Whitefish Bay brick cellar
Over the last 10 years, Lynn and Ted Turner have enlisted the help of Milwaukee remodeling company Design Group Three to make several improvements to their Whitefish Bay home.
They’ve remodeled the kitchen, put an addition onto their family room, and redone all of the upstairs bedrooms, including the master suite.
The Turners, who have lived in the 4,000-square-foot home for more than 30 years, decided to tackle the basement next. After hip replacement surgery, Lynn Turner wanted to put a therapy pool in the basement. While the builders were down there, she figured they might as well add a 260-bottle wine cellar as well.
Construction took about nine months and the results are beautiful, Lynn said.
The wine cellar is tucked under a staircase landing. The cellar door is custom made with iron hardware and heavy planks to give it a rugged, contemporary finish, said Bob Prindiville, an architect with Design Group Three who has worked on several of the Turners’ projects.
“It’s a fairly old home and the walls are built out of bricks instead of blocks so we cleaned and sealed the bricks and left exposed bricks everywhere we could,” Prindiville said.
The 4-foot-deep resistance pool took some additional work. It is partially sunken into the floor, so about two feet of concrete had to be torn out of the basement, Prindiville said.
“It’s one of the most extensive remodels we’ve ever done for a basement,” Prindiville said. “It’s a very unique space, with the brick walls and the exposed ceilings. It turned out very well.”
River Hills sommelier cellar
A River Hills estate with a lower-level home theater built in the mid-1990s was the prime location for a massive wine cellar, especially since the home’s owner is a sommelier.
Jim Hackbarth, owner of Menomonee Falls-based Sonoma Wine Galleries, said the homeowner was looking for a large wine cellar that could accommodate his trips to Europe, where he often purchases several cases of wine that need to age sometimes up to 20 years.
The result is an 850-bottle cellar that includes a clear glass wall you would expect to see in a shopping mall.
The $30,000 cellar also includes a cooling and humidification system and custom-made mahogany wine racks throughout.
The River Hills home is a family property. The homeowner is in his late 20s and lives with his mother, who is planning to move into a condominium. He will keep the property and wanted to update it according to his hobbies, Hackbarth said.
Sonoma Wine Galleries has been in business since 2004, and specializes in storage and presentation of wine. Hackbarth said clients include NBA players and many top executives. The River Hills project took about two months to complete.
“It’s a phenomenal cellar,” Hackbarth said.
