Getting what you want

Roxanne Fleszar and Michel Appellis like to "keep a piece of history" around in their guest houses and in the various properties they own. Even the new house they built at 1414 Newton St. retains bits and pieces of its past.

"Our address plate is the transom from Newton Street Station, the men's guesthouse we bought in 2000 and used five years as an annex to our Travelers Palm Inn," Fleszar said of the stained glass window embedded with white numbers hanging next to the front door.

Eventually, all four Travelers Palm locations merged on Catherine Street, and in 2007 the Newton Street property was granted a change of use from commercial guesthouse to the couple's single-family residence.

"Architect Tom Kelly designed the new house around the old front section, which we think was originally built as one of Flagler's railroad community shacks," said Appellis. "It's the only part of the house that's wood."

Everything else behind the formal front porch, foyer and guest bedroom suite--almost 3,000 square feet--is poured concrete covered with stucco exterior.

A second front entry, which is set back 13 feet from the original porch, is the entrance to Fleszar's and Appellis' office suite. A courtyard between the two front doors offers another piece of house history: Its brick walkway is inlaid with a blue-and-gold tile that says "Newton Street Station."

"During the demolition of all the guesthouse add-ons, the contractor said there was no way we'd be able to save that tile, but there it is," said Appellis, who served many years on the board of the Old Island Restoration Foundation.

Salvaging the old tile was just one element of the exquisite attention to tile work throughout the couple's Caribbean contemporary house. For instance, a multitiled compass rose inset on the foyer's Travertine-tile floor makes as much of a detailed statement upon entry as the diagonal tiles laid on the living room's staircase landing make when going up or down.

Each of the house's four bathrooms and two half-baths boast equally precise craftsmanship: Pearlescent Italian-glass tiles in the office suite; in the owner's bedroom suite on the second floor the shower walls feature white tiles randomly inset with smaller squares cut from the same rust-flecked Italian glass flooring.

A sitting room upstairs doubles as Appellis art studio, where "I really wanted a utility sink in the bathroom" to casually wash up paint brushes and sculptural materials. But, he said, "my wife thought differently," and a classy vessel sink was installed atop a blue-granite vanity that is, today, no worse for the wear of cleanup from varying finishes Appellis has made and applied to pedestals he designs.

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Getting what you want