Ron and Alison Bolt
MAKING THEIR MARK

Due to an unusually wet spring, Mark had to wait six weeks for the building site to dry out enough before he and his crew could get to work.

“I sent Alison pictures of bear prints in the mud so she could understand what we were dealing with,” Mark says. “We don’t have mud season in Maryland,” Alison quips. “That’s one of the things we had to learn about.”

Once construction got underway, Mark and his crew worked off plans that Ron and Alison drew up together and finished the home in just nine months. The result is an airy yet cozy home with an open loft and lots of windows that usher in plenty of natural light. “This is a house of a thousand details, and I love them all,” says Alison, who decorated the home herself.

Details include a custom sewing studio upstairs, where Alison can spread her quilts out while she works on them. She customized the space with a “bear’s paw” quilt pattern in the room’s linoleum floor, and quilt-like diamond overlays accent the pine railings on the stairs and upper walkways. To make it easier to move sewing equipment between floors, she installed an automatic dumbwaiter that goes between her sewing studio and the pantry and garage downstairs.

“You’re able to open the dumbwaiter from the garage and stick your groceries right through into the pantry,” Alison beams. “It’s a tremendous feature.”

In the kitchen, black soapstone counters sit on top of custom cherry cabinets, and Hawaiian green granite tops a center island. A cherry wood counter stretches to the left of an opening above the sink, which offers views of the wooded yard. “I wanted to mix a lot of different surfaces and textures to brighten the home up,” Alison says.

Old growth, heartwood pine covers the floors on the main level, where the Bolts socialize and entertain. But upstairs, where rugs cover most of the floor space, the couple chose less-expensive spruce. “It looks just fine,” Alison says. Vertical, V-notch pine paneling and white wallboard brighten up interior walls.

Moose-and-bear motifs live alongside the couple’s collection of European keepsakes to create an eclectic decor that Alison calls “a little bit moose, and a little bit Mozart.” Nowhere is that more apparent than in the sunroom, which boasts a family-heirloom piano beneath a portrait of Amadeus himself, next to moose-pattern tables. With full-length windows, the room makes for a great reading nook.

“That’s my favorite spot,” says Ron. “It’s especially comfortable in the winter, because it catches all the sun.”

Next: A TWISTED IDEA