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Outside the Princeton home of Duff and Julie Dimmig, the environment is inviting. The afternoon shadows play with your imagination as you stroll up the sidewalk to the Craftsman-type home, and the natural surroundings automatically make you feel at peace ... at home.
If you’re a fan of American architect, interior designer, writer and educator Frank Lloyd Wright, you’ve certainly knocked on the right door. Like Wright who believed one should design structures which are in harmony with humanity and one’s environment, the Dimmigs, working with a Kansas architect, have created a haven that clearly invites nature into their home.
“I plagiarized everything,” Julie said, referring to the trips she made to many of Wright’s structures, making mental notes of what she admired of the famous architect’s work.
Julie refers to her home built on a hill as “modern Craftsman,” noting the Craftsman style of a structure is basically timeless. Referring to her home as a reverse two-story house, the crux of the 2,800-square-foot home lies on the main level, which includes a living room, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom/bath, laundry room, another bathroom and a storage closet. There’s also a wonderful screened in porch, perfect for a relaxing cup of coffee in the morning or an after-dinner cold drink, plus a wrap-around deck on the back of the home. But rather than the Dimmig’s two children — Evinne, a junior at Emerson College in Boston, Mass., and Harrison, a senior at the Illinois Math and Science Academy — having their bedrooms upstairs, the second level of the home is reversed and below the main floor on the garden level.
The Dimmigs bought the land in the Charter Hill subdivision three years before they ever built their home there. The lot was perfect, filled with all that nature has to offer. Julie said she spent considerable time studying the site for the family’s new home before even one shovel of dirt was turned. When it was finally time to build, the project began in June of 2001 and was finally finished in April of 2002.
“Some of it was fun; some of it was not fun,” she said, admitting “I would never do it again.”
Julie jokes that throughout the process and even yet today, she wrestles with the question: WWFLWD? — What Would Frank Lloyd Wright Do?
What Julie Dimmig did, though, would probably have Wright smiling. In fact, he’d probably be very impressed. Like Wright’s structures, the angles in the home are at 45-degree angles, rather than the typical 90-degree angles.
“I find it very interesting to my eye,” she said of the angles, the nooks and crannies the 45-degree angles create.
Throughout the home, nature floods the curtain-less and blind-less windows — the many, many windows. In most rooms in the house, one forgets they aren’t outdoors, as the natural setting melds with the earthen tones of the home, coupled with a splash of color Julie adds here and there.
“We wanted to bring nature in; we wanted to bring the outside inside,” she said. “Fall and winter are so lovely ... I don’t even hang any art on the walls,” she added, noting that Mother Nature is her artist.
A self-described minimalist, Julie said she has taken a few “twists and turns” in her decorating style, but by and large, the style of the home speaks for itself.
“It’s a nice, solid, comfortable home, she said. “I think it was a good call. I’m very happy here. We’re home a lot. It’s nice just to have a few people over. I’m content. Isn’t life grand!”
She said her family has been careful to respect the environment throughout their 10 years in the home, and they’ll continue to live with nature in their Craftsman-style haven.
“The trees were here before us,” she said. “We’ve got to respect that ... We’re just truly blessed.”
