Openness Meets Intimacy

I can’t help but hear my mother’s voice repeating a tidbit of parental wisdom: “Good things come to those who wait.” Well, seeing how designer Dino Maniaci fell in love with his dream home 25 years before actually purchasing it, let’s just say mothers can be quite perceptive.

Maniaci had liked the location and style of the Madison, Wisconsin, midcentury house, but he particularly prized its setback, far from the street, which gave it intimacy in a relatively dense neighborhood. At the time, though, he couldn’t financially undertake its tricky interior design challenges. The previous owner, who was in a wheelchair, had reconfigured the plumbing and electrical elements — outlets were 2 feet off the ground, for example — and created wide corridors in an ad hoc fashion.