This charming home reflects the owners’ interests: cooking, gardening, reading and listening to music.

The lovely Colonial Revival house was built in the 1920’s on a ridge in Bellevue, KY, providing expansive views. The current owners have made it into a warm and restful home that’s perfect for their hobbies and lifestyle.

Owners Jo Anne and Fred Warren make a few tweaks to the house when they purchased it 20 years ago. In addition to painting the rooms in gentle, cozy colors and softening the floors with a mix of rugs, they added custom bookshelves in the living room and completely renovated the kitchen. The house now provides a beautiful backdrop for their books, art and china collection. 

The kitchen storage was carefully planned to ensure space for an extensive selection of cookie cutters for baker Jo Anne and cookbooks, pots and pans for Fred, who cooks most of their meals.

Outside, the couple spent a few years creating the structure for a multi-tier garden and goldfish pond. The plants they then layered in visually connect their property with the wooded hillside and views from the ridge.

The Warrens love living in their Bellevue neighborhood, close enough to shops and restaurants to be convenient, but far enough that they can enjoy the natural beauty of their home on the ridge.

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Thank you to the exclusive sponsor of this episode:

 

This episode is sponsored by Keating, Meuthing and Klekamp. KMK Law is a nationally recognized law firm of approximately 120 lawyers in Cincinnati, Ohio.  They deliver sophisticated legal solutions to businesses of all sizes – from start-up companies to Fortune 50 corporations.

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More information about the property

Learn more about the City of Bellevue here.

Learn more about Bellevue’s charming downtown here.

The bookcases in the Warren’s living room were made by Cliff Wagner, owner of The Restoration Society.

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Additional photos of the property (slide show)

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If you’d rather read than watch, here is the transcript of the episode:

Jill Morenz, host: Hi, welcome to another episode of Beyond the Curb River City Living. I’m Jill Morenz with The Catalytic Fund. Today, I’m going to take you inside of a beautiful Foursquare Colonial Revival. That’s built on top of a ridge in Bellevue, Kentucky.

The exclusive sponsor of this episode is Keating Muething & Klekamp. KMK Law is a nationally recognized law firm of approximately 120 lawyers in Cincinnati, Ohio. They deliver sophisticated legal solutions to businesses of all sizes. From startup companies, to “Fortune 50” corporations.

The owners of this house have lived here for 20 years and have done a lot of work on the landscaping, including adding a multi-level terrace and goldfish pond and back.

Fred Warren, owner: Everyone who comes here says, “Wow you have a great view.” And we’d like to joke and say, “Well, that’s what’s gonna go on the tombstone that they had a great view.”

But you know, it’s a 1928 house and it’s very kind of an old fashion house, and we liked it. This is the favorite room because it has all this light, but they call it Florida room.[Jill] There are now doors to the sunroom on either side of the fireplace, but when the Warrens bought the house, the left-hand door was a window, which they opened up for better flow.

[Fred] Well, when we came there were built in bookcases against that wall but they were only about half the height of the wall. And they were very dark and we had more books than they would hold. So we went to the restoration workshops in, Latonia.

[Jill] After designing the bookcases, they hired Cliff Wagner to build them. They add a lot of character to this cozy restful room.

[Fred] I guess my favorite room is the kitchen which I helped a little bit in designing so, and I spent a lot of time.

Jo Anne Warren, owner: Yes. We both spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I’m a baker, and he does all the other cooking.

[Jill] When designing the kitchen, they went for a homey, collected look, with a combination of painted and stained cabinets, spaces for their China, cookbooks, cookie cutters and pots and pans. The tiles behind the stove were found in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Warrens also enlarged the window above the sink to bring in more light. This is definitely a working kitchen but also orderly and inviting.

The soft blush and mushroom colors in the dining room make it a quietly elegant space. The Warrens eat dinner in here every evening. When this house was built in 1928, these built-ins had solid wood doors that had hand-painted vases with flowers on them. Then a subsequent owner wallpapered right over that. So when Jo Anne and Fred bought the house, they had these custom built glass doors made for the cabinets so that they could showcase their china collection. The paper cranes hanging over the table are good luck charms made for them by a friend.

On the lower level of the house, the Warrens have a garage, laundry room and additional storage.

All the woodwork at the entry is original. The Warrens added that great carpet runner.

[Jo Anne] I had a friend who lived in North Avondale. She decided to move from where she was. This is one of the houses that she looked at. It turned out, she decided not to do it. So I said, well, heck she put a bid on that, I want to go see that house. So we came up and looked at it and then I had a Fred and I came and looked at it and the realtor was happy because he’d been trying to sell it for a long time. Why, was something wrong with it? There’s always something wrong with the house if it doesn’t sell. So what we found out was that we loved it and it was perfect for us but I was busy fixing up things in the other house. Fred was still working and I was retired and he said he wanted to buy this house. I heard that house was a shambles. I had so much to do to get up here. I said, “okay, honey, we’ll buy the house”. And we’ve loved it.

(Jill) Thank you so much for joining me on our tour of this welcoming restful home in Bellevue, Kentucky. I invite you to take a look at some of our other episodes at beyondthcurb.org. You can sign up to receive notifications when we have new episodes. And also when we have our in-person tours. On behalf of our sponsor and the catalytic fund, I’m Jill Morenz. Thanks for coming beyond the curb with us.

Beyond the Curb is presented by the Catalytic Fund, a company that, through its investments and real estate expertise, executes high impact real estate projects in Northern Kentucky and creates new spaces for living, working and entertainment.