A Sunny Start

Historic details meet contemporary style in a Claverach Park home.

- Amy Burger

For Becky Melander, moving into a 1920s Tudor in Clayton’s his-toric Claverach Park neighbor-hood was truly a homecoming. Melander grew up about a mile away, and when she and her husband, Dr. Matt Melander, an orthopedic surgeon, returned to St. Louis after living in Indiana for Matt’s medical fellowship, they narrowed their house hunt to Clayton because of the excellent schools and her own sense of nostalgia.

“I love it for the memories it holds for me,” she says. “I had a really terrific childhood, and I wanted my kids to have that.”

Becky and Matt are parents to three girls: Willa (age 14), Adelaide (12), and Lucia (10). Becky is a stay-at-home mother and the owner of Rebecca Melander Designs, purveyor of hand-painted wood and glass Christmas ornaments, which she sells at area boutiques.

Before their brief move out of state, the Melanders lived in a century home in Webster Groves, so they were no strangers to the charms and challenges of owning a historic house. Since buying their Clayton home in 2007, they have worked to both preserve and update it in their own livable, contemporary style.

Last year, they tackled their largest project to date: the renovation of a very ’80s kitchen. Previously closed off from the family room, an addition that Becky says had been “plunked on” to the back of the house disconnected the kitchen from the rest of the home. A loadbearing wall separated the rooms, however, and the Melanders spent two years reviewing kitchen plans to reconfigure it without tearing down the wall.

“Finally, we thought, ‘If you’re going to dip your foot in the pool, you might as well go swimming,’” says Becky. “I really didn’t want to combine these two rooms, but it made sense.”