When Staci and Colin Eagen moved into their Reston home on Lake Newport, they didn’t spend much time around the water.
The couple’s daughters were young, “and we were just always sort of scared of them being too close to the water,” Staci said.
“So we never really did much in the backyard or took advantage of the lake,” she said.
“But we sure do now.”
The girls are now ages 16 and 18 and along with their parents enjoy the results of a major remodeling and rebuild that added two new kitchens — one indoor and one outdoor — to the Eagen home.
“We absolutely love it,” Staci said. “It changed the way we live in our house. We are outside all the time now, either in the outdoor kitchen, in the outdoor dining area or down on the boat dock, which we also had redone.”
The indoor kitchen was a challenge. So much work had to be done, including the complete reinforcement of the ceiling, that the family was without a kitchen for a full year.
“We lived in rubble,” Staci said. “Looking back, it was worth it, but it wasn’t easy.”
Staci said Federal Stone and Brick of McLean and its owner, Doug DeLuca, finished the outdoor kitchen and dining room more quickly.
“People are really getting into the outdoor living spaces,” DeLuca said. “In a climate like this, where you can enjoy the outdoors up to 10 months out of the year, it really makes a lot of sense to expand a house’s footprint through outdoor living.”
It can make economic sense as well. DeLuca said though remodeling can cost from $200 to $300 a square foot, he could build an outdoor living space for $30 to $40 a square foot.
The outdoor addition has a dining room, kitchen and an area to entertain that features a stone fireplace and pergola.
“It was important to have an unimpeded view of the water and nature from anywhere in the addition,” DeLuca said. “So that’s how we designed and built it.”
The kitchen features Viking appliances including a natural gas grill and refrigerator, a warming drawer and recycling stations. To deal with columns that stood at the back of the house, DeLuca shrouded them in stone, and installed fountains in the side and water basins at the bottom for a four-sided water feature that fits in well with the lake.
“We had these two ugly columns that stood right in the middle of the doors that you used to walk outside,” Staci said. “We were trying to figure out how to make it look nicer, and Doug came up with this water feature that is really beautiful.”
DeLuca said the sound of the water from the fountains is part of the overall design scheme.
“It’s important that an outdoor living area not just use every space, but you also want to appeal to every sense,” he said. “You want to see the water, you want to hear the water, you want to sit and relax and enjoy the look and the sounds of the outdoors.”
Out by the lake, DeLuca installed a bench and a planter on the Eagens’ dock.
“Before we had this staircase coming down off of our dock,” she said. “It wasn’t all that attractive. Now, it’s very, very pretty, and we spend a lot of time out there, sitting by the water. It’s very relaxing.”
DeLuca also restored two fireplaces and some columns inside the house.
“My husband owns his own business and works a lot,” Staci said. “We don’t travel a lot. We wanted to be able to spend a lot of time at home and really enjoy it. We wanted our girls to want to spend time here with their friends.
“That’s what we have with our outdoor living space,” she said. “We have the house we always wanted.”
