Name: Sally Breer, interior designer
Location: Austin, Texas
Size: 1700 square feet
Designer Sally Breer was tasked with taking an older South Austin bungalow and turning it into a hip, inviting and cool home for a young bachelor. The house, like a lot of older homes, had great bones (namely beautiful wood floors and a neat layout) but lacked a lot (okay any) style. Full of masculine touches, vintage details and lots of bright light, we love the cool, accessible look of this home she's created.
Sally, who is an interior designer and works at the hip store Amsterdam Modern in Los Angeles, really created a space with a lot of youthful fun but that still has a sophisticated, grown-up feel to it. And though there's an eclectic mood to the house, it feels pulled together and cohesive. We love the chevron-painted wall in the living room that greets your eyes and really sets the tone for the house. We love the melding of vintage, classic furniture pieces with rustic, more natural ones to create a fun mix. Sally did an amazing job incorporating the homeowner's personality through photos, art and off-beat accessories sprinkled around the house. One of our favorite elements to the home is the art collage in the back TV room: a series of framed still shots from the movie "Annie Hall." What a fun and affordable art idea!
Apartment Therapy Survey:
The style: I wanted to create a space that really reflected the guy I was designing for but was also livable and still had character. Using neutral but masculine greys and olive greens for the paint colors, I was able to play with vintage and modern pieces to give the space a calming yet warm, eclectic, lived in feel.
Inspiration: The person living here is a bachelor and bought it because he loves Austin so much and feels at peace there, unfortunately work keeps him in a different city so it's really a get-away home. I wanted him to have a place to come to where he truly felt at home. That's why I incorporated a lot of personal details into the space, to name a few...I created an art piece with 200 vintage stamps from his favorite country and framed an old magazine cover of a childhood cartoon he loves. He's also from a family of teachers in the north east so I drew a lot from americana to make a sentimental feel.
Favorite Element: I think I have too many favorite elements to choose one? One of my favorite pieces would be the cupboard that the TV sits on. I bought it from an old man who used it in his shop to store tools. Its structure is asymmetrical and it's really just beautiful. I had a local sheet metal guy make a top for it to give it a bit more polish.
Biggest Challenge: Probably the use of space. Being an old craftsman, it has a funky layout. It was really essential to me that every room felt like it made sense and there was a good flow to the house. Without having the option to knock out walls, I utilized a somewhat uniform color palette throughout the house and took off almost every door that didn't either lead to a bathroom or a bedroom.
What Friends Say: That the transformation from where the house started is pretty shocking. I didn't have to do much to make an improvement from its original condition! The house was painted an Easter Basket palette!
Biggest Embarrassment: The kitchen. I didn't really get a chance to do much with it.
Proudest DIY: "The lady of the house." There was an old painting left behind by the previous owner that my client was about to throw away (she was a little creepy) but I salvaged her before she went into the trash. With a little acrylic paint, I turned her into a boyscout (in tribute to the new home owner who is a former boyscout). I love that she's still around in the new place, but with a little facelift.
Biggest Indulgence: I would say the single biggest indulgence was the pair of bent wood Norway lounge chairs. Maybe not much of an indulgence in money but definitely with time factored in, I ended up driving a total of 6 hours for those puppies.
Best advice: Personal. Your home should live and breathe you. The best homes, in my opinion, are the ones that feel uniquely intimate to their dweller.
Dream source: MOROCCO, for their deep pile flokatis! Flea Markets and Uncommon Objects (Austin, TX) - the most magical place on earth.
Resources:
Furniture: Roundtop flea market, St. Vincent de Paul, Craigslist, Room Service Vintage, cb2
Accessories: Uncommon Objects
Rugs and Carpets: craigslist, Jeff Garbs@ Bacon Farm
Window Treatments: Uncommon Objects, World Market, Ikea
Beds: Mr. Long Upholstery
Artwork: Art from the streets, DIY, ebay
Thanks, Sally!
Images: Adrienne Breaux
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In the family room (umm, TV room, I guess), I love the rug, coffee table and the media stand.
An old antique store in my hometown sells those old farm carts for dirt cheap. I can't wait to get one and re-finish it for a coffee table.
Wow, nice work Sally. I love the loft bedroom, the hardwood railing is so beautiful. Major score on those 2 Norwegian lounge chairs-they are awesome. It's a shame the owner doesn't get to enjoy the space very often...
A few questions:
Do you have a close-up photo and before and after photos of the "creepy" lady of the house turned boyscout? That's an amazing facelift!
Also, where are the 3 hanging pendants over the DR table from?!
There are some design decisions that leave me scratching my head, but overall I like this. I especially like that the attic was opened up to be used as the bedroom - good thinking on that.
evokes a lovely feeling. feels somewhat aged but also very crisp. organized but still warm and cozy. love the choice of colors too. by far, one of my favorite house tours yet.
this is one my my favourite house tours by far. incredible!!!!
Love it! This gives ideas for my friend's bachelor pad that he wants help decorating.
Beautiful space, love the TV cabinet!
love it. what is the paint color for the fireplace and the lighter walls in that room?
I like almost everything in this house tour, with a few exceptions. (But, hey, I'm a married woman so a bachelor pad wouldn't be my style.) I think the kitchen looks good and that lofted/attic bedroom is a fantastic use of space. I have a bachelor friend in Austin with a bungalow, so I will be forwarding this tour on to him for use as inspiration. :)
Love it. I love the colours (except for the grey in the living room; sorry!) and I LOVE the staircase in the kitchen leading up to your bedroom (which is the size of my condo! Lol.) It's swank, rustic, cosy, stylish. Nice. x
Wow, I think Sally did a phenomenal job on this one! Love just about every choice. Re: the kitchen - don't be embarrassed, it looks fantastic as-is. And that lady-to-boyscout transition painting is genius.
The only thing that seems off to me (petty compared to the overall awesomeness that is this house) is that the dining room chairs seem a bit too disproportionate to each other.
Awww, I miss south Austin!!
I love the chevrons, which I'm going crazy for lately. What paint color was used for those?
Lovely job!
One of my favorite house tours too. Beautiful. Love the TV room rug as well as that gorgeous "TV chest". I want this house and the majority of everything in it!
Woooo, 'cool' is totally the right word for this tour. Love it.
I actually have a post it note next to me scrawled with a list of all the things I love about this so I wouldnt forget to give you kudos on all of them!
I love the angle on the TV cabinet, the suitcases are an an old but cool storage idea but done in a fresh different way, the Annie Hall screen shots (!), the built-ins and paint/wood treatment in the doorways.
At first I thought I hated the low chairs at the dining room table and then realized I love them. One guy lives here - it is nice to have space to feed 6 - but you don't want to be constantly reminded of all the extra chairs when it is just one or two eating.
BEAUTIFUL job!
What I like most about this is that it was designed for someone else, yet, as she states, still feels very personal. It does not feel like a generic "designed" home in which everything is so perfect that there's no character at all.
Wow. This is amazing.
it actually looks like someone with style lives there comfortably... must be nice to come home
Everything about this house is cool. Love it.
Love the dining room with the Mama Bear and Papa Bear chairs.
This place is sophisticated, yet comfortable. I think the large dining room chairs are gorgeous, but to me the DCM chairs are out of place. The size of the table and the other chairs dwarfs them and makes them look awkward. I would also change the curtains in the room with the striped wall to ones that are a little bit more formal. But in general this place is awesome!
You did a great job. I'd live there, and I'm a bachelorette. ;-)
Gorgeousness! But I don't like the big- chair-small-chair combo for the dining table. The small chairs also look lower, and making your guests feel small is no way to make them feel welcome in your home. I love the oversize desk lamp in the study.
Yes, please tell us the paint colors for the room with the fireplace!
Oh, gosh! So much awsomeness I don't know where to begin. This actually looks like someone with personality lives there. Plus, I seriously love the dining room: that rug, those chairs, those lights. Love.
So cool! Where did you get that awesome pillow on the couch?
I'm in the minority here. It doesn't look hip and fresh enough for a young bachelor, but that's only a matter of taste. Also, I don't understand the layout. Why isn't the dining room in the room with the fireplace? It seems such a beautiful focus is lost. And that area is oddly furnished with everything pushed against the walls. Is that just an entry way?
I love the Annie Hall screen shots! It's just like a film strip running across the wall.
I'd like to meet this south austin bachelor!
1700 sq. ft. for one person? Professionally designed? And the crowd goes wild! This isn't the A.T. I used to love. I guess you change to keep up with a changing readership. But I think it's telling that a designer project is lauded as having "personality" and as "masculine" despite being designed by a woman. Yet Mike's house tour from last week was panned if not entirely dismissed despite being original, DIY and designed by a guy for himself.
I lived in Austin and this is not a bungalow, it's too large.
Wow Sally!!! That was a totally inspiring home. Seriously, you did a bang up job and I am so impressed. And love that a lot of your sources are from Craigslist...isn't it amazing what you find on CL. The other day I got 4 bamboo chairs for dirt cheap! Also, your dining room looks so inviting. I see great meals, long conversations and cocktails! Great job!!!
Great place! Until the line that the bachelor in question is from a family of teachers in the NE, I was hoping that it might be my favourite Canadian actor who calls Austin home... Still a great job though!
I luv woody allen
W O W
I think my favorite thing is the little golden painting and the map. Were those a DIY project or did you buy that ready-made?
Love this place.
like some others, i also don't like that this space was professionally designed. i really think it destroys the soul of a vintage/eclectic style home when it's too calculated... which this space clearly is. the things going on in that space look like personal expressions of taste, emotion, and lifestyle, but someone else conceived them! it's just weird for me. too much hipster gentrification going on in south austin, and this just seems symptomatic of it
"disingenuous" was the word i think i was looking for here.
Really great place, I like the TV room/bedroom areas the best. Although I feel like the bathroom was a little overlooked.
I'm a little bit on the side of 'somecraftdame'. The place is wonderful but a little too 'put together' rather than evolved over time. It looks like a stage set kind of. Lacking the soul of the owner, maybe? Hipster gentrification is a good term for it.
On a scale of 1-10 for cool-ness factor; this home is a 20!! Great job! LOVE the finishing work on the stairs leading to the bedroom. Adds just the right natural wood touch (along with those lovely beams)! Thanks for sharing!!
who wouldn't love it?
Ummm, I don't love it. The black curtains silmply MUST go. The chairs are completely off at the dning table. And di we run out of money when we bought the bathroom tiles- only enough to go halfway across the room and stop arbitrarily? PLEASE explain all the random suitcases.....
That being said, LOVE the Annie Hall shots with subtitles- VERY creative.
Overall good start and has lots of potential!
The TV room and bedroom loft are my favorite spaces, but I love the entire house tour. I also don't think the space looks "calculated". Personally, I think it looks just right. I love the gray wall colors (especially in the TV room), the cabinet the TV is sitting on, and the dinning room table, lights and chairs. I would love to eat in that room!!
Well done, Sally!
Incredible! Some of the comments here disparage the use of a "designer" but this space is beautifully curated and thought out. The use of many second-hand and vintage items gives the space character and charm that is usually lacking in the "cost-no-object" decorator spaces we sometimes see here on AT.
I find this space to be terrific from top to bottom. It reminds me of my own home. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!
The place is not my style, but looks v appealing. But the process was very engaging; I wonder if any professional designers (who work the way SB does, rather than sourcing mostly-new items), keep blogs or whatever with a running log of their progress on individual projects?
The luggage storage is... cute. XD I hope those are the suitcases he uses when he comes "home", assuming he needs to transport anything. For those of you thinking the place looks "calculated", well, I imagine if he manages to spend enough time in the place, clutter might actually appear!!!
I'm very impressed by Sally's quirky eye and the fact that she clearly went above and beyond the call of duty to make this place perfect. Every part of it is interesting and absolutely lovely.
The fact that it's some rich guy's weekender brings out the rabid commie in me, though :)
P.S. But am I the only one who wonders why the living room has a picture of a vagina on the wall?
Now,...this fellow here,...he has Fine Taste!
"Disingenuous" is the word that sprang to my mind too. A professionally designed vacation home for the weekend hipster? It feels like it was designed expressly to feature on interiors blogs. Eames chair: check. Antlers: check. Quirky pop culture references: check. Carnival curiosity: check. Vintage luggage: check. Re-purposed wood furniture: check. Artfully displayed books: check. Old sign: check.
I like all of those things when they're collected by the owner over time. But when they're specially acquired by a designer it feels like no hip design cliche was left unturned. I actually like the kitchen the best. It feels the least contrived.
The bones of this house are incredible!
Well it is beautiful. I think it must be hard to design a personal home for someone else and try to incorporate their personal touches.
I have seen the boy scout painting on another post on AT and I have to say that was genius. Good save.
My favorite is the rincon corner with the chevron stripes.
It's great but sad that the home owner's style is sort of lacking in this. It is a designer's style.Oh well.
Oh I agree that there is a big discrepancy in the scale of the dining room chairs. Plus it would freak me out to have white dining room chairs as I wouldn't want to serve red wine to guests.
so who's the dude so that i have trap him with an "unplanned" pregnancy?
I have that dining table and I'm looking to seal it with some kind of wax. Any recommendations of what to use? Not sure I want it to come out glossy.