Home tour to highlight additions, custom designs

You may believe a perfectly decorated home exists after you see the one where Diane and Ron Nobles live. And it could cross your mind that Tricia and John Geary's expanded farmhouse is the perfect place to raise a family.

These are two of the seven homes open Sunday, June 12, to benefit the Arlington Heights Historical Society. Other homes are a 1950s “castle” with a turret that mafia boss Tony Accardo built for his brother, two bungalows, a Cape Cod and another vintage farmhouse.

What's to like about the Nobles' house in Scarsdale Estates?

Well, the handmade, hand-painted English wallpaper from de Gournay in the master bedroom is a good place to start. It is a chinoiserie design of flowers and birds, which means it has an Asian feel as interpreted by Europeans.

The flowers in pink, white and green or blue and multicolored birds flow across a golden brown background. And the design travels around the room without repeating, which you would expect in wallpaper.

Another delight is the mural of Tuscany that David Ryan of Rolling Meadows painted around the dining room walls to give the Nobles the feeling of dining in an Italian villa where they have stayed.

But the real secret in this home is how well everything goes together. And for that Ron Nobles credits designer Laurin B. Cowling of Interior Directions in Oak Park and builder Jim Milapanes of Arlington Heights' Homes by James.

“The palette and the furniture style in every room work in tandem,” explained Cowling. “You can pick up a piece and move it to another room, and it works. Nothing is out of sync, but it doesn't get boring even though it's essentially the same palette in every room.”

What about Diane Nobles' red office? How does that fit harmoniously with the light greens and golds in most of the first floor?

Well, there's red in the carpet of the family room on one side of the office, and look at that pillow on the cream wing chair in the living room across the entry hall. “It may not necessarily be exact, but it's enough of a reference to tie one room to another,” said the designer.

Milapanes and his family lived in the home before building another nearby, so many features were already set when the Nobles moved here four years ago from Mount Prospect.

Ron Nobles, a management consultant, jokes that the couple purchased the house mainly for its unfinished basement because they wanted to turn it into a place their teenage daughters would bring their friends. But the locked wine cellar — with another mural of trompe l'oeil to extend the room — makes it obvious adults like this space, too. Diane Nobles is an attorney who just retired as compliance officer for a major corporation.

Visitors will notice subtle faux finishes like striation and a Venetian plaster look.

Several settees throughout the house are also treasures, especially the caned one in the second floor hall that is covered in delicate blue silk. Some of the Asian touches were collected by Ron's parents.

Details that Ron Nobles appreciates are the 10-foot ceilings on the first floor and the white crown molding and extra-high baseboards. The fireplaces are extra tall, too, for a New England feel, and the one in the living room is faux painted to look a little less new. The staircase with spindles from an 18th century New York home spirals above a floor of pillow-edged limestone.

The homeowner wants you to know he designed the wine cellar and came up with several ideas for the house, including the design Ryan painted on the coved ceiling in the master bedroom, which just looked too bare.

In 1998 when Tricia and John Geary moved into the farmhouse on the corner lot in the neighborhood north of the library, they didn't have any children, but they knew they'd love the little park just one house away.

Now they have four youngsters, and the charming century-old home has a modern addition with a new kitchen, family room and master suite designed by architect Robert Flubacker.

“We both just fell in love with it, with the character, the quaintness,” said Tricia Geary.

Peter J. Mors, who later was mayor of Arlington Heights, had the home built by Henry G. “Carpenter” Meyer in 1905. The bill for the house and double lot was $4,500.

The Gearys, the fifth owners, struggled mightily to steam and remove wallpaper after they moved in. Chunks of plaster came down, too, so they had to have the walls skim coated.

The bay window in the dining room and the porch that the Gearys finished into a four-season room bring in a lot of light that Tricia Geary loves. She decided to let one of the windows in the bay open into the kitchen when they built the addition in 2005, rather than give up any of that light.

A previous owner decorated the bay windows with leaded glass trimmed with a ribbon of blue or green stained glass and with a larger amount of stained glass on the French door to the porch.

The farm sink in the kitchen was one thing that Tricia Geary knew she wanted because it “seems like it's always been in the house. We tried to keep the character of the house.”

Besides the granite countertops and cherry cabinets that include a pantry with pullout drawers, the room has a Viking range, wall oven and microwave and a two-story eating area with lots of windows.

That's the only place where Tricia Geary decided she needed decorating help. The window treatments she ended up with are red with large, light flowers. With the help of the owner of a shop that has since closed, she installed drapes with a charming smocking near the top on the French door to the porch, and had valances made from a matching quilt.

The walls on the first floor are light green and gold with red in the dining room.

Throughout the home window seats with thick cushions on top of radiators add a warm touch. And old-house fans will love the oak flooring that the Gearys had refinished after taking up carpeting. Even the porch turned out to have hardwood flooring under the turf-style covering.

Tricia Geary stays home with the couple's four children, and her husband is in management with a large insurance company.

The sketch of the bungalow near the front door was the home of John's grandmother in Chicago, and the leaded glass window with a gold and green design that hangs in the living room window came from that house, too.

“The people who bought the home replaced the windows with new ones and were going to throw them away,” said Tricia. “John's sister asked if she could have them and gave us one.”

Tricia's heritage is represented, too, with a photo of her mother's large extended family at her mother's first communion.

<b>If you go</b>

<b>What: </b>Arlington Heights Historical Society's House Walk & Tea

<b>When: </b>Noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, June 12

<b>Where: </b>Arlington Heights Historical Museum, 110 W. Fremont

<b>Tickets: </b> $25 for members of the historical society, $30 for nonmembers; available day of the event

<b>Tea: </b>1 to 3 p.m., $10; tickets must be purchased by Thursday, June 9.

<b>Information: </b>(847) 255-1225 or <a href="http://www.ahmuseum.org" target="_blank">ahmuseum.org</a>