Feature Home: Formal yet family-friendly

In planning their 3-bedroom home in Spanish Wells, two young daughters and two small dogs didn't sway Matthew and Lisa Miller from pursuing elegance and practicality.

"We had to make come concessions to reality," said Lisa Miller with a laugh. "I wanted dark-colored walls to hide little fingerprints (the walls are painted chocolate brown), and floors that would resist kids and pets (mottled bronze porcelain tile). I've had white floor tile. Never again."

That tile was in the house the family lived in while their new one was being built by the family business.

"I used to be in the building business with my dad here in the Bonita area, but I left to work in the high-tech business," said Matthew Miller. "That involved a lot of international travel, and after 9-11, that was no longer attractive. We moved back here from Washington, D.C., and I joined my dad and my brother in a new construction business, West Points Development. A lot of my family live in Spanish Wells, and our company has lots here. We think it's a great location."

But the builder's wife is no slouch when it comes to home building. Lisa Miller did floor plan drafting work for the family construction business before the move to Washington.

"We were looking for an easy living plan that had formal living spaces," she said. "We went through Sater Design Group's floor plan book and found that this home suited very well. Matt and Dan (Sater) worked out a few changes on the elevation to make it more Mediterranean."

"There were dormers we wanted to eliminate, and we wanted the pitch of the roof to be less steep," Matthew Miller explained.

They added precast stone trim, and painted the outside a medium shade of copper.

"We put a fountain on the wall on one side of the driveway and included a seating area on the other side, to give the approach a more European spirit," he said.

That spirit continues as the front door opens with a view of the chandeliered living room.

"Daria Collins is the design director of West Points Design Group, so we felt very comfortable working with her," said Lisa Miller. "She approved all the major furniture pieces, which we got at local showrooms, and she helped us with accessories and window treatments. I showed her magazine pictures of what I liked so that she could zero in on the right things."

"One of the challenges was to get the right look for the living room drapery panels," Collins said. The Millers loved the formal lines of a faun-colored chaise-style sofa and two Italian-mood armless chairs upholstered in a diamond-pattern fabric. The ceiling has a bronze, textured faux-paint treatment.

"We decided on puddled panels of Dupioni silk in a doeskin color for the drapery, attached at the top with tie-back medallions and actually tied back with tasseled and crystal-beaded tiebacks."

An oriental silk area rug adds warmth and softness to the seating area and a marbletop coffee table burnished with gold and silver leaf has the formal characteristics to blend with its surroundings.

The ornate chandelier in the living room is similar to, but not exactly like, the chandelier in the dining room. The same can be said of the faux-painted ceilings in each room.

"We were thrilled to find a dining table and chairs with lots of carving, and an equally detailed, marbletop buffet from the same collection," said Lisa Miller. "Daria came up with just the right floral painting to hang over the buffet in the niche. The colors complemented the tones of the wood and fabric, and the mood was also harmonious."

"Niches can add high drama to any wall in which they're installed," Collins said. "All three in the Miller home have been painted with a Venetian plaster effect. The one in the casual dining area is edged with grape-patterned precast stone, and we found an interesting painting of grapes that we set in the center."

Precast stone also decorates the kitchen, where the granite-slab backsplash and pot rack-style chandelier supply more Mediterranean ambience.

"They call that granite Baltic Brown," Collins said, "but there isn't much brown it. The 'brown' appearance comes from flecks of blacks and greens and a tiny bit of mauve."

The granite's flecks are reflected in the family room seating, composed of a coordinating sofa, easy chair and ottoman and a harmonizing pull-up chair.

The tufted sofa is a deep olive tweed, with cushions in a gold, olive-and brick-floral, according to Collins. The easy chair and ottoman are covered completely in the floral and the pull-up chair is Empire in style, with leather arms, a cream chenille seat and an animal print tapestry back.

To accent the wood floor, they chose an area rug with a Marrakech design in paprika, mustard and olive.

"Daria designed the entertainment center, and I was responsible for all the lighting and audio visual elements in the home," Matthew Miller said. "We have a remote that controls all the lighting in the house, and there's a plasma TV hanging on the wall of the lanai."

While the lanai TV is mounted unadorned, the family room screen is housed in a customized structure that includes spiral columns and wrought iron grills backed by faux-painted panels and cast stone trim. The storage cabinets are finished to match the kitchen's maple cabinets.

"And that's not all I did," Matthew Miller added. "I helped plan the landscaping and I designed the pool area with a spa with waterfalls, a wading ledge for the girls and a hand-picked rock coping. There's a table and four chairs built into the pool, and the deck floor's deep terra cotta color was selected with the girls and the dogs in mind."

Matthew Miller also gets the credit for selecting the canopied four-poster for the master suite. The headboard and footboard have leather insets and nailhead trim, and the nightstands are cylindrical, fluted, and marble-topped. The copper/bronze/black duvet is covered with elaborately trimmed pillows.

"I wanted a dressing area somewhere in the master suite," he said, "so in the entry to the master bath, we did a little built-in for me on one side with a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. There's a bench for me to use and four drawers underneath it.

"Of course it had to be beautified," he said, chuckling, "so there's a plant ledge and the bench is fitted with pillows on top and art above."

Katie, 5, and Madeline, 7, have identical sage green-walled rooms with white four-posters and the same cherry wood floors that anchor the kitchen and family room. While the formality is at a minimum in the girls' rooms, it is not altogether absent. Each room is fitted with a petite crystal chandelier.

The Millers laugh when asked how long the project took.

"It didn't help at all to be all in the family," Lisa Miller confided. "The job took about nine months, because any time a customer needed something, off went our workers to help."

Home Profile

Locale: Spanish Wells

Profile: 3-bedroom/den/2½-bath single-family home

Area: 3,000 air-conditioned square feet; 4,500 total square feet

Built: 2002