KELLEY VIEREGG WAS READY TO SIMPLIFY HER LIFE. The interior designer’s three grown children had finally moved out, and Vieregg found herself alone in a large home that, while beautiful and had helped cultivate some of her fondest family memories, was just too much for one person.
“I was at a point that I felt like I needed to physically and mentally declutter my life,” she says. “I’d spent the last twenty years raising my three children while also running my own business and retail store, and it got to the point where I was ready to not wear 6,000 hats. I needed to simplify everything, and that included downsizing.”
Vieregg enlisted the help of her close friend and realtor Ellen Kelly to find the needle in a haystack: a small, charming home centrally located in Charlotte with character and enough room for her kids and grandchild to visit and stay comfortably. “I wanted to be able to come home and instantly feel relaxed,” Vieregg explains. “When you’re raising a family, you’re constantly trying to keep up, constantly trying to maintain your home and be with your kids. Life, in general, is just busy. It was a really great time for me to take a deep breath and exhale, and this home was the start of that.”
Vieregg’s exhale came in the form of a rough-aroundthe-edges circa-1925 shotgun home on Sharon Road. While the 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom cottage was run down and needed a serious update, Vieregg’s discerning eye could see past the eyesore and envision a ton of potential.
Underneath a layer of aluminum siding was a foundation of stunning solid pine siding, which, when coupled with the home’s original handblown glass windows, gave the home instant curb appeal and just the right amount of charm. “I knew going into it that it would require a major renovation, but I was willing to do the work,” she explains.
With the help of contractor Dwayne Arnold of Custom Home Works, Vieregg gutted the kitchen and bathrooms and added a half bathroom, keeping the original crown molding, casings, and other architectural details. To update the space, she included wide white-oak flooring throughout, a plaster facade to the one-time brick fireplace, and crisp white shiplap in the hallway. “Because it’s a small footprint, I wanted everything to be fluid and flow well,” she says of the design upgrades. In addition, the dilapidated front porch was repaired, and an open-air back loggia with a stunning herringbone white-oak ceiling and white shiplap walls was added.
The result was a modern blank canvas for Vieregg to begin installing her signature sophisticated interior design. With a mission to make everything comfortable and classically designed, Vieregg looked to her existing pieces from her previous home and began to pare down, choosing items that would complement the aesthetic of her cottage. “I repurposed a lot and moved pieces to a whole new area of the home, which gave them new life,” she says. “I’ve spent years collecting and curating things, so it was really hard to part with them. That was the biggest challenge with downsizing—there are a lot of things you really love and don’t want to let go of. But it was fun because I got to freshen up some areas.”
Vieregg updated the nearby powder room with a black-and-white wallpaper by Schumacher. She used the existing sconces and added the foo-dog towel-bar ring from her previous home. A chest that once stood prominently in her former home’s foyer is now in the owner’s suite. Her coveted piano holds a distinguished place in the room dubbed the “music room,” where custom built-ins by Arnold feature large sketch portraits of each of her three children. The portraits, by artist Paul Rousso, also hung in her last home.
The designer created entirely new spaces, as well. In the kitchen, she added a custom banquette swathed in a leather hide with brass legs, coupled with a vintage black-iron pedestal table she found at a flea market.
No matter how the designer repurposed existing pieces or layered in new ones, the goal remained the same: simplicity. “A friend once said to me that my cottage is like a ‘sweep and lock’—you can come and go as you want, and it’s easy to maintain. It’s not quite like that, but that was definitely my design intention—to make this place easy to come and go. I spent years being a slave to my house, every weekend getting everything back in shape for Monday morning. The intention of this home was to be simple.”
The cottage has become a respite for the designer and her children, who visit often. One even recently moved back home. “They’re never really gone when they move out,” Vieregg laughs. “I wanted this new cottage to feel like a little vacation home that they don’t want to leave. And I guess it worked!”