A 100-year-old house in Atlanta with an unexpectedly English interior
If you're trying to do up your house on a shoestring budget, perhaps the last thing you would think to do is hire an interior designer, but there are stories that show just how well it can work out. One such is this Craftsman bungalow in the historic Atlanta neighbourhood of Virginia Highlands, completed several years ago by Texas-based interior designer Avery Cox for her client Lawren Williams.
It was an early project for both of them: Lawren, an artist and photographer, had just moved back to her hometown of Atlanta after eight years living in Santa Monica, while Avery's studio was in its first few years of existence, and the idea of a bungalow on a tight budget was rather appealing. ‘It's just one of those great relationships where we both started working together when we were both young and single and in new chapters of life,’ says Avery. Lawren came to her via a mutual friend, on a quest for an interior that would be ‘colourful, artistic, different than what she was finding in Atlanta,’ explains Avery. ‘She wasn’t drawn to the classic southern look.’
While the house had been built in the 1920s, subsequent renovations had stripped it of much of its charm and detail, so the mission was to bring as much character and texture back to the interiors as possible. Like so many older houses, walls had been taken down to make it a fully open plan space, and one of Avery's missions was to bring back the sense of separate rooms, each with their own look. ‘One of the most impactful changes we made was to add a wall between the living room and the dining room,’ she notes. A wide archway allows the space still to feel open, but there is a distinction between the two rooms, and it became possible to treat the walls differently, with painted stripes on the living room side and a small-scale wallpaper in the dining room.
The look was always going to be eclectic. Part of Lawren's brief was to make use of hand-me-down furniture she already owned, plus antiques and vintage pieces that would make sense from both an aesthetic and a cost perspective. ‘One of my favourite pastimes is going to antique stores and finding pieces of all kinds that add story and meaning to my home,’ says Lawren. The bamboo chairs that are so much a feature of the sitting room perfectly demonstrate the pair's resourceful approach to furnishing the house. Avery and Lawren had intended to use a set of chairs belonging to Lawren's mother, but when she objected to the idea of their painting them, they ended up sourcing two pairs of very inexpensive similar chairs, painting them teal, and creating two sets of contrasting cushions. ‘I think that's a really good example of not spending so much on anything too fancy and just having fun with colour and pattern and fabric,’ says Avery. Few things in the house cost a great deal – the dining table was a Chairish find, stripped back and stained red, and Avery also brought in clever high street finds, like the four poster bed from Room & Board.
Much of the house's appeal lies in its use of colour and pattern, which was a part of the project from the beginning. ‘All the inspiration that Lawren sent me had a lot of colour and pattern and was moody and quite frankly English in its look,’ says Avery. Lawren explains that the nature of the bungalow had sent her in that direction: ‘It has lower ceilings and not a ton of natural light, so once I started diving into the designs of cottages in the UK, I felt more called to honour the space for what it was. I love the layers, the antiques and I wanted to feel the rooms were living, breathing spaces that tell stories of the people who live there.’
‘So I wanted to use plenty of print, without it dominating the space too much.’ The dining room, for example, uses the small scale ‘Wattle’ wallpaper from Robert Kime, which introduces pattern into the large open plan space of the kitchen and living area, but ‘doesn't create too much disjointedness.’ The living room's more neutral backdrop, meanwhile – broad painted stripes that Avery had always longed to try in a project – is enlivened by a an array of checked and floral fabrics on the chairs, and new deep green tiles on the chimneypiece. Avery was clever with using up remnants of fabrics from her inventory around the house, with the window seat in the study featuring four different fabrics all by itself.
In the midst of all of these ingenious solutions, Avery is keen to stress the importance of having a few good, grown-up pieces to anchor a space. In the living room, for example, she found a beautiful hand-knotted vintage rug in dark, earthy hues that ‘transformed everything. It made it feel less like a beachy dorm room and more like a cool, eclectic space.’ She also points to the antique barley twist table in there as a key ‘serious’ piece. ‘These classic pieces that people have been using for years and years, they stand the test of time and will always be in style, I think.’
The same could be said for the entire scheme that she created for the house. Three years after they completed this round of work, Avery is back working with Lawren on other spaces in the house as she now lives there with a partner and children. ‘When I bought the house we designed it for me and my two cats, and we're now redesigning it to be used by two adults, two children, three cats, a dog and sometimes my 78 year old dad,’ says Lawren. ‘For a tiny bungalow, it will serve a lot of purposes!’ ‘We’ve both come a long way in our lives,’ concludes Avery, ‘but we're so excited to keep reimagining this space together.’
Lindsay Brown1/8The rug in the dining room is from Nordic Knots.
Lindsay Brown2/8The dresser came from A. Tyner Antiques in Atlanta.
Lindsay Brown3/8Avery re-covered a chaise owned by Lawren in an olive green cotton velvet from Kravet. A vintage Bessarabian kilim from Chairish adds pattern and colour to the floor.
.jpeg)
Lindsay Brown4/8A ‘Royere’ chair from Julian Chichester has been covered in Colefax and Fowler's ‘Mylor’. The wallpaper is ‘Flourencecourt’ from Cole & Son.
Lindsay Brown5/8The ‘Architecture’ bed from Room & Board is the focal point of the main bedroom, while the bedside tables are from Made Goods. A bedspread from Nickey Kehoe and a chair covered in Morris & Co's ‘Fruit’ add pattern.
Lindsay Brown6/8The bedroom looks out into a sweet hallway where a vintage Venetian mirror hangs over a demi-lune table from vanCollier.
Lindsay Brown7/8Lawren's second H.B. Mruta find hangs over the bathtub
Lindsay Brown8/8Avery has added warmth to the white bathroom with earthy textiles, including ‘Heather Linen’ by Ferrick Mason on the cafe curtain and a 1960s Turkish rug. The wall lights are from Hudson Valley Lighting and the mirror is from Noir in LA.
