2907 Pioneer Oaks Drive, Ringwood, IL 60072

Ten-foot ceilings are one of those things you feel before you think to look up. Open the front door and the light spreads instead of pooling, sound settles instead of bouncing, and a house you expected to be nice turns out to be something else entirely. That impression holds, because this is not the ranch the model center will show you. The great room was pushed nine feet deeper than the plan calls for - a structural change made before the foundation was poured, which is the only point at which it can be made. It brought the rear wall flush with the breakfast nook and opened the whole back of the house to two sets of triple picture windows and a full-glass slider, all of it facing west. What that buys is a main living space running better than thirty feet end to end under ten-foot ceilings, wide-plank European oak the entire way, and nothing standing in the middle of it. It is the one thing about this house that could never have been added later. The kitchen anchors that same open run...