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The client's brief to Mariette Himes Gomez was a daunting one: "Make this the best house you have ever done." But to the designer, it was less a challenge than an invitation. A self-described minimalist with a strong classic sensibility whose work is more client-driven than style-driven, Gomez immediately took to the 1929 French Normandy–style house on the shores of Lake Michigan. "It's a masterpiece of building," she says, "with lovely details throughout. What it needed was the perfect balance of appropriate furnishings and decoration."

In finding that balance, Gomez was fortunate to have an enthusiastic and sympathetic client, who was, she says, "incredibly involved." A financial services professional with a young family, he had spent several years in Europe, where he developed an eye for English and French antiques and art. Gomez was also teamed with architect Marvin Herman, whose responsiveness to his client's instincts echoed hers and whose passion for the project was infectious.

"Part of my job description is to find the perfect place for every piece," says Mariette Himes Gomez.

"This house is a charmer," says Herman. "It's well proportioned and well balanced. And it has a fascinating history. The first owner was an amateur opera singer who created a two-story music gallery for her performances; it had a double-arm staircase leading to a stage on the second level." In 1931 she added a Prohibition-era entertainment room with a bar area hidden behind paneling that opened at the touch of a button. And as an antidote to cold midwestern winters, the walls were covered with canvas panels depicting a fanciful, vaguely Moroccan seacoast, lush with date palms; the floor was paved with cobalt-blue Mediterranean tiles, and the ceiling was painted with silver leaf. The rest of the house was somewhat less whimsical but equally rich in detail: The dining room was paneled in walnut, the music gallery's walls were picked out with plasterwork, and the library's ceiling was coffered with 1,000 squares, each imprinted with a different rose. But by the time the client saw it, the house had suffered from the vicissitudes of time, including water damage, and the depredations of a previous owner's dog, whose sprints through the double-height gallery had left deep claw marks in the parquetry floor.

None of this mattered to the client, an aficionado of historic buildings who immediately fell in love with the place and gave Herman and Gomez the task of transforming it into the home of his dreams. As it turned out, Herman had a head start: His firm had carried out a mid-1990s renovation of the house for an earlier client—"an immense help to us," he says, "because we could see what we could have or should have done to it before."

This time around, Herman was charged with expanding the residence for his new client's family and bringing it into the 21st century while restoring the glorious features that had made the client want it in the first place. This involved adding a bedroom wing with playroom, offices, and an expanded kitchen with a breakfast room; installing new wiring; and matching stone facing on the exterior and replacing damaged plaster detailing in virtually every room. "In the case of the library," says Herman, "that beautiful coffered ceiling was sagging, and we had to rip up the floor on the second story and guy-wire the whole thing back into place so that it looked as if nothing had been done."

Meanwhile, Gomez was grappling with how to make her own work invisible. "I always have to give myself a thesis when I do a project," she says, "and in this case, I wanted the house to look as if it had always been there." She began by purchasing a variety of soft-hued antique carpets, their palette establishing the whole tone of the house. She then called on Donald Kaufman to mix wall colors for each room. "It was a huge undertaking to get the interiors to look mature," she says.

Gomez was helped by her client's eye for, as she puts it, "the very best-quality English furniture." A trip with him to the Olympia antiques fair in London yielded an extraordinary mahogany bookcase, its fabric-screened cabinet doors still sporting the original silk. Later finds included a massive partners desk, made in 1860 after a design by Thomas Chippendale, a Viennese carved oak library table and matching chair (an unusual pairing) and a set of Regency chairs and matching settee. An Anglo-Indian round table with whimsically carved legs is the centerpiece of the understated entrance hall. "Part of my job description," Gomez says, "is to find the perfect place for every piece."

She is also, as she sees it, "the curator who makes it all work"—who devises an equilibrium between the architecture, the design and the client's taste. A case in point is the former music gallery, now the living room, where the star attraction is the view of the lake through clerestory windows at the center of the eastern wall. Gomez chose furnishings—including a Regency sideboard and tables and a pair of deep, comfortable sofas copied from an original by Syrie Maugham—for their clean lines and neutral palette so as not to compete with the view. And what would have been a focal point in any other room, a Renoir purchased by her client, one of a number of Impressionist and early-Modernist paintings in his collection, is instead placed above the sideboard on a side wall—a gesture that downplays its importance and integrates it into the life of the house.

It's a gesture that characterizes the designer and the architect's achievement in this residence. Nothing appears "done"; everything seems harmonious, whole and, above all, personal. "A good designer," says Mariette Himes Gomez, "is someone who lets clients create their own history. These people knew exactly what they wanted—they were ready." Fortunately for them, they found partners who could take them where they wanted to go.