When renovations can’t do the job, residents are building custom homes to get what they really want.
After years of living in modern condos in the District, Trent Heminger and his husband, Adam Sean Younoszai, moved to Bethesda in 2010 so their twin girls, now 9, could attend better schools. They liked the midcentury aesthetic of their 1963 home, but it was too closed in for their taste.
“It was a nice house, but the 8-foot ceilings I couldn’t handle,” Heminger says. After living in condos with 10-foot ceilings, lower ceilings felt downright claustrophobic. So in the spring of 2013 they purchased a home in the South Bradley Hills neighborhood of Bethesda with the intention of replacing it with a custom home that better suited their style.
Heminger, a real-estate agent, and Younoszai, a physician, are among a contingent of homebuyers who are commissioning homes with features they either can’t find on the market or achieve through renovation—including bigger windows and doorways, higher and detailed ceilings, and special entryways and mudrooms.
