Elliot Street

Having undertaken an architect-designed renovation several years prior to contacting us for interiors work, the couple of this Chestnut Hill home were ready to give a few key rooms a new level of comfort and pizzazz. They wanted several built-ins for display and storage, new furnishings, and some color in the Living Room.

The Living Room opens to the Kitchen/Dining area via a seven-foot wide, two-step stairway. Those abutting rooms are flooded with natural light and feature white walls and wood cabinetry. So with that neutral palate nearby, we thought we could get away with introducing a bold color in the Living Room, but limit it to mostly one prominent feature.

We decided on built-ins painted a cyan blue with large scale reeded cabinets beneath thick open shelves that flank the fireplace. The Arabascato Corchia marble fireplace would be a knock out next to any adjacent color or material, and here amidst the cyan blue, well let’s just say, we’re glad the couple gave it their stamp of approval!

The coffee table and side table are custom designed for the space, and pair nicely with the small concrete round table and the pair of sofas in ivory color boucle.

Family TV watching, piano playing, and Daddy’s work all occur in the Living Room. Thankfully the room is long enough to accompany all of their activities. On the other end of the room beyond the two sofas, there was still room for the piano, and directly across a desk space.

We designed a custom desk that though super stylish, doesn’t detract from the main living space - basically white, accented with oak framing and knobs.

Directly below the Living Room is the Family Room, aka: the kid’s hang out. It’s the exact footprint of the Living Room but with much lower ceilings. Thankfully, clerestory windows were added during the previous renovation. But since the room is in the basement, we added oak built-ins and paneling to give the room less of a basement feel. Since there is an enormous TV screen on the wall opposite the windows, we painted that wall, as well as the other wall not sheathed in wood, a dark grey making the big black screen less prominent.

The brick fireplace was painted the same shade of grey. And with the exception of the oak chair upholstered in a pale lime green wool, we used all shades of greys for the furnishings. This could have made the room appear too serious or flat, as greys can do, but with asymmetric angled shelves and fun accessories, the room doesn’t feel too sophisticated for children - soon to be teens.

In the Main Bedroom, we swapped out the IKEA closets for some knock out new built-ins. They were not easy to build, but in the end, well worth the effort. (I hope the woodworkers agree ;)