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A beautiful bungalow built for two

Jason A. Michael

The Old West Side. It's a trendy neighborhood – some would say upscale – yet like much of Ann Arbor, it's pleasantly unimposing. Situated just across the street from a family-friendly park full of foliage sits the stately bungalow of Gerry Duprey and Mark Uhen.
The couple bought the house, a 1928 Craftsman style house built by the owner from a plan book, in 1996.
"When we moved into it had been substantially undone," said Duprey, in a gem of an understatement.
Just a handful of years after it was built, the single-family home had been converted into a boarding house. Decades later, the home changed hands and new owners wanted to stretch out.
"They wanted space and they had blown the walls out and the minimal architectural design had been removed," said Duprey, and replaced instead with white carpet over hardwood floors and pink walls, giving the potentially charming home the ill-comforting appearance of a birthday cake.
One of the first things the couple did was pull up the carpeting, an act that unbeknownst to them at the time would be the impetus of a major remodeling project.
"It got us going, 'Hmmm, maybe there are some things in here we can look into,'" said Duprey.
Now, eight years later, the home is virtually unrecognizable.
"Many of the interior features of the house have changed over the years, but it's now back in the spirit of its original self more than it likely has been in 40 plus years," Duprey said.
Indeed, the transformation is nothing short of remarkable, half restoration and half recreation. The couple not only took the home back to its roots, but managed to grow them a bit incorporating elements of the arts and crafts period not originally in the home but appropriate to the period it was built in.
In so doing, Duprey and Uhen boldly mixed original fixtures with reproductions, century-old concepts with modern technology and somehow managed to create an ornate showplace that's spartanly decorated and emphatically masculine in feel.
With them on their journey of transformation was Bruce Curtis and his crew from Washtenaw Woodwrights, who helped the couple find the unique materials and fixtures they were looking for.
Most of the lighting fixtures are elegantly appointed reproductions, but their beauty takes a backseat to the bold tile work and warm stained glass – much of which was designed by Duprey – throughout. Uhen was particularly ingenious with the tile. A paleontologist, he personalized their remarkable new gas fireplace with two one-of-a-kind tiles using a plaster mold process similar to the one he uses in his paleontology lab to create the imprint of fossil whale teeth on one tile, and the imprint of a bunch of chips from the first computer Duprey, a software designer, ever built.
It's personal touches such as these that make the home so comfortable. One room on the first floor was completely designed around two custom bent-arm chairs. The reading room now features built-in bookcases and a cozy window seat.
Metal switch plates frame modern light switches on the first floor in a nod to Duprey's technological savvy, and two touch screens on the first floor take it a step further allowing the couple to control the house's temperature, security and atmosphere – recessed speakers have been installed in every room – with ease. The house is fully networked with a control center in the basement, which, incidentally, is right next door to the couple's impressive home theatre that comes complete with two rows of leather recliners and a massive projector screen.
"We definitely took the house a little further than it had been in the beginning," said Duprey.
Yes, the man is master of the understatement.

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