Home & Design

All in the Details JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

 

With three young kids and limited space, a Glen Echo couple was ready for a change. When they decided to move closer to the downtown DC area where the husband works as a lawyer, they found what they were looking for tucked into Chevy Chase’s Kenwood neighborhood: a spacious center hall Colonial on a picturesque, tree-lined street.

“I loved it right away,” says the wife. Previous owners had expanded and renovated the 1946 house a few years before, retaining many of the distinctive details that often come with older, traditional homes, such as dentil moldings, leaded-glass transoms and built-in corner cupboards. These architectural elements just needed to be properly emphasized. “It was kind of a decorative wasteland when we bought it,” says the wife, “but the bones were there.” 

Since they planned to live in the house for decades to come, the couple decided from the start to redecorate it from top to bottom. “We hope to take pictures of our kids on the steps of this house when they get married,” says the wife, explaining their philosophy.

So the owners turned to Bethesda designer Kelley Proxmire to help them achieve their vision. “We loved her style and felt she understood our family,” recalls the wife. With little kids running around, Proxmire realized “not everything could be precious” but it still needed to look good.

At a little more than 10,000 square feet, the house already gave the family all the space they needed. Proxmire’s challenge was to turn it into a home that would reflect its new owners’ taste and style. She also had to furnish it “pretty much from scratch,” says the wife. They had relinquished most of their old furniture because “our other house was on a whole different scale,” she explains. 

Proxmire, who is known for her crisp use of color and contrast, happily embraced the wife’s preference for a “subdued and peaceful” environment in a palette of her favorite pale blue, green and yellow hues. “I focused on finishes,” Proxmire says, pointing to walls faux-painted to look like linen, textured wallpaper and distressed wood furniture that mingles with dark-stained mahogany pieces. 

She also took into account the family’s child-friendly requirements. “The main thing was to keep in mind that it’s a family house and it has to be practical,” Proxmire says. She created bedrooms in styles the kids could grow into, selected durable fabrics wherever possible—including vinyl-covered textiles in the kitchen—and found sturdy furniture for the family room. 

Yet despite the bow to kid-friendly solutions, the house remains sumptuously elegant. In the foyer, dentil crown moldings and a curved staircase convey a sense of grandeur, while wide, faux-painted stripes on the walls impart a fresh vibe. The large adjoining living room includes plush sofas and chairs grouped around a coffee table from Salvations that Proxmire had custom-fitted with an antiqued mirror top. Behind French doors at the end of the room, a mahogany-paneled study (the husband’s favorite room) houses a striking semi-circular desk and a custom mahogany credenza that matches the paneling. 

Visible through an archway beyond the foyer, the dining room presented a challenge. The previous renovation had left it windowless, so in lieu of window treatments Proxmire suggested they embellish the walls with wide fabric panels framed by millwork. She chose a lush Cowtan & Tout fabric in the wife’s favorite colors, then furnished the room with a custom dining table and Nancy Corzine chairs upholstered in reversible Cowtan & Tout fabric. 

As far as the owners were concerned, one of the home’s selling points was its kitchen and breakfast area, which needed only a few decorative tweaks—including a tile backsplash depicting a rooster (the wife’s favorite motif) behind the stove. With the adjoining family room (slightly reconfigured to create symmetrical corner shelving and a space for TV watching), this area constitutes the new part of the house, added during the renovation. 

Awash in soft beiges and blues, the master bedroom suite epitomizes the restful quality Proxmire and her clients were after. Occupying the second floor above the family room, it includes a sitting room/entry to the bedroom, walk-in closets and a spacious master bath. The children’s en suite rooms have been carefully designed to hold their appeal as their occupants grow older.

The third floor includes two guest bedrooms and a bath; here, Proxmire traded the subdued palette of the rest of the house for a bold scheme of red, black and white. The effect is dramatic and fun—and the wife is just fine with it. “We love this house,” she says. “Some designers’ projects look like them, but this house is definitely us.” 

Photographer Erik Johnson is based in Seattle.

INTERIOR DESIGN: KELLEY PROXMIRE, Kelley Interior Design, Bethesda, Maryland.

**Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home designs.  Wonderful visuals of inspired décor and lush landscapes are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design ideas to life.

A Spare Touch JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

Washington-based Nestor Santa-Cruz first discovered the work of the late French designer Jean-Michel Frank when he was 17 years old and an aspiring architect. “I used to get ten dollars from my grandfather every month and I would buy Architectural Digest,” he recalls. “One of my first copies was a 1976 issue with the Paris apartment of Yves St. Laurent that was believed to have been designed by Frank.” The same issue featured an essay on Frank by Van Day Truex of the Parsons School of Design in Paris, where Frank taught a class and designed the classic Parsons table. Santa-Cruz has admired Frank’s pared-down interiors and iconic furniture designs ever since.

Today a design director for Gensler who also has his own residential interiors practice, Santa-Cruz often pays homage to Frank in his work. Such was the case in an Alexandria, Virginia, home, recently completed for a couple and their three sons. They approached Santa-Cruz after seeing his work in magazines and a show house. “Of his projects I’ve seen, even though there are threads of commonality, they are very much suited to the client,” says the wife. “With Nestor, I knew I wouldn’t get another cookie-cutter design. I felt like I was going to get my own look.”

She and her husband asked Santa-Cruz to create quiet, slightly masculine interiors in the elegant Belle Haven home that they had recently updated with help from Texas-based architect Pedro Aguirre. The 1948 residence, with its stone façade and simple form, lent itself to a restrained approach. “To me, there’s a Puritan kind of lack of decoration on the exterior that makes sense with my clients’ interest in a minimal look—not a lot of tchotchkes or unnecessary things,” he explains. “It fit very well to do this sort of pared-down minimalism that is warm and comfortable.” 

Before he lifted a pencil, Santa-Cruz introduced the homeowners to Frank. He gave them a copy of The Stylemakers: Minimalism and Classic Modernism 1915-1945, written by his friend Mo Amelia Teitelbaum, which details the designer’s work in Europe and Argentina. “I wanted to help them understand that this current design aesthetic—minimalism—comes from the history of design and show them how we could connect it to modern living,” says Santa-Cruz. 

“When you look at Paris and what was going on at the time, Frank came out of that brilliant era,” says the wife. “I saw where Nestor was going and just loved it.” 

Once the vision was clear, the designer set about furnishing rooms with a spare touch—emphasizing precious materials and textures but, in true Frank style, limiting art and accessories to a few carefully chosen pieces. An overall palette of grays and creams creates a subdued backdrop that the designer likens to a cashmere sweater. 

In the foyer, he juxtaposed an English-style console with a modern stool of his own design, inspired by a Frank piece. A classic sofa in chenille and two Holly Hunt bergères invite repose while a waterfall table in shagreen—one of Frank’s favorite materials—lends texture and pattern to the look.

In the dining room, a Murano glass chandelier found in Argentina adds a hint of color above the table. Shades of gray reappear in the kitchen, where Aguirre combined the latest appliances with marble countertops and other details that suit the home’s vintage. 

Santa-Cruz achieved a sense of serenity in the master bedroom. A parchment bench, a Louis XVI chair and a Niermann Weeks table lamp called Le Michel all pay tribute to Frank’s aesthetic.

Aside from the study, the homeowners have left the windows bare to make the most of views that include glimpses of the Potomac River during the winter. But remaining open to change is part of the Modernist oeuvre. “The house really became a canvas they can build upon,” says Santa-Cruz. “We may add draperies; maybe not. But in the meantime the story is complete with their intent.”

The homeowners could not be happier. “It is amazing what Nestor put us in touch with—pieces from Paris, Argentina, L.A.—that we would never have known about. He’s so well traveled and able to pull from his sources all the time,” says the wife.

“We ended up with this little jewel of a comfortable home,” Santa-Cruz observes. “I was certainly influenced by the work of Frank, yet it has its own personality.” 

Photographer Angie Seckinger splits her time between Potomac, Maryland, and Spain.                                   

RENOVATION ARCHITECTURE: PEDRO AGUIRRE, Pedro J. Aguirre Architect, Washington, DC. INTERIOR DESIGN: NESTOR SANTA-CRUZ, IIDA, LEED AP, Nestor Santa-Cruz Decoration, Washington, DC.

**Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home designs.  Wonderful visuals of inspired décor and lush landscapes are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design ideas to life.

 

An Artistic Aura JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

When a newly retired Potomac Falls, Virginia, couple sought to update their traditional home to accommodate both their art collection and their desire for increased accessibility, designer Michael Stehlik of Carnemark saw the writing on the wall.

“The words I kept hearing over and over were ‘contemporary’ and ‘clean-lined.’ We wanted to create a space that was clearly designed for displaying art,” Stehlik says of his early conversations with homeowners Dee and John Benda. “And that meant opening the space and straightening out some funny-angled walls on the first floor.”

Once Stehlik reconfigured the walls and raised a dated—and decidedly non-ergonomic—sunken living room, the stage was set to transform the space, including the addition of an elevator with three-level access. The goal was to create a warm, gallery-like showcase for paintings and sculptures—but under Stehlik’s studied eye even the utilitarian objects would come to transcend their everyday purpose and adopt an artistic aura of their own.

Nowhere is this more evident than the master bath, where a sculptural tub resides mid-room, a glass shower redefines a corner and a vanity is centered amid a sea of marble. “We wanted to create rooms where each element is treated as its own individual object,” Stehlik says. “So rather than slathering cabinets on the wall from end to end, rather than build the tub into a deck, each element floats and is carefully positioned for effect. Even the powder-coated steel bowls on the vanity are set there purposefully.”

The same principal guides the kitchen, newly opened to the dining and family rooms. “We entertain a lot, so we wanted a lot of openness and a practical living space,” says Dee Benda. “By removing and reconfiguring the walls, now everyone can be in the area without crowding each other.”

An inviting walnut-topped bar balances the glossy gray-lacquered cabinetry and smoky obsidian glass display cabinets, which are situated in perfect proportion on either side of the cooktop. “We created a niche for cabinets to fit in rather than overwhelm the space,” Stehlik says. “Here again it was a matter of grounding the cabinetry rather than having it go wall to wall.”

The Bendas’ artwork adorned not only a smattering of display alcoves—like the two found in the gracious dining room—but also the neutral palette of colors and materials that prevail on the first floor. Stehlik opted for soft white on most of the walls, and wide-plank oak flooring runs throughout. Cohesive elements abound. The Cararra marble that frames the fireplace in the family room is the same material used for the kitchen backsplash and counter. 

“Those walls face each other and so we wanted to repeat that material, infusing the house with a consistent palette,” Stehlik says. “The whole house feels like it was washed by the same hand.”

Presiding over Stehlik’s clean, open design is the grand staircase, which was already curved but had been encased in Colonial-style spindles. Stehlik wasted no time replacing the traditional vertical spindles with curved stainless-steel rails that continue on a horizontal trajectory around the perimeter of the second-floor walkway. “It’s another continuation of the kind of details they wanted to bring to the house and the palette of neutrals, grays and stainless steel,” he says.

Adding an elevator posed a few design and engineering challenges, including pouring a thick concrete slab in the basement for the footprint and—in contrast to the first floor—adding walls in the voluminous master bedroom to designate a vestibule for the elevator and to infuse the room with a sense of intimacy. “We wanted to give more definition to the space,” Stehlik explains.  

In perhaps the most resounding statement of a satisfied client, as soon as the redesign was complete the Bendas called on Stehlik to transform the one part of the house that had not been part of the initial plan—their guest suite. 

The space now comprises two spacious bedrooms, each with its own connecting bath. “To add all that, you’d think you’d have to do an addition,” Stehlik says. “But we were able to carve out the space and create more than modest-sized bathrooms, too. It was just a matter of maximizing use of the space and getting rid of those funky angles.”

In fact, defining new spaces throughout the house—particularly with those angled walls and soffits on the first floor—was the designer’s greatest challenge. “Of course, we tried to make them look like they’d been executed on purpose,” Stehlik says with a slight chuckle. “In general, contemporary design leaves little room for flaws.” 

Writer Cathy Applefeld Olson is based in Alexandria, Virginia. Anice Hoachlander is a principal with Hoachlander Davis Photography in Washington, DC. 

RENOVATION DESIGN: MICHAEL STEHLIK, CARNEMARK, Bethesda, Maryland. DESIGN/BUILD: CARNEMARK, Bethesda, Maryland.

**Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home design and building/remodeling features.  Wonderful visuals of custom homes and eco-friendly resources are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design and remodeling projects to life.

,span style="display:none;">Full Potential JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

Once ridiculed as “antipasto on the Potomac,” the Watergate complex designed by Italian architect Luigi Moretti has become one of Washington’s most respectable addresses. But its curvaceous 1960s architecture still poses design challenges for residents seeking to transform their outdated apartments for contemporary living.

Homeowners Rick Lincicome and Cheryl Flota found it took two renovations to realize the full potential of their Watergate residence. After buying the one-bedroom unit in 2000, the couple removed unwanted wallpaper and built-in bookcases, and updated the kitchen.

A more extensive remodeling followed a decade later under the direction of architects Jane Treacy and Phillip Eagleburger, and interior designer Ernesto Santalla. “Their collaboration brought fresh design ideas to the space,” says Lincicome, an architect who leads AECOM’s global practice. “They completely understand how to do residential architecture in terms of details and finishes.”

Treacy and Eagleburger began the project by embracing the rounded geometries of the Watergate. From outside the apartment, they extended the curving shape of the hallway into the foyer so the small space now bends into the heart of the interior. “The curve culminates in a large open room that we created by taking down walls to combine living, dining, sitting and kitchen,” says Treacy. “This space, in turn, directs the view to the Watergate courtyard and terrace outside.”

One of the attractions of this particular unit is its vast terrace just beyond the living space. Landscaped with a variety of potted plants, the aerie is nearly twice the size of the entire apartment and provides a generous platform for relaxing and entertaining.

Inside, the living area now extends from the terrace door to the kitchen and an adjoining nook for watching TV. The rear wall of the kitchen isn’t tiled or painted, but covered in boards made of recycled wood fiber, fly ash and cement. A row of fir cabinets stands out against the gray panels and white-lacquered drawers under the Corian countertops add more contrast. “I now enjoy cooking so much more,” says Flota. “The previous kitchen had very little counter space and storage, and very little connection to the rest of the apartment.”

To partially screen the kitchen from the living area, Treacy designed a higher-than-usual island that she nicknamed the “prairie dog unit.” Like the ground squirrels emerging from their burrows, the homeowners’ heads can be seen popping up from behind the four-and-a-half-foot-high unit as they prepare meals. “The tall island was a master stroke,” says Lincicome. “It creates privacy in the kitchen and a strong backdrop to the living room. It makes the space feel bigger and more inclusive.”

For his part, Santalla strengthened the architectural concepts in adding the final layer of furnishings and finishes. He took inspiration from the classic, architect-designed furniture already in the homeowners’ possession and combined select pieces from their collection with new designs. Both modern and contemporary furnishings share the same color palette to harmonize with the kitchen finishes previously chosen by the architects.

“A neutral color scheme allows sculptural objects, in this case iconic furniture, and artwork to stand out,” says the designer. “An element of contrast, such as a tone or a texture, adds richness to the palette.”

In the master bedroom, Santalla designed the bed frame with attached nightstands and upholstered the adjacent wall to create an oversized headboard. He created a television stand on the adjacent wall that allows the screen to swivel so it can be viewed from the bed or terrace.

A talented lighting designer, Flota has worked on projects ranging from illuminating Metrorail station canopies to the Hope diamond at the Smithsonian. She found that lighting her Watergate apartment was harder in some respects than her museum projects. “It was difficult to do because of the concrete ceilings,” she says. “You can’t recess the fixtures unless you drop another ceiling.”

Flota solved the problem by varying the lighting to fit the needs of each space. In the foyer, a row of fiber-optic fixtures reinforces the curve. Track lighting in the kitchen can be focused on countertops or walls, and a cable system in a hallway spotlights a niche for art. Paper lamps by Isamu Noguchi provide a soft glow in the bedroom.

Of all the renovation challenges facing the couple, one of the most problematic was deciding what to do with the original parquet floors in the living space. Santalla came up with the idea of staining the existing wood and extending the same dark tone to the terrace floor.

“Now the indoor and outdoor parts of the apartment are integrated to create an almost seamless space,” says Lincicome. “The design succeeds in realizing the promise of what the Watergate can be.”

Frequent contributor Deborah K. Dietsch is based in Washington, DC. Alan Karchmer is a photographer in Washington, DC. 

ARCHITECTURE: JANE TREACY and PHILLIP EAGLEBURGER, AIA, principals; DAVID FENCHEL, project manager, Treacy & Eagleburger Architects, Washington, DC. INTERIOR DESIGN: ERNESTO M. SANTALLA, AIA, LEED AP, principal; SPENCER G. McNEIL, designer, Studio Santalla Inc., Washington, DC. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: LILA FENDRICK, Lila Fendrick Landscape Architecture, Chevy Chase, Maryland.

**Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home design and building/remodeling features.  Wonderful visuals of custom homes and eco-friendly resources are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design and remodeling projects to life.

 

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