When Megan and Mike James made the move to Winchell Court in Dublin’s Coventry Woods neighborhood, the couple didn’t go far. In fact, they moved only one street away from their former residence on Chaddington Drive.
That move, Megan says, made a world of difference for her school-aged children. It was important to stay in the same neighborhood so her 17 and 14-year-old sons, Bryson and Evan, could stay connected to their friends and continue attending Dublin Coffman High School. The family lived in their Chaddington Drive home for 17 years.
Bryson will be a senior, and Evan an incoming freshman. The couple’s 19-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, is a student at the University of Dayton.
Megan and Mike found the home on the market as a rental and moved in March 2014. In five months, they completely renovated the house.
“We gutted it top to bottom,” Megan says.
Now, the home has three-and-a-half baths and five bedrooms. The entire first floor was redone, as was the laundry room. The kitchen now has a more open floor plan, along with counter seating, which Megan says serves many purposes.
“(The counter seating) is good for sitting with the family between sports,” Megan says. “It’s also great for entertaining guests.”
The layout of the home allows quiet and private spaces while also assuring that Megan and Mike can supervise their children.
“The areas (around the home) are not so noisy,” Megan says. “The living room is more closed off to reduce noise and activity from the kitchen.”
Throughout the home are five television sets that serve as viewing areas for sports games. The kitchen is home to one of those viewing areas, providing a spot for the kids and guests to snack while watching Cleveland Cavaliers games.
The James’ former home on Chaddington Drive was a corner lot without much privacy, Megan says. Now, the kids have a large back yard that keeps them active.
“They play a lot of sports back there,” Megan says. “There’s a lacrosse net. When it rains, there’s a creek in the back that ices over, and they can ice skate on it. Now, there are more private areas for the kids to congregate, like the basement and back yard.”
The yard is used by the children and their friends year round, and Megan says supervising from the home’s new deck is easy and convenient. A three-season room was also added, as well as an expanded driveway for Bryson’s car.
While renovating the basement, Megan says, they did not change much. With teens in the house, she and her husband did not want to include a bar. Instead, the basement has a kitchenette, room for the kids to play games, ping-pong and a large movie viewing area. An exercise room was added, complete with a treadmill, a stationary bike and weights. There’s also a spare bedroom in the basement.
On the first floor, what was originally a small bedroom was transformed into a mudroom for all of the kids’ sporting equipment, shoes and jackets. The original family room now serves as a home office.
“We both work from home a lot,” says Megan, who owns MJ2 Marketing Group. Mike is CEO of Fireproof Records.
There are four bedrooms on the top floor – the three bedrooms for the James’ children as well as the master suite, which features one of the home’s bathrooms and a walk-in closet.
“It was really important to me to have all the kids upstairs,” Megan says. “In the old house, they could retreat more (to the bedrooms).”
Staying in Coventry Woods was important to the family, but so was staying in Dublin. Megan cites the “boom and growth” of the city as its main attraction.
As a family, they enjoy biking on the paths and walking to Historic Dublin. All the kids’ friends are in a one-to-two-mile radius, Megan says.
“I love being a part of a city that’s on the move,” she says.
Hannah Bealer is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
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