I fell in love instantly and was even more smitten when she sent me photographs of the beautiful North Carolina home she shares with her husband, John Brockenbrough, and their three children, Zoe (7), Lucas (5), and Sophie (22 months). True fans of the modern aesthetic, they opened up the back of the 1924 colonial-style home to create an airy and spacious great room, where the family does most of its living. However, the original flavor has not been completely irradicated--tradition lives on happily beside the more contemporary touches.
So you really did a major renovation to the back of the house. Would you say that you have a specific design philosophy or credo that you follow?
Well, we are definitely more modern in our taste than most of the people around here, but we really love the juxtaposition of a traditional-feeling structure with more modern furnishings. When we did the renovation, we thought of it more as creating a blank slate rather than making a contemporary addition. The trees and the light are so beautiful, so we wanted to take advantage of that. Now we have wonderful light in here all day long.
That huge wooden table is fabulous ... and are those the famed dishes?
Ha! Yes, those are the Duralex kidishes. We really do use them every day! I love the table as well--it is wonderful to have the space to put it in. I first fell in love with one very similar to it in a store window in New York, but it was much too expensive. Crate & Barrel did this great knockoff, and voila! We have the perfect dining table. It also looks great with the high chair that my mother brought us back from France. You can't find anything like that here ... I don't know why. I much prefer wooden furniture and toys to the plastic things you see everywhere.
Speaking of cool wooden furniture, tell me about this step stool you have in the kitchen!
Oh, that is called the learning tower, and it is really great stuff! We've had it for 6 years now, and all of my kids have used it. It has a wide base so they cannot fall, and the bottom is adjustable so that they can be counter height and see what you are doing. I can't say enough good things about it!
So you've managed to find a practical and attractive kitchen stool for the kids, and here it looks like you've come up with a great solution for displaying their art.
Yeah, you know, we have so much artwork by the kids, and we are always trying to figure out how to display it. I thought it would be nice to put it in a frame, so I searched around for one that I liked, put cork board in it, and now we use it for drawings and photos--it suddenly puts them into a nice context and makes the work feel more special.
Usually you see a bench in the mud room/entry area, but you've got these great wooden seats....
They are from an old movie theater. We found them in an antique shop and fell in love with them the instant we saw them. Do you know how sometimes you buy a piece and when you get it home it's like it was always meant to be in that space? These chairs are like that. We'll probably leave them here when we move.
And now to the more formal part of the house.... We've just spent all of this time in the bright white of the great room and then suddenly you have a rich chocolate brown living room and a dining room that is vibrant orange.
I've always felt that color is better when an old house has nice architectural details, moldings, etc. Otherwise, all of those features get washed out. We even wanted to use more color in the great room, but there were so many angles and planes that it didn't make sense. We did paint one wall (behind the TV) but we chose to leave the rest white and use color in the accents. The coffee table is really unusual. Everybody that comes into the house comments on that! It's actually an old workbench that my husband found in Vermont and used to have in his studio. We took the legs off and put it on two blocks of wood. It helps the room feel less formal.
Now we head upstairs past a series of black-and-white portraits of ... sock monkeys?
I think sock monkeys are amazing--I have always loved them. These photographs come from a coffee-table book that I bought at Calypso in New York. The book is wonderful. We just picked out a few of the images and framed them. My youngest daughter, Sophie, loves to look at them as she climbs up the stairs.
Speaking of Sophie, let's head into her room next. I love the bright pink dresser.
That is from IKEA. We bought it and then painted it that color. Poor Sophie has gotten the short end of the decorating. She was a bit of a surprise and was born right as my business was taking off, so her room definitely needs work. She's still a baby, though, so she hasn't started complaining yet!
Hey I recognize that slide--I think I used to have it when I was a kid!
Isn't it great? This is definitely something that I want to keep for my grandchildren--it's a classic. It's so simple and yet it has so much more style than what is out there today. In this house, we are lucky enough to have a playroom--a place dedicated to our kids and their mess! This way they can keep their things in their own area, and we can keep our things in our area. We used those flower Flor tiles, which I think work perfectly.
Now on to Lucas's room. That might be the largest portrait of an Uglydoll ever produced!
One thing I feel very strongly about is not filling the kids' rooms up with cutesy made-for-kids stuff. The space can still be kidlike without being silly. My husband was doing a project at work where they made huge prints of interesting objects and this was one of them. It was actually Lucas's doll, so we took it home when they were done with it. I worried that it might give him nightmares, but he's fine with it.
The bookshelf adds a fun splash of color. And tell me about the koala bear--is that a chalk board?
The bookcase is from Design Within Reach and is great because you can change the configuration so it can grow and change as we do. I just started importing the Koala sticker from France. It is chalkboard, but it's made from potato starch so it is completely biodegradable. When you are done with it, you can just throw it in the compost and it will completely decompose.
And lastly onto Zoe's room, which looks enormous!
All of the bedrooms are quite large, which actually makes them more difficult to decorate. I like to be somewhat minimal, but in a room this size, minimal just looks empty. So you have to find a happy medium. That's why we all have such big beds. It kind of fills up the room a bit and makes everything seem less lost. We might have gone a little overboard with the pink for Zoe. I would love to get away from it at some point.
I like her little animal collection. Tell me about the panels that hang above her posse.
Oh, those are fabric bulletin boards, actually. She uses them to pin up pictures, art, whatever. And they look good empty or full, which is a bonus!
Well, it may be predominately pink, but it does feel like a great place to hang out, as does your entire home. Thanks for giving us permission to throw the old and the new into the same pot and delight in the juxtaposition.
Find out more about those tempered glass dishes and lots of other cool products on Valerie's website, and check out all of our house tours.
And see more from Nesting contributor Brooke Williams at her blog, this is authentic.
