Worth the Wait

By Lisa Arnett
September 2025 View more Featured

This Naperville family took their time to get their modern reno just right

Both patience and vision are necessary to undergo a home renovation, and Naperville residents Rajeshree and Sejal Patel proved to have both in spades.

Rajeshree is a pharmacist, and Sejal is an architect and partner with Hospitality Guru Group, an Aurora-based hotel developer and operator. They moved to Naperville from Atlanta in 2011 to develop several hotels in the area, including Holiday Inn Express in Romeoville, Holiday Inn in Joliet, and Candlewood Suites in Joliet.

They rented a condo near downtown Naperville while they started their house hunt, which ended up stretching on for years. “This was our fourth home purchase, and we renovated every one of our homes, so we always look at the home as not what it is, but what it can become,” Sejal says. “Even our Realtor said, ‘I will not be able to find you a home,’ because we were so picky.” After visiting more than 200 houses, they finally found “the one” in 2013. “The reason we liked it was because of the nice open floor plan and backyard, and we instantly knew we could change some things and really make it our home,” he says.

In the years following their home purchase, the Patels slowly refined their reno wish list, which included more natural light and expanded space for entertaining. They also wanted to blend their indoor and outdoor living spaces and redo the front façade. “We are both lovers of modern architecture and we wanted a modern design, simple living, and a decluttered space,” Sejal says.

Their efforts to find just the right renovation team were painstaking, to say the least. Sejal spent the better part of a year researching prospective architecture firms to work with and eventually tapped Wei Yu and his team at Chicago-based Yu & Associates Collaborative. “We hired them because we want them to push the envelope and come up with ideas that are unique,” Sejal says. Yu delivered a thoughtful design that included a two-story entry with a curved wall, a kitchen with two islands, and a cantilevered canopy above the front door.

After interviewing a dozen contractors, the Patels hired HJ Pokorny, a Yorkville-based commercial contractor that built one of their hotel properties, Holiday Inn in Joliet. By the time construction began in 2023, a decade had passed since they first closed on their home. They hadn’t intended to wait so long, but busy work schedules and the pandemic slowed the process. Their two daughters—who were in grade school when they bought the home—graduated this spring, one from college and one from high school.

Not everyone understood the Patels’ approach. “So many people said, ‘If you were doing this big of a renovation, you should just buy a new house,’ ” Rajeshree says. “People didn’t understand that we weren’t renovating to sell the home; we were renovating for ourselves.”

In the end, they felt their diligence and deliberate order of operations paid off. “So many people I talk to who renovate their homes hire a contractor first, but we were able to do all this because we hired a design professional first—an architect who was able to give us ideas,” Sejal says. “I’m an architect so I’m biased, but I would [recommend] spending the money to hire an architect first, and you will be much happier with the outcome.”

ENTRY Yu and his team eliminated an unused storage space on the second floor and transformed the home’s foyer from one story to two stories, with a curved wall and large windows that create artful plays of shadow and light. “You have all of these hard edges on the outside [of the home] and when you come inside, with the curved wall and the circular fixture, it just really helped soften the space so much,” Yu says. The geometric shape of the stair railing was the subject of much discussion. “We had a folder with like 47 pictures of different railings and we shortlisted to three they really liked,” he says.

KITCHEN The Patels aren’t big on cooking, but they are obsessed with their kitchen. “Our favorite parts about the kitchen are [that] it’s simple, symmetrical, and everything is hidden,” Sejal says. “We love the contrast of the dark and the light, and it’s just beautiful to look at.” The original layout featured a sink in front of a small bay window facing the backyard. “Our first design had a huge single island,” Yu says. “At one point we said, ‘What about double islands? That would be cool.’” Thanks to new large windows, the Patels can enjoy their backyard views from anywhere in the room, not just when washing dishes. They also love the geometric light fixture. “When you’re looking from the living room into the kitchen, it looks like an art piece against the cabinet,” Rajeshree says.

DINING ROOM In the open-concept dining room, simple globe lights illuminate an expansive custom-made table below. A wall of lower cabinetry provides storage for occasional-use kitchen items and other belongings.

LIVING ROOM The Patels’ only TV is in the living room. “We do a lot of lounging here and we do watch sports and Netflix, but we typically don’t use this space until evening,” Sejal says. “We dim all the lights, and it’s wonderful and so relaxing.” Yu’s redesign of the room eliminated eye-level windows on each side of the fireplace that looked right out to the neighbor’s pool and replaced them with windows positioned higher on the wall for added privacy. A shallow shelf holds a sound bar and minimal accessories while a protruding wall element holds the TV. “When we did the canopy [for the entry], the idea of something heavy floating was interesting, so they wanted to do something similar here,” Yu says.

PANTRY PASS-THROUGH While some homeowners relish collecting tchotchkes and keeping them out on display, the Patels prefer clean, clutter-free surfaces. “What brings us joy is putting everything away and not having to look at it,” Rajeshree says. That’s one reason they love this pass-through pantry area, which lets in light from the front of the home and provides space for them to stow away things out of sight. “We charge our phones here and keep our personal items that we leave downstairs here,” Sejal says.

POWDER ROOM Though the color palette in the rest of the home is neutral, the Patels felt they could go for something more playful in their first-floor powder room. However, having easy-to-clean surfaces—or better yet, less surface to get dirty in the first place—was important to Rajeshree. “In our old powder room, we had a black countertop that when we had people over, they would wash their hands, and the water would just sit there on the countertop and make marks,” she says. They skipped a countertop altogether and opted for this cylindrical freestanding sink, complemented by periwinkle and gold wall vinyl, a tall rounded mirror and a stacked-globe fixture. “If you go to Asian markets, they have light textures very similar to these,” Yu says.

PRIMARY BATH When it came to revamping the primary bath, the only way to go was up. “We had probably the worst shower you could imagine, a three-by-three-foot prefabricated shower. It was just so bad, and we lived with it for 10 years,” Sejal says. Rajeshree had some special requests when it came to both form and function. “I wanted the bathroom to have a sauna kind of feel and color—nothing too bright, nothing too dark,” Rajeshree says. “I also wanted to have a ledge at just the perfect height—I’m pretty short—to prop my leg on when I shave.” The zero-entry shower features vertical tiles in a wood-like hue that extend along the wall and trim the tub as well.

DECK Two sets of sliders by Pella Windows & Doors open up onto an oversize deck on the same level as the home, giving the Patels the indoor-outdoor feel they desired. Outside, there’s plenty of space both to dine and gather around a rectangular fire feature.

A Cutting-Edge Canopy

Sejal and Rajeshree Patel hired Wei Yu and his full-service architecture firm, Yu & Associates Collaborative, to bring distinctive design ideas to the table for their home renovation. “One of the things that Sejal mentioned early on was he wanted something really unique and different to wow people as they come in,” Yu says. The answer? A floating steel canopy above the front entry.

They brought in Stacking Dimes Welding & Fabrication from Cortland to create the canopy itself. “We put a lot of thought into how we could make something really heavy look light and thin,” Yu says. “We did sandwiched plates with a recessed structure, so it’s sort of like a reverse C shape. By doing so, all you see approaching the house is the plate on top and plate on the bottom that look like two pieces of paper.”

A great deal of planning was needed behind the scenes to defy gravity, so to speak, including consulting with Andrew Lane, a structural engineer. “We had to pour foundation for two new steel columns on each side of the canopy and we have a horizontal steel beam going across. And then we had to tie this entire H-frame back into the main steel in the middle of the house,” Yu says. “But all you see from the outside is this super-thin blade with seemingly nothing supporting it.”

Photos: Angie McMonigal; styling by Darwin Fitz Design; The Patel Family (before photo)