About This Design

Interior Design: Paul Miller

Is it possible to fall in love with your home all over again after more than twenty years? My clients at Nest #226 were ready for a change, but after so long it was hard to see the forest for the trees. To make this project a success, it would require us to peel away the past, find and improve the bones of the house, and introduce the best our makers and craftsmen have to offer. And it would demand openness and faith from our clients.

From day one, my clients were open to my recommendations and, as they floated ideas of their own, our collaboration resulted in game changing decisions, like heightening the doorways in the living and dining rooms and removing the higher bar counter in the kitchen. What buoyed the design throughout was my clients’ hunger for change. It was time for new colors, lighting, treatments, and furnishing, as well as select architectural improvements.

The transformation is stunning and the collaboration was a delight.

The kitchen has a unique layout and one that my clients enjoy for its compact footprint. As someone who functions best in smaller workspaces, I understood that the kitchen was not in need of a complete overhaul. The existing cabinets were of extremely high quality and had the inset doors and drawers that have become more and more prized over the years. Working with our painter, we covered over the cherry wood, choosing Ben Moore’s lush Rosepine for the main work hub and calming, airy Alaskan Skies for two walls of pantry cabinets not shown and for the beadboard on the outside of the peninsula.

For the countertops, we switched from a dark, muddy granite to Clarino Brushed, a quartz product that I selected for of its warm, toasty shades and soft, leathered finish. Because we stayed with the beautiful, hand-made terracotta floor tiles, it was important to me that those earthy, golden brown hues be referenced in the counters. A new light fixture over the sink and knobs on the cabinets in brushed, antique brass were a perfect fit for this design.

In the dining room, as well as the living room directly across from it, classic Oriental carpets were beautiful but heavy, so we changed out the floor coverings for serged wool with a tweedy weave. New sculpted velvet fabric on the dining chairs further brightens and modernizes the room. Window treatments in both rooms had been mounted level with the base of the palladium transoms, cutting the vertical height and creating an awkward, squatty architectural appearance. Given the privacy of the house and the shade provided by a gracious front porch, I recommended doing away with the drapery altogether and lightening up the wall color to decrease the contrast with the trim color. This allows the eye to glide gracefully over the spaces. We took away a chair rail to further uplift the room.

In the dining room, we added contemporary light sconces to flank the sideboard, providing stylistic contrast with the traditional furnishings. I felt that we should keep the original, crystal chandelier, as its light, magical presence in the space felt right. A new painting featuring vibrant, joyful colors heightens the eclectic elegance of the space. In the living room, we repurposed the beautiful fabric that had been on the dining room windows to reupholster a chair and ottoman that have nice details and are an ideal scale for the room.

New lamps in red and a tuxedo-armed sofa in gentle blue introduce cleaner silhouettes and fresh textures, while drawing color from the freshly reinterpreted lounge chair. Unlike many formal living rooms, this one gets frequent use, as one of my clients is a pianist. Fittingly, the baby grand is a finely and completely restored antique with a rich, mellow tone.

My concept for the front hall, living, and dining rooms was for them to be treated as one large salon, so all three spaces share the same wall and ceiling colors, Ben Moore’s Chatsworth Cream and Bella Blue respectively. This concept is what prompted my client to ask about raising the headers on the doorways to ensure that the repetition of the blue ceiling was visible within each of the spaces. The modification works perfectly to heighten drama and continuity.

In the hearth room, we completed refaced the hearth. The tray ceiling in this room did not give enough vertical height to accommodate a niche that had been in the original brick. New stone and an altered treatment to the face of the firebox give the hearth earthier style and a more comforting weight in the room. An original painting by Theodor Seuss Geisel inspired the colors in the mitered seam ottoman and the custom green chest. Comfortable sofas in user-friendly performance fabric invite family and friends to come right in and get comfortable. Our painter applied Chatsworth Cream to grasscloth in this room and the texture and dimension casues the room to read as a half-shade deeper than the adjacent foyer and dining and living rooms.

In the hearth room, we simplified the floor covering, using a rust and ivory wool in a playful micro-trellis weave. Art over the custom green console was commissioned by a Virginia-based artist and reflects colors that play throughout the home: gold, green, teal, and rose. A sleek, sensuous new lamp strikingly fills the intentional void in the art placement. Throughout the home, leaves and other botanical forms emerge in art and textiles, reflective of the lush surroundings gardens created by Barrett’s Horticulture.

Attention to details, willingness to edit, and openness to a whole new vision all played a role in helping this project blossom into a full-fledged transformation. Each of the rooms we were commissioned to reimagine are a reflection of my belief that proportion, scale, texture, and rhythm are essential for a pleasing aesthetic. The art and textiles work together with fluid grace while drawing the eye around the spaces to ensure that no lovely feature is overlooked.

About This Design

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