Design Reveal: Family Home for Life to Happen

Well hello there! It is such a treat to get to share this home with you today - I got to work with the sweetest of friends and realized very quickly how kindred we are. After nearly a decade in their home, they came to the decision to stay put and continue investing in the roots they’ve sewn in their neighborhood and community. It’s a very similar story to what led Matt and I to add on to our home last year after 13 years in our house. Life is beautiful when we open ourselves up to the possibilities God has for us; I can think of no greater adventure!

My first reaction during the initial walk through was how heavy the home felt. The dark neutrals with very little contrast just made their main floor feel weighty. They desired something lighter, airier, and more conducive for their love of gathering friends and family.

Family Room

When all the elements in a home are of similar color and saturation, everything melds together and can look heavy. One of the biggest things we did was paint! Getting the walls a fresh, clean white allowed the colors we used throughout to really stand out!

Not the first fireplace I’ve re-imagined without a total overhaul. The ornate mantle was removed and replaced with gorgeous wood, and the ‘fluted’ sides were covered with a quarter strip of drywall and painted.

These clients gravitated toward a somewhat coastal color palette, specifically teal, coral, blush, mustard. To anchor this palette, the area rug makes for a vibrant element in the room that allows a lot of flexibility in branching off with surrounding textile colors.

I’ve really never gravitated to heavily filled mantles, but do enjoy using interesting pieces and balancing the visual weight!

While this family room really feels light and airy, using a variety of textures, materials and wood tones makes it feel so warm and inviting! Mixing pieces lends to such a casual vibe and I love the contrast among the main players in here.

Ready to see the pink dining room peeking around the corner?

Dining Room

The paint alone completely transformed this space. I mean, I feel that way with the entire home, but in here it’s incredible the difference! I chose the paint color first, fully recognizing what a massive risk it might be to recommend pink. But it totally works! It’s definitely unexpected and fun. We’re not taking ourselves too seriously here, which I just love.

Living Room

In this space I essentially wanted to swap the color on the wall for color in the furnishing! As you see this room right off the front entrance, using a stunning, but neutral wallpaper, with a vibrant teal velvet sofa and rich leather ottoman couldn’t be a better mix to draw you deeper into this home!

That’s a wrap! I always feel sentimental when a project is completely finished, but my motto over the years has become ‘a finished room is a new beginning’. My part is done, and now these rooms are ready for life to happen in all its wild and beautiful forms. Thank you so very much for coming by to check this project out! I’m grateful for you.

Design Reveal: Cozy in Capital Hill

Hello and happy Thanksgiving week, friends! I sit here writing to you during a very soggy day when life outside seems to slow and quiet for a bit. In fact, if not for the pounding rain I likely wouldn’t have sat down to share this recent project! I so appreciate when God nudges me towards a slower day that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen for myself. Taking the time to look over these images of work I was able to do this past year just reminds me how tethered creativity is to my Creator. I am grateful not only for this work but the passion that fuels it!

This project was attractive to me from the get-go. While the house was updated, there was charming evidence of it’s age still lingering around and I couldn’t wait to get rolling! The absolute perfect person for this home had recently bought it and as a first time home owner, wanted to invest in her new space well and thoughtfully. So we set out to work through her new home together, room by room. While each space is uniquely designed with it’s own palette, there is consistency in the depth of the colors. Sameness is not the only route to cohesion.

Let’s check it out!

Master bedroom

Deep green walls, ceiling and curtains - a sophisticated tone on tone display of moodiness contrasted by the white oak bed and neutral linens. I LOVE designing with contrast, and going dark on the walls and light elsewhere was really fun in here!

I had actually saved these lights long ago and then patiently waited for the right room to use them! Architectural elements are really attractive to me and I enjoy finding opportunities when they can enhance a space!

Design tip: Mix up those wood tones. When a room is full of all the same wood, it feels dated and heavy. Blending lighter tones with medium and/or darker tones gives a home a more collected feel to experience, rather than just enter.

Guest room

This quaint room is just large enough for the guest bed and home office on the other side. While there are no overlapping colors between this room and the master bedroom, I went with a complimentary rich, dusty blue tone and carried that all the way through. The traditional floral wallpaper is a nod to this homes age and the powder blue duvet a fun play with tone on tone.

Design tip: You don’t need a large room to create an accommodating guest space. When I put guest rooms together for clients it’s always with a light touch. Have fun with impactful elements that don’t take up a large footprint in the room, like pretty bed linens or a fun accent wall. If you’re like us, our guests usually stay in one of the kids’ rooms, so we clear what we can from surfaces to make room for them.

Kitchen

This kitchen. As a designer I have a deep love for transforming a space when there’s no budget for a renovation. The client did not love her kitchen in the least. The white walls, white cabinets she wouldn’t have chosen and the counters with their flecks of maroon were the low point for her. But those maroon flecks inspired everything that followed! Take a look below at the space before:

And after some magic with color, furnishing, lights and aged brass cabinet hardware!

I enjoy the challenge of taking an undesirable element, and not only making it work but making it look intentional - like it was meant to be there all along!

As is always the case with design, the vision comes before the view. I saw this space in mauve with a rich cranberry island and couldn’t see it any other way. My client has a really cool style and isn’t afraid to push the envelope, but of all the rooms in her home I held my breath on this design the most. I fully expected a negotiation process and was prepared to pivot…but she loved it!

Design tip: It’s fine to have brass, black and chrome all in the same kitchen or bathroom. This is one of the more common questions clients ask and my personal preference is more of a mix than everything being an exact match. This kitchen has a chrome faucet, antiqued brass cabinet hardware and a black framed dining light, and for this space in this home, it works really well.

Living room

My favorite aspect of working on older homes is the asymmetry - maybe because it drives most people bananas! I tend to embrace chaos and am naturally inclined towards design challenges. Here’s how I tackle asymmetry: Balance. More often than not you’ll find symmetry nearly impossible. Maybe it’s an oddly placed window, or an off center fireplace. It’s everywhere in new homes and old; workarounds that builders just have to come up with on the spot that mock all the future homeowners.

Design Tip: Instead of worrying about the asymmetry you can’t change in your home, work towards creating visual balance. There are a variety of ways to do this and each solution will be unique to the challenge and your particular style. In the image below, the fireplace was such that we could add shelving on one side but not the other. No biggie. Angling that chair towards the center of the space brings balance on both sides of the fireplace.

That’s a wrap! Bless you if you read this far. I hope you enjoyed seeing this project and getting a peek into some of the process that went into it!

Addition Reveal: Colin's Room

Colin is our oldest by one minute and he has never had his own room until now. He and his twin sister, Shire, shared a room until they were about 3-4yrs old, and then Shire and Mason, our youngest, switched. Colin and Mason are just under 17 months apart and they have shared a room for the past decade. And I gotta tell you, it has really been a gift in more ways than I could have ever imagined. They are very different from each other, yet they’ve built a closeness that has been established over ten years of extreme laughter as well as frustration they’ve had to work through together. Their bond to one another is one of the sweetest gifts to my heart, and when we were able to give them their own room after the work on our home was complete, I felt some grief welling up! But as they grow up and use their spaces very differently (Colin is a collector of all kinds of things and Mason doesn’t like clutter), it became apparent that being in their own space would give them each the chance to establish themselves more fully in this home. Colin now has more freedom to spread out with things he draws and creates without closing in on Mason. I love that they still choose to spend the bulk of their free time together and I often see them coming out of each others rooms for a visit before bed.

Colin’s room is Colin in every way. This room was incredibly tender for me to put together as he didn’t want to leave his old room (now Shire’s room), so making sure it felt ‘him’ was a must. He picked everything in here - much of which we had already! The rug and the flag are the only purchases we made for this space, but everything else was used elsewhere in our home before. It was fun shopping around our home and showing him things we had that he could use if he wanted!

As a history lover, this flag with the dying words of US Naval Captain James Lawrence in 1813 was perfect for our Colin. Colin is unflappable, hard working, and has tremendous perseverance.

This room didn’t come together with any particular plan but rather as we collected what was needed. We moved things around trying to figure out what might fit where and tried to leave plenty of space open for play. One of my favorite things about Colin is his variety of interests! He has a naturally curious nature and seeks to understand various species in the wild through books and drawing. But he also loves sports, is a gifted athlete, and could probably tell you the roster of every NFL team!

Colin’s room is a direct representation of what hes drawn to and is one of my favorite rooms in our home. I’ve learned SO much from him! Things I never would have been interested in on my own have captured my heart because Colin loves sharing new things he’s learned.

I adore this kid so much and was worried he would just miss his old room too much to feel at home in here! It feels wonderful to know Colin loves this room. He truly loves it. I love catching him in here drawing and creating things as he’s loved to do for most of his life now.

Thank you so much for stopping by! More finished projects and rooms are just around the corner! In fact, I’m heading to DC tomorrow to photograph an incredible home I’ve had the pleasure of working on this past year. Get ready for wallpaper and bold walls!