Finishing Touches

For The Devoted Classicist, the perfect finishing touch to a room is a dog or two, plus maybe a cat.  This is not to say that one needs to have a pet as an decorative accessory, of course, but nothing adds more to a room than one's most devoted family member.  The image above is the Family Room of clients in Highland Park, Dallas, a delightful couple for which I have had the enviable position of working with several times previous to this renovation.  The project was a collaboration with the highly regarded Dallas firm, Josie McCarthy Associates. 

Bunny and John's dogs in the Kitchen of their Connecticut home.
Photo from AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE.

Of course, it is hard to talk about dogs, decoration, and delightful couples without mentioning Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.  Bunny's wonderful book, AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE, surely the best book of its type, includes a chapter on dogs and interior design. 

Bunny and John's dog on a sofa in the Barn guesthouse.
Photo from AN AFFAIR WITH A HOUSE.

It can be ordered at a discount, here.  (Despite the note to the contrary, it is available on the site if a price is given on the detail sheet, but not with the option of free shipping).

New Library of Reclaimed Pine

The new pine panelled Library by John Tackett Design.
Photo by Peter Estersohn for Southern Accents magazine.

This new Library is another room in the Volk Estates, University Park, Dallas, Texas, residence that has been featured in previous posts of The Devoted Classicist.  The Entrance Stairhall can be seen here, the Living Room here, a downstairs Sitting Room here, the Luncheon Room here, and the Garden Room here;  all these rooms are in the renovated house.  One of the additions contained the Master Bedroom seen here, which is over this panelled Library.  As previously mentioned, this project was executed by John Tackett Design in conjunction with Dallas architect Wilson Fuqua and interior designer Josie McCarthy.

A corner of the new pine panelled Library by John Tackett Design.
Photo by Peter Estersohn for Southern Accents magazine.

As the grain and knots were of importance, builder Kevin Smith was able to source the wood from an old warehouse in Louisiana that was being demolished.  It was remilled to conform to the desired panels and custom moulding profiles of my specifications, and then washed with grey stain to relieve the redness of Southern Pine and waxed by Barry Martin, whose company was responsible for most of the painting on the project.

Snapshots of the new Library before the foil tea paper was applied to the ceiling.
Image:  John Tackett Design.

Although some of the furnishings were purchased especially for these rooms, almost all of the furniture from the owner's previous home, which was also decorated by Josie McCarthy, was reused, albeit in a different way, and usually reupholstered or slightly altered.

The Luncheon Room was previously a Breakfast Room.  The new Breakfast Room and the Dining Room will be featured in up-coming posts.

The great set of prints in the Luncheon Room were previously displayed on the staircase of the Strait Lane home.  Some years ago, that house was featured in a holiday issue of Southern Accents magazine, so it is included in this post as seasonal inspiration.

The owners' previous home on Strait Lane, in Dallas, Texas, as decorated by Josie McCarthy.

Garden Room Revealed

The Garden Room of a house in the Volk Estates section of University Park, Dallas, Texas, renovated by John Tackett Design.
Photo by Pieter Estersohn.

A number of blogs, including two of my favorites, The Peak of Chic and Me & Mrs. Jones, have featured the latest book by Florence de Dampierre, Walls:  The Best of Decorative Treatments which was published by Rizzoli this past March.

 

I was delighted to learn that a room from one of my projects, an extensive renovation of a 1920s house in the Volk Estates area of University Park, Dallas, Texas was featured.  The book is a little "lite" in text, however, and no identification is given for the room, a peeve that has now moved to the top of my list of Issues With Authors of Design Books.  But The Devoted Classicist is happy to be able to provide more information on the room.

The wallpaper panels as installed in the Dining Room of the owners' previous home, with interior design by Josie McCarthy.
Photo by Peter Woloszynski.

The eighteenth century handpainted wallpaper panels were bought by my clients some years before, and installed in the previous home's Dining Room which was arranged with mouldings in a boiserie effect of black lacquer walls.  But the owners wanted to use them differently in their new residence.

The trio of custom made stools resulted from a 1996 series of velvet covered furniture developed by John Tackett Design.
Photo by Pieter Estersohn.

The space was previously a Florida Room with jalousie windows of glass louvers and a shag carpet over the concrete floor.  With the addition of a new panelled Library on the ground floor, this room became a passage from the adjacent Living Room on one side and a cozy Sitting Room on another, making it essential to create a distinctive space as well as a link to the remarkable garden beyond.

Drawing by John J. Tackett  from construction documents by John Tackett Design.

The six panels were the same length, but of different widths.  The layout of both the room and the panels allowed them to be joined as a large panel on the north and south walls but kept separate to flank a doorway on the east wall.  A design module was devised to allow a fretwork frame that would fit the four resulting widths yet still allow for corners to be resolved.

Views of the Garden Room showing the south and west elevations showing the treillage added to the ceiling and the antique tole chandelier from Marvin Alexander, Inc.  The slipcovered loveseat was relocated for the previous images.
Photos by John J. Tackett, John Tackett Design.

To reinforce the garden theme, a traditional lattice motif was introduced but restricted to the ceiling.  Roofing slates were used for the new flooring and custom French doors open to a new porch.

A scap of the wallpaper from the previous installation was used to develop the paint scheme for the Garden Room.
Photo by John J. Tackett.

The paint scheme for the room was developed on site with the owner and the painter, Barry Martin, who used pigments to mix the colors for review and approval.  The furnishings were a collaboration with Josie McCarthy, who had designed the interiors of the clients' former home.  An admirable job was done by the building contractor Kevin Smith, and Wilson Fuqua provided the documentation for Code Compliance.  The 1999 Pieter Estersohn photos originally appeared in a fourteen page article in "Southern Accents" magazine in 2001.  Some photos of the house also appeared in the 2003 book Southern Accents on Color edited by Frances McDougall.  My clients have since sold the house, now spending more time at another project I designed for them in Pebble Beach, California.  But additional aspects of this Vassar Avenue house will be featured in future posts of The Devoted Classicist.

The 2011 book WALLS: THE BEST OF DECORATIVE TREATMENTS can be ordered at a discount of 30% off the published price with the option of free shipping by clicking here to visit The Devoted Classicist Library.

The Best Southern Rooms

Although regular issues of "Southern Accents" magazine are no longer published, a special issue has been produced which they have called "The Best Southern Rooms, 135 of Our Most Beautiful Spaces".  One of my projects which was published in the magazine a few years ago partially reappears with the four rooms that follow.  Sadly, two of my favorite rooms of the house that were shown previously did not make the editorial cut this time;  I will include them in a future post, however.

I was planning an addition for the clients, recently married and living in the lady's charming 1920s house on a prominent corner lot on the boulevard of Belle Meade, the self-governing community to the west of Nashville.  A former owner had sold the rear garden, however, and set-back building lines for the corner severely restricted any addition.  When the house just two doors from the lady's close relative came on the market, it was decided to move instead of adding to the existing house as the new house had the required rooms for the growing young family and just needed some aesthetic improvements.  The new house was not new in age, but was a traditional, 1950s house, in the Leave-It-To-Beaver style with several extensive remodelings and additions over the years.  While it occupied a very large, desirable lot on a road of small estates, we were all suprised when the real estate transaction made the front page of the local newspaper;  the sale broke the county record for residential real estate.  (The area is full of houses much more lavish and attractive, but they were custom built and/or had not changed hands in years).

In the two story Entrance Stair Hall, I changed the staircase, but that is one of the spaces not included in this edition.  The Living Room, which is to the right of the entrance, stayed much as it was architecturally.  The Louis XV style chimneypiece was exisitng but in a very peculiar multi-colored marble which was faux painted to resemble limestone.  I designed a pair of large, comfortable upholstered chairs to flank the fireplace, but they are replaced in this photo with the Marshall Field models that were flanking the sofa opposite.  Hector Samada from my office hung the owner's collection of drawings.  The cabinet and table flanking the fireplace are Swedish antiques, just part of the owners' large collection.  In tandem with this project, I also helped them with their home in the equestrian community of Wellington, Florida, and we travelled to Stockholm to search for additional furnishings for the two projects.

In the adjacent Dining Room, a Swedish chandelier hangs over the table surrounded by Russian neoclassical armchairs.  The opposite wall is actually more interesting as it is covered with a huge framed drawing, a "cartoon" of a Rubens tapestry.  My only architectural improvement to this room was to add an actual door, double-acting, to the trimmed opening to the adjacent serving pantry, blocking the view to that space, the Breakfast Room and the Kitchen beyond that had previously been just one long shot through the house.

My architectural improvement to the Family Room was to decrease the width of this opening to an adjacent Sitting Room;  it was formerly 16 feet wide.  The enormous steel beam in the load-bearing structual wall had to remain, so the opening height remains as existing or I would have preferred to raise it.  Josie McCarthy collaborated on this project and chose the wonderful printed linen that covers the walls (and matching curtains, not seen), as well as many other invaluable contributions.  Again, Hector Samada hung the framed prints, all birds of prey, a collection numbering almost 30 that covered the Entrance Hall walls and up the stairs of the previous house.  I designed most of the new custom made lampshades, including these for the great pair of red tole lamps from Colefax and Fowler, found on a shopping trip to London, that were specially re-wired to also include an uplight to bounce illumination off the high ceiling.

In the Sleeping Room of the Master Suite, I laid out the pattern of the Chelsea Editions embroidered linen fabric to utilize the scalloped border for the bed hangings of the Louis XVI style bed.  Josie and I both like to use side tables or chests rather than typical bedside tables that so often are newly made too low for a traditional bed's mattress height.

It was a fun project, especially interesting for me because of the improvements I was able to make to the architectural aesthetics of a house lacking refinement, yet held in high regard by the general public.