When interior designer Lindsay Speace received an email from her new clients, she knew it would be a fun and special project. Her clients explained that their “current home is a wild and somewhat wacky mixture of . . . oh hell, everything. We need our next house to be a ‘grown-up’ house, if you will, but also one that captures our spirit.”
A family of five, going on six, Speace’s clients needed a larger home to accommodate their growing family. Happily, the perfect home became available just down the street from their current Hope Valley home. It was a beautiful brick Georgian designed by prominent Durham architect George Watts Carr. “The house was in beautiful condition with well-proportioned rooms, but renovations were required to accomplish everything on the clients’ wish list and to modernize it for a young family of six,” Speace explains. The home was on a generously sized lot and the original owner, who built the house in the 1960s, had lovingly cared for it since.
For the renovation, they started by adding a shed dormer off the back of the house to allow for a large playroom and a sixth bedroom and bathroom for their eldest child. The kitchen, master bedroom, and master bath were also renovated, with a large closet added to the master suite. “Formerly from the children’s book publishing world, a book nook at the top of the stairs was an important addition for the parents and a place for the family to read together,” Speace adds.
An enclosed breezeway was added to connect the main house to the existing carport, which became a screened porch complete with a drop-down projector screen for movie nights. A separate garage was added, which houses a gym and batting cage on the lower level. With the proper additions made, it was time to create a space that made the family feel like they’d lived there all along. “When the homeowner’s reached out to me, they actually described their current home as looking like it was decorated by Tom Hanks’s character in the movie Big, but in a good way,” Speace laughs. She said that they wanted the new house to be more traditional, but that they really wanted to integrate both styles into one home. “They have such a joyful, irreverent sense of style, and I wanted to infuse their home with that same spirit but in an elevated way,” Speace says.
Wanting to keep the integrity of the architecture and the history of the home intact, Speace designed the rooms with that in mind as she melded the new family’s modern and fun vibe with the Georgian construction. In the living room, Speace selected a traditional English roll-arm sofa upholstered in an aqua fabric and placed it alongside a tufted chartreuse velvet sofa on a brass cantilevered frame. “I love the tension of traditional and modern,” she says. “In the entry and stairwell, I employed a more traditional design and covered the walls and windows in the same fabric but in a modern deconstructed stripe by Miles Redd for Schumacher.”
When it came to knowing what her clients wanted in their home, Speace did what she always does—she took inventory of her clients’ current possessions. “I like to get a sense of what is meaningful to them—their art, collections, inherited antiques or heirlooms. It really helps me get a sense of their style,” Speace says. From there, she pulled fabrics that she felt spoke to her clients’ style. “For these clients, I chose pieces with big personality. Things that were a little wonky. Color palettes that were almost Dr. Seuss-like,” she says.
One piece of inspiration came from the original owner of the home, in fact. “The homeowners inherited the original George Watts Carr blueprints for the home,” Speace says. “The blue was so vivid, it seemed like the perfect jumping-off point for the living room. I had them framed in handsome burl-wood frames and hung them in a grid above the sofa.”
In the kitchen, Speace focused on some unique details. A salvaged vent hood from a North Carolina mill was retrofitted and painted to match the BlueStar cobalt-blue range. The double basin soapstone sink was designed to anchor the island and “is as functional for a family of six as it is beautiful,” Speace says. She adds that the brick wall was original to the home and a hallmark of George Watts Carr’s design. This is one of her favorite rooms in the home.
Speace says that she likes to try to incorporate new vendors in each of her projects. For this project, she used wallpaper from Flat Vernacular, fabric from Ferrick Mason, Sister Parish, and Wayne Pate, and a Durham-themed fabric from local printer Spoonflower. “My aesthetic is always evolving, but rooted in a love of color, art, and beautiful fabrics,” Speace explains. “Each project brings new influences and inspiration driven by my clients. I love that I get to be a bit of a chameleon and design in a variety of different styles and interpret each client’s aesthetic through my lens.”