HOMETOWN PROUD A Kirkwood native and her family build their forever home in the heart of the suburb.
By Kim Hill Photography Anne Matheis Builder Mahn Custom Homes Architect Jeff Day & Associates Fresh floral arrangements provided by Bloomin' Buckets
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OCTOBER 2021 STLOUISHOMESMAG.COM
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nne Loden is a self-described fan of Kirkwood. Born and raised in the suburb, she loves the walkability, the downtown and the sense of community. No wonder, then, that she and her husband Damien found the lot for their new home a half mile from their existing Kirkwood house by way of a neighborhood Christmas party in 2019. A fellow partygoer mentioned Mahn Custom Homes & Renovations had placed a for sale sign in a nearby yard. Damien says they’d been “passively looking” for a lot in a central corridor surrounding Van Buren and Washington. “Our daughters are in Keysor Elementary, so this was the area we were targeting,”
he says. Their existing house in Kirkwood, built eight years ago upon their return to St. Louis from a work assignment in Austin, TX, was a whirlwind process, they say. At the time, they had a toddler and a newborn. “It’s hard to envision how you will live in a house’s spaces when your kids grow to be 10 and 8, and then what that will look like when they are teenagers,” says Damien. “You have such blind spots to how spaces will really work when you’ve never gone through it before.” They wanted a second go-around, they say, to design and build what they hoped would be their forever home. During initial meetings with Mike
