A Tropical Strongsville Pool House Transforms a Suburban Backyard

Summer Alaedeen’s client loves living in the pink.

“If she could put pink everywhere, she would,” says the co-owner of Adeas Interior Design in Westlake. “And (her husband) actually welcomes it.”

That desire extended to the 700-square-foot stacked-stone pool house, part of a project that put a pool, fire pit, putting green and basketball half court in the backyard of the eclectic Strongsville modern-craftsman home that the couple shares with their three children. Inspiration came from a hand-embellished flamingo print and the black-and-white-striped vinyl-plank flooring in Alaedeen’s studio. The result looks more like something you’d find on Miami’s South Beach rather than near the Lake Erie shore.

“They always did want that very unique, out-of-the-box experience in their home,” Alaedeen explains. “They don’t fit into any regular category — and they don’t want to.” 

Alaedeen’s biggest challenge was sourcing a large-scale flamingo-print wallcovering that could stand up to high humidity levels. One wall of the pool house had been outfitted with a glass garage door and wet-bar service window that, along with sliders to a side porch, would be left open for hours. The search ended with a vinyl paper she found on happywall.com. 

Workers hung the paper on a wall facing the garage door and service window, then installed a television over a bank of white cabinetry. Alaedeen anchored the arrangement with a black retro-style refrigerator for chilling appetizers and other perishables that the wet-bar under-counter beverage center couldn’t accommodate. 

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The remaining walls were finished in Sherwin-Williams Azalea Flower, a shade of pink that matched the wallpaper background, and the woodwork painted a glossy black. The ceiling, in contrast, was covered in a rustic tongue-and-groove knotty pine selected by the male homeowner. 

“It almost gave a tropical feel to it,” Alaedeen says. “It was this raw material that felt like it was still a part of the space.”  

Alaedeen flanked a window overlooking a basketball court in the home’s lower level with a pair of the hand-embellished flamingo prints that inspired the interior design, then added two teak-frame barstools with black all-weather wicker-look seats at the white-quartz counter. For actual dining, she surrounded a white concrete table with chairs featuring white bolster-style backs on black iron frames. The seats were covered in a black linen-look polyester blend, the backs in a white polyester velvet treated with Fiber-Seal-brand’s fabric-care system.

The same polyester velvet glammed up a quartet of club chairs — two in pale blush, two in an emerald green — gathered around a black concrete coffee table. Alaedeen pulled the jewel tone from a playful pool-theme-print paper hung on a half-bath wall. She recalls multiple conversations about sticking to a linen- or terrycloth-look performance fabric. But the female homeowner chose a luxe material appropriate for year-round use.

“She wants all the (home’s) spaces to have more of an elevated feel,” she says.

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