Add to Del.icio.us
Digg this Article
Add to Mixx
An estimated 7,500 visitors toured the DC Design House during the 20 days it was open. Fifteen local designers dramatically transformed the space, originally a boys’ schoolhouse, while achieving a cohesiveness throughout that is rare among show houses. Rooms flowed beautifully, one into another, with many neutral wall coverings. Antiques were layered with modern furnishings. And designers consistently said they wanted their spaces to look as though they had evolved over many years. Washington Spaces was proud to be the media partner for this inspiring show house, a benefit for the Children’s National Medical Center.
The biggest buzz about the house arose the morning Interior Designer Paul Corrie arrived early to find Secret Service agents waiting on the front stoop, hoping someone would let them into the locked house. When the surprised Corrie was informed that Lynne Cheney would arrive in 45 minutes, he quickly made calls, gained access to the house, and turned on lights in time for her arrival. After freshening the flowers in the hallway he’d designed, Corrie, in track pants and a baseball cap, tried to slip out, but didn’t quite make it. “When I was introduced to Mrs. Cheney I said, ‘I am absolutely mortified to be standing here dressed like this,’ ” Corrie says. The vice president’s wife put him at ease at once, saying she really admired the hand-carved canoes from New Guinea he’d placed at the end of his hall. Plus, she recognized the Vaughan lantern in the bathroom he’d decorated. “She knows her stuff,” Corrie says.
A Touch of Whimsy
Skip and Debbie Singleton, owners and co-chairs of the DC Design House at 3014 P Street, NW, are also the principals of DC Living Real Estate LLC. The Singletons collaborated with Danny Ngo of N.D.T. Construction and Michael Bruner of Architectural Built-ins to renovate the property, which is on the market for $4 million. They had the 1842 house, which had been long neglected, gutted to its brick shell. Interior designers Frank Babb Randolph, Barry Dixon, and Michael Roberson were on the steering committee to select the designers to decorate the house. Taylor Wells was the designer liason. Randolph and Dixon collaborated on the entry hall, stair hall, and upper level hall.
Roberson decorated the new kitchen, which features a Lacanche stove, Sub-Zero refrigerator, Bosch dishwasher, honed Calacatta Gold marble for the countertops and backsplash. Roberson had large but subtle daisies stenciled sparingly throughout the kitchen – never the whole flower, rather simply a suggestion. “I took the wall paint, [Farrow & Ball, Old White, No. 4], cut it by half, and put a glaze on top, so it’s a little lighter and softer than the walls. It’s a very functional kitchen, but then you need a little bit of whimsy, something that makes you smile,” says Roberson, who also created an inviting nook with a small table and chair tucked into a bay window overlooking the garden. She veiled the windows with sheer linen Roman shades. “I like all the light I can get in a kitchen,” Roberson says.
The DC Design House was among the homes featured on the Georgetown House Tour and so many people visited it on April 26 – roughly 1,500 – that the den Craig Henson designed became a bottleneck because it was at the end of a hall. People were congregating in the facing kitchen, and folks were trying to move in and out to see the deck, also by Henson. “It was so crowded you could hardly move,” he says. “And there was one woman, the most elegantly dressed woman I saw take the tour, who wanted to go outside, but she was stymied by all the people and furniture. I watched as she took a little step back, jumped over the Lucite table, and headed outside. I laughed and laughed,” Henson says. He created a comfortable den accented with grass-green and chocolate-brown furnishings and extended it out to the deck with Century outdoor furniture by Richard Frinier. The Stanton outdoor sisal rug he added gives the deck the feeling of a room without walls.
Dual-purpose Powder Room
Dana Tydings of Tydings Design Inc. packed big style into a small powder room. She had subtle details from a damask pattern enlarged 300 percent and hand-painted by Barbara Billet of Billet Collins Studio on the walls. She mounted a TV behind a two-way mirror above the sink, so the TV could operate as a security monitor if a camera were added to the front door. That way, if anyone were to ring the doorbell, the homeowner could slip into the powder room to see who it was.
Tydings had a demilune vanity made of antique wormy chestnut painstakingly painted to create the centuries-old look of liming, and she accented it with Sherle Wagner platinum and rock crystal fixtures. In the end, when a workman arrived to paint the ceiling, he glanced at the wormholes in the carefully whitewashed vanity and asked Tydings, “You want me to fill in these holes and give it a couple good coats of paint?”
Spot On
Page Palmer, who also stopped in to freshen flowers in the guest bedroom and bath she designed on the morning Lynne Cheney made her surprise visit, says the vice president’s wife had about eight women with her. “They were so pleasant,” Palmer says. “Mrs. Cheney is very knowledgeable.” Another visitor surprised Palmer, too. This young woman peeked into the closet, which the designer had decorated with a Ralph Lauren Grosvenor custom-cut wool rug (the same she had used for the bedroom), hat boxes custom covered and trimmed, silver pumps, and a sky-blue silk halter dress. The woman inquired about the dress and when Palmer said it was approximately a size 5/6, the woman said, “I’ll buy it.” “Don’t you want to try it on?” Palmer pressed. “No, I’m a perfect size 6,” the woman replied. “Twenty-percent of the sales of anything in our rooms goes to the Children’s National Medical Center, so this was a win-win situation,” Palmer says.
Peonies Abloom
“I found these beds at the Georgetown Flea Market, which is now in the Courthouse parking lot in Arlington. They spoke to me. Now, two years later, they were the driving force for my design,” says Victoria Neale, who designed a bedroom that would be a fantasy come true for little girls. She’d also been keeping some bold pink and green Osborne & Little floral fabric in a Ziploc bag for years, which she used on the headboards. But that wasn’t enough. “The fabric demanded to be put on the walls,” says Neale, who padded the walls before covering them with the eye-popping peonies.
A Personal Connection
Nancy Colbert of Design Partners LLC, who has participated in three other show houses in the past, says the DC Design House was especially dear to her heart. “My granddaughter, Berkley, has been treated at Children’s National Medical Center, because she has a brain tumor,” Colbert says. “My son and daughter-in-law live in Winchester, VA, and turned to Children’s when she was 6 months old. She’s now 3 and doing well. So this has been a special show house for me,” Colbert says. “What those people do is phenomenal. They are a national treasure.”
He Says, She Says
On a lighter note, Kelley Proxmire of Kelley Interior Design created a classic and calming owners’ bedroom with sumptuous floor-to-ceiling silk draping of Brunschwig & Fils and Jagtar aqua and cream silks behind the bed and at the windows. She designed the luxurious draperies to discreetly camouflage a wall-mounted flat-screen television, which can be extended on a retractable arm when in use or tucked out of sight when not. “Hiding the TV is a gender issue,” Proxmire says. “Women love to hide it, and guys say, ‘Where’s the remote?’ ”
Green Media Room
Susan Beimler of Susan Beimler Interior Design gave new life to the lower level of the DC Design House. She collaborated with Michael Bruner of Architectural Built-ins and repurposed the original joists of the house, which had been lying in the garden for months while the floor of the basement was lowered and the ceiling raised. Beimler and Bruner reused the original supporting beams to panel the room. “Often, the lower level of a home is a darker, cooler, less inviting space,” Beimler says. But not in this case. With the reclaimed pine paneling and beautiful built-ins, Beimler created a multifunctional space that would work as a media room, for wine tastings, reading, or conversing. The limestone floor graced with an Oushak carpet leads to the inviting private garden. “Georgetown is full of history. I like to keep it authentic,” says Beimler, who kept the basement windows in their original state.
Hall of Fame
Paul Corrie, participating in his first show house, wanted the hallway in the lower level to have a warm familiar feeling. He used an antique Oushak rug from Turkey, a 19th century French walnut side table, and those inimitable carved canoes from New Guinea. “I wanted this to feel like the collection of a lifetime,” he says. His encounter with the veep’s wife is an experience he’ll remember for years to come.
