced Holsum Bread.

As a lot as the Davises appreciate their renovated residence, it’s the Hundred Oaks neighborhood with its silent streets, proven are living oaks and friendly neighbors they like the most.

“This is a serious community,” Anne Davis stated. “Most people is aware every person.”