Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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185 fitting a comfortable modern staircase in a Colonial home. "They are expert problem solvers," Sue says. "There was no issue that arose that they were not able to remedy." Once the puzzle pieces in the garage had been identified and put in their proper places, the couple was dismayed to discover that nothing remained of the home's original hearth room, where the cooking fire would have been. "We had to do some research to recapture the style and spirit of what it might have been like," Kelsey says, adding that historic documents from the Pea- body Essex Museum and research on the Internet led the dialogue between the designers and the homeowners to craft something that seemed fitting for the space. "Their direction to us was very clear: They wanted to put things back to the extent they could and make things right," Kelsey says. "They see themselves as care- takers of the history and the house." Of course, the couple wasn't prepared to go back to open-hearth cooking, so the other directive was to add the technology needed for comfortable living today as unobtrusively as possible, Kelsey says. An addition created a modern kitchen—one that stayed true to the historic charms of the rest of the house.