Tour a Washington, DC, Row House With Period-Perfect Victorian Details and a Touch of ’80s Style

Wander the streets of our nation’s capital and also you’re certain to come across a digital rainbow of macaron-hued row homes with proudly protruding bays and fanciful turrets. Washington, DC’s Bloomingdale neighborhood is not any exception. Developed between 1890 and 1912, it boasts a few of the extra preserved examples of late Victorian and early-Twentieth-century housing kinds within the district. Nevertheless, that they’re intact doesn’t essentially imply they’re inhabitable, as owners Andrew Smith and Carl Holshouser found once they received a glance contained in the 1906 brick row home that may change into their dwelling.

“It was in actually tough form, to place it properly,” says Smith, a vp at TTR Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty. “It was full of things the proprietor had collected all through his many a long time in the home, from Christmas ornaments to piles of previous magazines.” As soon as they seemed previous the muddle, although, they noticed the house’s elegant bones and unique woodwork. “I had all the time seen this home and thought, Wow, that may be nice to do one thing artistic with,” he says. In order quickly because the couple bought the place, they known as longtime buddy and AD100 inside designer Patrick Mele, and enlisted the assistance of native architect Evelyn Pierce to provide the home the considerate reinvention it deserved.

Though the design staff initially thought of an open-concept ground plan, they in the end determined towards it. “We voted to maintain the unique footprint of the home,” Mele says, as he hoped to keep away from what Smith jokingly calls “the bowling alley impact,” the place you stand on the entrance door and might see your entire first ground in a single look. “It’s the act of leaning into what a home is, versus pretending that it’s a loft,” Mele says. “Not opening up the partitions additionally saved the architectural particulars intact and the areas feeling somewhat bit extra intimate,” Pierce provides.

To unify the person areas all through the principle degree, Mele painted almost each floor—together with flooring and stairs—Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore. The full white-out was partially impressed by the interiors of architect Hugh Newell Jacobson, who did loads of work within the DC space. As a result of high-gloss white flooring present each scuff and scrape, the thought did require a little bit of arm twisting. “Fortunately they took the plunge,” Mele says. “The area appears to be like double the dimensions, and every bit of furnishings actually stands out.”

The white flooring weren’t the one design through-line within the venture. Mele employed a punchy black-and-white palette all through and in addition integrated mirrored surfaces in a number of rooms—a intelligent trick to make a slender row home look bigger. Such sleight of hand is on full show within the kitchen, the place a mirrored backsplash and glass-front cupboards create the phantasm of depth. There, a mosaic-tiled ground and an vintage English-style lantern conjure turn-of-last century staff’ kitchens, whereas the retro sq. tile and that glam reflective backsplash really feel straight out of the ’80s—it’s Gosford Park, however with a New Order soundtrack. “At evening with the under-cabinet lights on, the mirrors make it sparkle. It’s such a magical little area,” Smith says.

Simply steps from the kitchen, Mele and Pierce created what stands out as the venture’s largest abracadabra second. Impressed by the charming courtyards and secret gardens of close by Georgetown, they transformed the previously derelict yard and carriage home into an out of doors entertaining oasis, full with a dreamy cover of wisteria. Incorporating the masonry shell of the unique carriage home nods to the house’s historical past and properly sums up the design staff’s method to the entire venture. Mele says, “An important message was to give attention to honoring the unique bones of the home, restoring this dwelling to what it may need been whereas making it related for in the present day.”