Thoughtful, Beginning to End
Victoria Pater · Lincolnwood, IL · 2026
THE STORY
A House Built by Someone Who Was Paying Attention
Victoria Pater is a woodworker and a weaver, and the weaving part is still new. "I'm still exploring how those two things overlap," she says. She works out of a studio in her mid-century modern home, where she lives with her three kids, a dog, a backyard garden and, by her own description, a pretty constant level of chaos.
Some houses get built by people who show up, do the job and check out. Victoria's was not one of them. Whoever designed it was thinking about the whole thing, from the way the roofline meets the sun to the way water runs under the floors. That's exactly the way Victoria thinks, too. As a maker, she can't look at anything in her house without wondering how it works, how it could work better, and whether it will hold up.
Life with three kids is anything but predictable. Muddy hands come in from the garden. Homework takes over the island. Bath time turns into bubble beards. Through all of it, one thing stays dependable: turn on the water, and it's there. We sat down with Victoria to talk about the house she fell for, the studio she claimed, and why she'd rather invest in something once.
THE HOUSE HUNT
The House Nobody Else Could See
The house sat on the market for six or nine months. "I can never remember the number," Victoria says, "because it needed a lot of work." What it had, though, were bones: the fireplace, the floors, even the doors. "I could just see the potential."
The floor plan sealed it. Walk in the front door and the house splits in two. One wing holds the bedrooms and bathrooms. The other opens up into one big shared space where everyone can see each other, which makes it great for hosting. "Those are two separate areas, intentionally," she says. "A lot of mid-century floor plans are thoughtful in that way. I can really see how we live here."
"I could just immediately be like, oh, we could totally live here and have a party around this fireplace."
— Victoria
These days, when friends come through the front door, they mostly comment on how original the house looks. "Some people just love the doors, some people love the wallpaper," she says. "It's just a grand entrance."
MID-CENTURY, EXPLAINED
Smart Before Smart Was a Thing
Ask Victoria what mid-century design gets right and she doesn't start with the furniture. She starts with the house.
The south-facing side has a longer roof overhang, so the house takes less energy to heat and cool. And the terrazzo floor in the entryway has hot water pipes running underneath it that heat the house. "So you essentially have a heated floor without paying for a heated floor." She only figured it out because one day she noticed how good the floor felt.
That's the part that sticks with her. Nobody asked for it. Somebody just thought: we're already running these pipes, let's make it make sense. "They were thinking about the whole thing, and not just the way some people work today. It's like a whole thoughtful thing, beginning to end." Builders today, she says, mostly make choices for cost. Mid-century design was meant to be affordable too, but it was also meant to be good. "It was like the beginning of mass production, and still keeping quality."
THE STUDIO
From Doctor's Office to Maker's Studio
The room that sold Victoria on the house didn't look like much at the time. "It looked like a 90-year-old man's doctor's office," she says, "because that's what it was." (There's still a weird incinerator in the basement.)
Back then she was working in a tech office and didn't picture herself as an artist. But the room was a den with no closet, so nobody could claim it as a bedroom. It was open, it was by the front door, and the garage was right there. "I was like, sweet, I got my own space."
Today it's where she does her woodworking and, more recently, her weaving. Everything is out where she can see it, because "if I can't see something, it sort of doesn't exist." Even the storage is handmade: custom racks built from the old plywood drop cloths that used to sit under her painting projects. And because the studio is right by the front door, she can work and still be there when the kids get off the bus.
"I feel pretty lucky that I get to wake up here, have coffee and make from home."
— Victoria
THE MAKER'S MINDSET
Invest Once
Being a maker, Victoria admits, makes it hard to be a homeowner. "I want to recreate everything, or fix it, or make it better, or make it smarter." She does deep dives on how things work before she buys or installs anything. It's also why the sunroom is still untouched. "I would like to do too much to the sunroom."
So how does she tell the difference between something well made and something that just looks well made? She thinks about a light fixture she once designed. Anyone can make a pretty light and sell it cheap online. But what happens when the bulb goes out? Do the pieces come apart? Do they go back together? "Good design is thinking through that whole thing. Is it usable? Does it hold up over time?"
"I only want to invest in something once, because it is a pain to put something in and then have it break and have to swap it out."
— Victoria
THE HEART OF IT ALL
The Sink Does Everything
The kitchen sink and island are the main event in this house. Birthday parties, guests, and every single day after school. "Besides just washing dishes, there's cooking," Victoria says. "But I was just telling the kids we used to actually give them a bath in these sinks before the other bathrooms were done."
These days the island hosts homework and coloring sheets, and the sink handles a steady stream of hand washing: after the garden, after a walk, fresh off the bus. "So we use the sink all the time."
That's a lot of work for one sink, so this kitchen has two: one on the island and one on the counter under the window. Both run the Cia One-Handle High Arc Pulldown Kitchen Faucet in Brushed Gold. The warm finish picks up the walnut cabinets and the green tile, and the pulldown spray makes quick work of whatever comes in from outside.
GARDEN TO SINK
The Fastest Way Outside
In this house, getting to the garden is half the fun. You can take the door, sure. Or you can take the slide, straight out the window and down into the backyard, where the raised beds, the hose and a couple of watering cans are waiting.
It's the mid-century floor plan doing what Victoria loves about it, just with a little more speed: inside and outside, connected, and built around how the family actually lives.
THE HARVEST
Carrots, Worms and Purple Beans
Right now the backyard garden is turning out tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula (which the kids will eat without washing, sometimes) and the occasional purple bean. "Sometimes we have a lot of great things," Victoria says, "sometimes some questionable, like the carrots are covered in dirt."
The kids come in covered in dirt too. "They've been playing with worms." Everything, and everyone, makes a stop at the kitchen sink.
THE BATH
Old Brass, New Brass
The hardest call in the whole house was the bathroom: which tub filler, which shower system. "There are so many options." What helped narrow it down was the house itself. It already had a brass finish throughout, so the question became what felt like the rest of the house. "We wanted our old stuff and new stuff to kind of go together."
Looks were only half of it. "We wanted it to hold up over time, be easy to clean, and be able to take care of the kids. Shower, bath. We have a dog now. Just thinking of all the ways that you use a bathroom."
The result is the Cia One-Handle Tub Filler in Brushed Gold, set against a wall of wavy chartreuse tile. The hand shower handles rinsing kids, rinsing the tub and, yes, rinsing the dog.
THE CONSTANT
Is There a Sound for Chaos?
Ask Victoria what the house sounds like when everyone's home and she laughs. "Is there a sound for chaos?" Kids, the dog, people walking past the window, mealtimes especially. "It's pretty loud in multiple ways all the time." Then, without missing a beat: "But I love it."
Ten years from now, when the kids are 17 and 18, she knows exactly what she hopes they'll say about growing up here. "I hope they think that we had a fun house and had a lot of fun times here."
A fun house runs on a lot of things nobody notices. Floors that keep everyone warm. A sink that can handle dirty carrots, homework and the occasional bath. A tub that's ready for bubble beards on a Tuesday. Almost nothing about life with three kids, a dog and a garden is predictable. The water is the one thing Victoria never has to think about.
"Beyond the faucet just looking good, we wanted it to hold up over time."
— Victoria
