Haven: Letting in light by the bayside

Approaching Jill and David Levi's house on a bayside cul-de-sac in Margate is a good way to catch a panorama of 20th-century architecture where no developer has restrained the variety of design.

With a view of blue water behind it, the cul-de-sac includes a sculpted white International Style house, a traditional Colonial, a few ranch houses, and the Levi house, which has been called "the light box." All the houses have small side yards and seem to be close together.

"That's what we wanted," says Jill Levi. "We wanted a neighborhood of families and not just a house near a lot of summer homes where neighbors are only there a few months a year."

The Levis' year-round Shore home, now clad in a gray cedar that is set to turn darker over time, began life in the 1980s as a clapboard-covered summer place with little to no insulation.

The structure deteriorated until the Levis bought it three years ago as a bargain.

Jill and husband David, a radiologist, came to Margate when he was hired by a nearby hospital. They had lived in Long Island and Brooklyn, N.Y., but had always liked Margate, where they had spent several summers with their families.

While they were looking at properties in the area, the Levis had two young children, Jillian, then 4, and Caleb, then 2, and Jill was pregnant. (Now taking a baby gap from teaching, Jill is working on a graduate degree in education.)

"We were house-hunting on the ocean side in 2012 but couldn't find anything, so we rented a house near the beach while we looked," Jill says. "The houses on the ocean were too expensive, and we ended up finding this house as a bargain because it was in terrible condition.

"When Sandy came, our rented house was damaged by the flood," she says. "We had just signed a contract for this five-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot house and were delighted because Sandy didn't really cause much damage here. We found a new respect for the bayside."

The next step was to find an architect. The Levis hired Stanev Potts Architects of Philadelphia.

"We knew the design had to correct the fact that the house was in very bad shape," Stephan Potts says. "We had to create a feeling of light and space for five people."

Jill and David wanted the house to be modern and have some of the ambience of a Japanese home, with screens and a feeling of surprise. All on a limited budget.

"We gutted the house and tore down walls and created an open plan with the Japanese influences Jill said she liked," Potts says.

"We built a well surrounded with cedar strips around the three-foot-wide staircase, which stretched from a rectangular solar panel in the roof to the first floor."

The architects also used the cedar strips to encircle a small vestibule on the one side of the staircase, so people in the house can see only the silhouettes of those in the vestibule.

The kitchen and the dining and living rooms were combined into one large area with two islands, a larger one near the stove and a smaller one near the entrance.

"Despite the family's limited budget, they now have more space and light," Potts says. "The exterior was modernized with fiber insulation, so utility bills are a fraction of what they were in the original house."

On the second floor, between Jillian's bedroom (with its vivid wall covering) and Caleb's is a tiny area with organdy curtains and a crib, for baby Leni.

"I was pregnant during construction, and this room was supposed to be a closet because I thought the baby would have a room on the third floor," Jill says. "Then Petra Stanev [a partner in the architecture firm] told me I was crazy and I really don't want my baby a floor above me, and she was so right."

Jill says she is very happy with the design of her family's "fixer-upper." The couple have decorated their home with modern furnishings in the living room, warm wood cabinetry in the kitchen, and brightly colored rugs in the play areas.

Especially pleasing is a fifth bedroom that has been turned into a space for his-and-her closets, with full-sized wooden doors on each side of the room, one for Jill and one for David.

"I must admit this might be one of my favorite spaces," she says.