The late night drive home from work for Leon Harris, evening news anchor at WJLA ABC 7, gives him time to reflect on his good fortune. “Some days I just pinch myself,” Leon says. “For someone who grew up the way I did in Akron, OH, to drive along the GW Parkway, along the Potomac River, and down the avenue into Avenel with its horse fences, pools, and people walking dogs, it doesn’t feel real. It looks and feels almost too perfect.”
Serendipity led Leon to Avenel. He had visited the community and played golf there 15 years earlier. So to return to the neighborhood in 2003 while hunting for a home after accepting a position with WJLA and after visiting 37 homes that didn’t feel right for his family, a lightbulb went on.
“It was the first place that looked like our kind of neighborhood,” Leon says. It was the first home that came close to providing them with the luxuries of the custom 7,500-square-foot home they had built in Atlanta where Leon spent the last 20 years as an award-winning anchor for CNN. Leon has won three national Emmys for his coverage of the September 11 terrorist strikes, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2000 presidential election. He also won a National Capital Area Emmy for Best Anchor in 2006.
It was a shock to move from Atlanta to the DC area with home prices so much higher and lot sizes so much smaller, Leon says. He thought they would have to spend a fortune to get something comparable. But after visiting Avenel, Leon, 46, felt it was worth the expense to get something close to what they had in Atlanta. It was a home he thought his wife Dawn, also 46, and children Darren, 16, and Lauren, 14, wouldn’t look at him and say, “What did you get us into?”
“I asked him what the laundry room looked like and he said, ‘I don’t remember, but it has a sport court,’ ” Dawn says with a laugh. When Leon first brought his family to see the home, they drove down Bradley Boulevard and Dawn was thinking, “He did good.” Seeing the look on her face, Leon recalls saying, “Dawn, before you get too excited, don’t look at the houses on the right,” which were larger and higher priced.
Not knowing what to expect, Dawn says, “After taking a deep breath, I liked the house. It took a minute.” She especially likes the owners’ suite and the partially finished lower level for the children. The home’s open floor plan matches their lifestyle. But, Dawn didn’t care for the foyer’s staircase. “It was very country,” she adds. That had to change.
“The neighborhood is absolutely perfect for our family,” Leon adds. Their children settled in within a week of school starting in fall 2004. They went to private school in Atlanta and now enjoy the cultural diversity of this region.
Grounded With Earth Tones
After viewing so many homes, Leon quickly learned to look at a home’s potential. Because he moved to the DC area months before his family, Leon knew painting the existing pink and green walls, replacing carpeting upstairs, and updating the kitchen and baths would make a dramatic difference in the Avenel home. He found someone locally to change the foyer’s country-style staircase into an impressive first glimpse at the interior through double front doors.
“Dawn and I have a decent eye” for decorating, Leon says, but they wanted help with finishing touches. When he asked around about designers, Leon listened to his co-anchor, Maureen Bunyan. “I learned in the short period of time that I’d been here that you don’t argue with Maureen; she knows what she’s talking about,” Leon says. “She has high standards.” Bunyan recommended Matt Swingly, principal of McMaster Wallace Interiors LLC.
“We had a comfort level immediately,” Swingly says. “The Harrises wanted good style, but family friendly. They wanted a contemporary look infused with personality.”
“We clicked on two things with Matt,” Leon says. “We wanted a comfortable, classy, and clean look, but we didn’t want to spend our children’s inheritance. Matt had a sense of where we were at,” Leon adds. Swingly and Chelsea Killin of McMaster Wallace Interiors found the right items, at the right prices, and just in time to enable the Harrises to host a For Love of Children fundraiser in their new home.
To get started, Swingly painted walls neutral colors. “You can go a long way with earth tones,” Swingly says. “You can dress them up or down, they have a long shelf life.” Next, he worked on refining what they had and bringing the items in step with the livable family spaces they wanted. It’s a home that’s “not overdone, not decorated looking, beautiful but not precious,” Swingly adds.
The designer says the most dramatic change is in the dining room, both in color and function. The biggest impact, though, was putting carpet over the hardwood floor in the family room. “The carpet grounded the family room, it quieted the room down,” Swingly says. But the carpet selection was arguably the most difficult decision – Leon wasn’t convinced Swingly found the right carpet for this room. “By that point I was able to say, ‘Okay, Matt, if you insist,’ ” Leon says. In the end, Leon admits the carpet pattern Swingly chose was a good call. “You have to have the confidence to let any designer take you to a higher level than you can yourself,” Swingly adds.
Leon and Dawn, who graduated together from Ohio University with Leon later receiving an honorary doctorate from there as well, found the move to the DC area both challenging and fulfilling. “The neighborhood is picture perfect,” Leon says. And now, their home is, too.
