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H E A D T O T H E H I L L S R O M E S O A P E

$ bedazzle Built to Shark River Shangri-La is Craftsman-style perfection

A lan h a is a retail and residential interior designer. Tom Smith, a managing director and chief of compliance at JPMorgan Asset Management, keeps the firm out of

trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What both men lntug to their very different professions is a

laser-beam focus on the nitty-gritty GGercing the details right is paramount in each of their fields.

That same careful precision is evident in their dazzling, 2-year-old Chman-style home in the Shark River Hills

section of Neptune. Nestled among the till ma like a beau- tiful bird, with a cornman- view of the river below, the three-bedroom bungalow literally has stopped &c along sedate Pinewood Drive as passersby drink in all those deli-

I cious details. They're ga-ga over the gently sloping roof lines, the wicker-

green shqles, the custom-made Craftsman windows and l lgt fixtures, the Wiam Morris-inspired pergola that lets the

h&t shine down upon a h n t porch of TAKE THE shimmering, copper quartzite slate from

India and the "waterline" of dry-stack Audio stone that wraps along the foundation in www.app.com/ goodl~fe/srh the b n t of the house, anchoring it to a

rugged landscape, sokned by a profu- sion of Shasta daisies, day lilies, gentle Japanese maples and feathery pines.

When Kosa and Smith, both 52, are outdoors, they can scarcely get a chore in edganse for all the people who stop to ask about this or that, or simply to congratulate them.

'Tve never experienced that before, and I've lived in nice houses; says Smith, who grew up along Long Island's Great South Bay B lot of people have told me it's the nicest house they've ever seen - not just in the area, but anywhere. And I'm k, Wow, how did this happen?'"

Yes, pray tell, how? It all started six yeas ago when Kosa and Smith went look-

ing for a third house. The faa that the couple already owned a condominium in

the upscale Harmon G v e Towers in Secaucus, as well as a summer home on Eire Island, off Long Island, might not sug- gest the need for a third residence in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, but they had their reasons.

As anyone who has been there can attest, the ever-worsening s u m m e d e traflic can dampen anyone's ardor for Fi Island; particularly after a four- or five-hour Sunday night crawl back to Manhattan. A h , the island effectively shuts down in

STORY BY SHANNON MULLEN P H O T O G R A P H Y BY BOB BlELK

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H E A D T O T H E H I L L S H O W E S C A P E . .

room'" - with its wall

the Northwest than it is at the Jersey shore.

'The American Craftsman movement, which placed a premium on simplicity of desii and Iugh-caliber aafbmamhip, srartedinthefinalyearsofthe19thcen- cury as a d o n against the excess of dK Gilded Am! and the cheap, mass-pm- . . duced bric-arbrac that &the twilight ofthe Vmrian era. Cratisrnan homes were typically one- or one-and-

I a-half story bungalows with low roof

I lines, bur-sided, tapered column sup- ports, airy front porches, an open floor plan, + beams and h, built-in mob for storage d sating. The idea was to blend in with the envi- ronment, not dominate it, so there was an emphasi on using wood, stone and &r nand materials from the area.

TheGdismanstyieappeakdtoKasa and Smith because its dean lines and ti* almost Asian minimalism created all kinds of i n m t i n g possibiities for bkndmg uadiaonal and contemporary elements. The style also fit perfectly with their vision for a haxlse that would invite their garden indoors.

From the start, Kasa and Smith wae demmined to be extremely hands-on with the project, with Kosa taking the design lead. It was vital ebat the profes- sionals they hired to implement their very de6nite ideas felt comfmbie with that sort of working relationship, and just as impmmtl~ that they shared the couple's enthusiasm for creating some- dung special. It wasn't all sunshine and roses: The couple switched architects mid-meam, bemngonUdcQ Ckcom OfFatLceforthesatthrun.

w h e n ~ a n d s m i t h ~ a n x u r d

for a buildeq they found exactly what they were looking far in Sallie Dwyer.

Dwyer, 44, and her husband, Chris, 33, own C&S Custom Builders Inc., basedinsharkRivarn,wherethey bothgrewupandstilllive.

W e Dwyq one of the fbv women buildersin&earea,stamdtheunnpany in 1999, although she didn't work full- time until after the couple's son, Colin, was born in 2002. Since then, they've built and remodeled dmem of h o k s t h r o e u t Monmouth and Ocean counties, although ctKyGe done the bulk of their work in Shark River Ws.

"They were probably my No. 1 cus- tomer to deal with. They were very irrvolved,m Sallie Dwyer says of Kosa and smith.

Qesigning the house for them was a pleasure because they knew what they wanted, and they put together some amsing materials." As the name suggests, the Craftsman

movement sought to empower skilled tradesmen - who as a group were beaming inaeaslngly marginalized by mass production.

Kosa and Smith had a similar point of view. =th the &men we used," Kosa says, "once they saw how detail- oriented we were, it raised the bar for them and everybody seemed to put out their best effort in their 4." As a dt, the house evolved into a show- case b r the calenrs of such &men as Manuel Aha, a tile instalk based in Hillside, who dearly rose to the chal- lenge.

In hct, &e landscap Kosa and Smith hired, Frtd Burns of M ' s Creanve Landscaping in Brick, is still hard at

The view from P / d Drive: The house has literally stopped tmffic, and Inspired other hormrowners. "It's a compliment when pemple ask you about t b details and tty to bring them into their own home," Ko~a says.

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