"The theme of this house is change; as our lives change, our house changes," says Nancy Faist. She and her husband, Stephen, built the 2,900-square-foot brick and stucco English Tudor in 1991.

Stephen acted as general contractor with plenty of input from Nancy, who was expecting their first child. "I designed it wrong," she says ruefully, insisting on a laundry area on the main floor between the kitchen and the garage. "By the time you have three babies, there's no room there for all the laundry." In 1997 a major interior overhaul was needed, from the ground up. "I did it better the second time," she says.

The Faists relocated that pesky laundry area to the lower level and finished the rough basement. Later they reworked the main level. "When I remodel, I do a whole floor at a time," she says. "We lived upstairs when we remodeled downstairs — and vice versa." She hired interior designer Alan E. Brainerd, owner of Alan E. Brainerd Interiors Inc. in St. Louis. A native of Belleville, he and Nancy met in grade school.

"There was a comfort level in working together," Alan says. "It was definitely a collaboration. Steve and Nancy are able to think outside the box and are open to new ideas."

Working closely with Fulford Remodeling, he finished their lower level into an entertaining area with an exercise room (now a guest room) and a powder room, as well as the family laundry. The project took about nine weeks to complete.

Four years later, in 2001, they called on Alan again to redesign the main level. "It was about opening up the space and making it more efficient," he says. He redid the entire kitchen, flipped the dining and living rooms and turned the dining room into a handsome study. He opened the wall between the family and dining rooms and created a mud room in the original laundry space. The main floor project took almost four months to complete.

Alan says, "It's a much more user-friendly home that can go from intimate to a space to entertain a large crowd and still feel comfortable. I call it 'tired elegance' — you can just plop down when you're tired." Nancy agrees that it's the perfect home for her family. "This is the teenagers' house; they love it. Kids are cooking food here at 11 p.m.; Will and his friends are making brownies, the girls bake cookies."

Alan most recently redid the master bedroom suite on the second level. It is a glamorous space with a decidedly more contemporary edge than the rest of the home. "It's always subject to change here," Nancy says. "And as the girls head to college next fall, we're looking at being empty-nesters. Right now the house is warm and cozy. It's like a good cup of Earl Grey tea; that's my favorite."