photo by: Mike Yoder

The home of Arne and Kelly Scholz, 4608 Hearthside Drive.

Fifteen years ago, in the midst of a divorce, Kelly Scholz needed a new house to raise her two daughters, Rinny Herndon, then 8, and Ivy Herndon, 5.

Serendipitously, a friend was selling a home Kelly had always admired — a two-story at 4608 Hearthside Drive that was built in 1996. Since first walking into the house in 2001, Kelly had been struck by its beauty.

“I loved having the master bedroom on the main level and having the separation of bedrooms,” Kelly says. The textured walls “make it very different, and I love the softness of the doorways.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

The home at 4608 Hearthside Drive has a large bedroom on the first floor adjacent to the living room.

Rather than straight edges, the doorways feature bell arches, which complement the shape of the fireplace in the living room.

Kelly and her daughters moved into the house in July 2007 as its third owners, and they had a special name for it.

“I raised two girls here, but they’re both gone,” Kelly says. “Me and Rinny and Ivy — we called this the hen house; this is no longer a hen house. My husband (Arne Scholz) and I married in 2014, and now we are empty-nesters. We had to ask, ‘How do we take a house that raised children into the next phase?'”

Kelly is a project manager at Pfizer, and she had an at-home office in her basement from 2007 until 2021. When her youngest, Ivy, now 20, moved to a downtown apartment, Kelly jettisoned her basement office and created one in Ivy’s former bedroom, painting it green and adding a standing work desk and a cluster of large plants.

photo by: Mike Yoder

A second-floor office at 4608 Hearthside Drive has room for a sewing area, a large bookshelf and a desk area by a window.

“I started working from home … when I returned from maternity leave with Ivy,” Kelly says. “I was so very fortunate to be an early participant in the work-from-home movement.”

Now she has a window in the office space. “I can look out and I just love it,” she says.

Ivy says her former bedroom was a great fit as she was growing up.

“I had the coolest room,” she says. “There’s a main part of the room that is pretty spacious and a side part of the room divided from the main area. So I put my bed in the tiny room and made the large part a living room. It was perfect for me: with my huge walk-in closet, there was space for all of my clothes, which is very important to me, and space for my art supplies.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

The focal point of the home at 4608 Hearthside Drive is the two-story, open living room with a fireplace.

Though Kelly’s daughters no longer live in the home, the house often hosts guests. Kelly is a board member for Lawrence Sister Cities, a nonprofit that organizes student and teacher exchanges from Eutin, Germany; Hiratsuka, Japan; and Iniades, Greece. In total, the number of days that students and teachers have stayed at the Scholz home amounts to nearly three years.

“It was important that we always had a room for guests, and when they live with you they become extended family,” Kelly says.

Currently, most of the basement is occupied by Arne Scholz’s goddaughter, Lana Wetzel, 17, a junior at Free State High School.

Kelly and Arne also enjoy using their spacious home to host social gatherings.

“I like the layout of the house, that we have enough space to entertain friends and family and always have room for guests,” Arne says. “It has a very open and welcoming vibe to it, at least to me … I love the patio and front porch, especially in the spring and fall when we grill a lot and have a drink in the beach basket on a lovely evening, and the front porch, for nostalgic reasons. Kelly and I spent hours sitting out there when we started dating.”

Kelly also loves the outdoor area.

“I will say one of my favorite things about this house is the front porch,” she says. “I have always had furniture on the front porch. We added curtains to keep it warm and outside heaters so we could have friends come and have a visit. It’s always been a place to have a cocktail or a cold beverage and sit with friends.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

One of Arne and Kelly Scholz’s favorite pieces is the custom-made beach basket in their backyard. Kelly is holding Boo, their dog.

Arne is from Germany, and when he joined Kelly in the home they made a few minor changes to make it more European, such as installing a bidet. In the backyard they also have a custom-made beach basket from the Baltic Sea region. Beach baskets provide shelter and protection from the wind, but allow sun exposure.

“I just love them, and he proposed to me in a beach basket, so now I love them even more and we have one in our backyard,” Kelly says.

The one thing Kelly and Arne say they wish they could change about their home is the lack of natural light.

“Sometimes it’s rather dark inside, even in the middle of a sunny day,” Arne says. “We hope that the new windows that are about to be installed will help us with that.”

In the meantime, Kelly is pleased that she can offer her home as a sanctuary for visitors.

“This house just always felt like home to me, and I have tried, in my decorating and in entertaining, to make it a welcoming place for guests,” she says.

photo by: Mike Yoder

The large kitchen and casual dining area t 4608 Hearthside Drive include partial view-through walls open to the living room.

photo by: Mike Yoder

A formal dining room with bold-colored walls is located near the home’s front door at 4608 Hearthside Drive.

photo by: Mike Yoder

An antique buffet in the dining room at 4608 Hearthside Drive provides plenty of room for refreshments during gatherings.

photo by: Mike Yoder

A sewing nook in the upstairs office at 4608 Hearthside Drive contains a display of meditating skeletons by a rack of colorful spools of thread.