In case you missed it – this being a travel-filled holiday week and all – The Washington Post had a fantastic article in Thursday’s Home section about an 11-foot-wide house in Georgetown. (Mysteriously, the online version omits the photographs, so I’ve included them here. Photo credit for all is Kevin Allen.)
The owner of the house is architect and inventor Marilyn Stern, who evidently had her eye on the house for years before it became available. To me, the second most amazing thing about her house – after the design brilliance – is her extensive use of Ikea cabinetry and shelving as the starting point for distinctive “built-in” features.
In the kitchen, for example (above), the tall cabinets are Ikea, to which she attached intricately carved Chinese fruitwood doors she bought at auction.
The birch island is from Ikea, but Stern glazed the ends with a fruitwood stain and lacquered the legs black. (She may have started with the Varde freestanding sink cabinet, at right.)
The wall of cabinets in the dining room also is Ikea, but you’d never know it after Stern applied layer after layer of Ralph Lauren silver metallic paint (below).
Ikea shelving figures prominently in the library/guest room, where expert installation by her carpenter makes them look built-in. Add the lovely books, marquetry bed and antique engravings, and the room is charming without being precious.
Leaving Ikea aside, Stern wisely chose a consistent color palette, with cool neutral walls and warm wood accents throughout the house. The living room, with walls in Benjamin Moore’s 1611 Graytint, is spare and serene.
So what’s the lesson to be learned here, aside from, “Hiring a creative, smart architect like Marilyn Stern is an excellent idea”?
It’s this: Skilled workmen – contractors and carpenters – are essential to making inexpensive solutions look expensive. Any one of Stern’s clever Ikea upgrades would have looked shoddy and cheap had her vision not been executed so expertly.