34 SPRING 2017
B
ARBARA AND LAURENT VERNEREY ADORED MUCH OF
their Boxford home—a gracious shingled exterior
set amid lush greenery and gardens, including a
wisteria vine that ushered in spring with lavish
light-purple flowers. Not so much love bloomed,
however, for the home's interior.
"The previous house was dated," Barbara Vernerey
says. "It had a '90s look to it and needed to be updated."
Furthermore, she adds, there were big spaces that
weren't usable, and some of the layout, such as the
Removing a wall
between the
breakfast room and
sunroom opened up
the view. Right,
In the kitchen,
a new exhaust hood
was added and gray-
green subway tile
extends to the ceilng.
inspire
nshoremag.com/nshorehome/
first-floor sunroom, looked like a clunky add-on.
When the Vernereys decided to update their home,
they went to Steve Howell, co-owner with his wife, Susan
Howell, of Howell Custom Building Group in Lawrence.
There the couple found a trifecta of skills and talents for
the renovation of their Nantucket-style house: expertise
in engineering and planning, a reputation for quality,
and strong relationships with craftsmen and other ex-
perts, including interior designer Jenn Sanborn, ASID.
Steve Howell helped put himself through college at
Cornell—where he studied engineering—working on
residential framing crews prior to working at Hewlett-
Packard. Before he and his wife founded their business,
he built a timber-frame house in Boxford, where they
still live. "I was sort of a do-it-yourselfer," Howell says.
The Howells operate their business from one of the his-
toric mill buildings in Lawrence's Riverwalk complex
on the Merrimack River.
Sanborn, the principal of Sacris Design in Amesbury,
collaborated with Steve Howell on the project. First,
Howell says, "We worked together to mold the design
so it met the owners' objectives and budget."
Howell and Sanborn concentrated on the first floor's
kitchen, breakfast room, sunroom, and family room.
Throughout the first floor new decorative lighting and
energy-saving LED recessed lighting, designed by San-
born, casts a pleasant glow.
Sanborn's expertise in designing interior architec-
ture led her to suggest some key changes to the layout
of the 1990s home, with a lovely wraparound porch in
the front. "The biggest design goal for the Vernereys
was to connect the living space to the backyard,"
Sanborn says. To accomplish that, Sanborn's design
plan called fo removing a wall between the breakfast
