When Kate Boes and her husband, Matthew, moved from San Francisco to Raleigh in 2009, they decided to rent a space for a year to get acquainted with the city and its varied neighborhoods. It didn’t take long for them to fall in love with the area, and in 2010 they purchased a home just a mile from their rental that checked all the boxes.
The traditional Georgian home had great interior bones, a nice-sized lot, plenty of space for a growing family (they were three months away from having their first child), and a garage—a sticking point for her husband. The home was on a quiet tree-lined street in a cul-de-sac, and it was still close to downtown, which pretty much made it the perfect home for the Boeses and their new baby. When her previous designer went on hiatus, Boes was connected with Lindsay Speace, a local interior designer with a love for colors and patterns. “I scoured her website and Pinterest boards, and after about ten minutes, I knew she would be a perfect designer for us. A brief phone call only sealed the deal—we instantly connected, and her c alm, confident tone made me feel calm and confident in her,” Boes says.
“Kate and I were on the same page pretty much from the get-go,” Speace says. “We share a love of art, color, and beautiful textiles. In so many ways, it was a dream project.” The pair worked together to envision impactful, layered spaces, and Boes encouraged her designer to be bold with the selections. “Design concepts can be watered down in the process, which I can understand because taking risks can be scary,” Speace explains. “But this project was the opposite.
We both pushed each other, and we can’t be more thrilled with the result.” The Boeses took their time getting comfortable in their home and welcoming their new baby into the world. In 2016, Speace began working on their design and enlisted the help of architect Carter Skinner to flesh out architec tural changes. Renovating the kitchen was a top priority.
The space occupied by the original kitchen was transformed to include a butler’s pantry and a wet bar. Large cased openings were added between the living, kitchen, and dining rooms. This created an expansive feeling while still maintaining separate rooms, which, in turn, allowed Speace to be bolder in her selections than in an open-concept floor plan.
The design process began, as it always does, with Speace pulling samples of anything and everything that excited her and felt authentic to her clients. After some editing, a cohesive theme began to take place. With the rest of the home shaping up to be so richly saturated, the kitchen needed to hold its own. Speace sourced a gorgeous hand-painted tile for the backsplash that became the catalyst for the rest of the kitchen. “To complement the tile, I selected a deep blue for the cabinetry,” Speace explains.
“The kitchen gets a ton of natural light, which keeps it feeling open and airy, even with the darker color.” To make the counter stools extra family-friendly, Speace had a lami nation treatment applied to the light-blue ticking stripe prior to upholstery. The space gained from expanding the footprint of the kitchen allowed for renovations on the second floor of the home. A spacious bath and walk-in closet were added to the master suite, and the homeowners’ youngest daughter acquired a larger bedroom and bathroom.
Speace knew she wanted to highlight the Boeses’ fantastic art collection, as well as their chinoiserie antiques inherited from Boes’ grandmother. As she was out antiquing or traveling, Speace would pick up pieces she had an “inkling” Boes would love and bring them back to show her. “Kate and I are both collectors, so accessorizing the home came very organically,” Speace says.
In the living room, Speace used a playful mix of color and pattern. “I started by bringing texture to the walls with a neutral raffia wallcovering,” she says. “On the floor, a sisal rug acts as the foundation for the room with a striped Madeline Weinrib dhurrie layered on top.” A classic tuxedostyle sofa covered in a blue-and-white John Robshaw fabric floats in the room and pulls in the kitchen colors, just beyond.
A pair of comfortable swivel chairs can easily be turned to watch the television, and a Coleen & Company lantern in a verdigris finish tops off the space. The resulting new multipurpose room off the kitchen that now includes a butler’s pantry and a wet bar is also the family’s main point of entry to the home, and a room from which several other rooms shoot off—here, Speace was directed to be most creative. “From the outset, Kate and Matthew wanted this space to be a showstopper, and I really ran with it,” Speace says. “We landed on a patterned floor, lacquered millwork with antiqued mirror, and the most beautiful vining chinoiserie wallcovering.” The patterned floor proved to be a challenge for Speace, but one that she mastered.
She designed a custom hexagonal pattern with sixteen wood floor tiles, which she laid out and had installed. “It was challenging, but it completely makes the space,” she says. She finished the space with an unexpected pop of modernity and color in a yellow tie-dye fabric for the skirted table.
“I love every room, but this one is my very favorite,” Boes says of the butler’s pantry. “It’s bold and packs a serious punch, from the chinoiserie wallpaper and teal-lacquered cabinets to the antique mirror backsplash and thick walnut countertops—and, of course, that floor! It’s a perfect blend of masculine and feminine—exactly what we wanted to achieve.”