Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors by Michelle Gringeri-Brown

While atomic ranches aren’t typically two-story, the Hafners added their second floor to provide bedrooms, a laundry room and a central hangout/homework area for their kids. And Paul, who has done master carpentry work for some of the area’s leading custom builders, worked on several old Ralph Twitchell houses over the years.

Martha’s grandparents had built the first split-level atomic ranch house in North Berwick, Maine, in the 1970s. Not “cold steel and glass,” adds Martha, but a home that would be warm and livable for a family with two busy teenagers and a dog. It’s just that, “Ever since I moved to Sarasota and got interested in the Sarasota School of Architecture, I wanted to build a modern house,” says Paul. What’s more, Paul’s family had owned the tiny 1925 cottage directly across Madison Court, where Paul lived right after college in 1985 when he taught math at Sarasota High.

(The neighborhood is on the National Register of Historic Places.) They lived right next door to their new home for 13 years, where they rehabbed a rambling Dutch Colonial built in the 1920s and moved by barge to the site by a pioneering Sarasota family, Judge John L. It’s not as if the Hafners don’t respect Laurel Park’s aesthetic.

Tour-goers oohed and aahed over the handsome, clean-lined, stucco and stacked brick home with wide overhangs and warm colors, designed and built by its owners, master carpenter and interior decorator Paul and Martha Hafner.

Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors by Michelle Gringeri-Brown