Name: Ellen & Derek
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
When Ellen and Derek moved with their three children from Old Town Alexandria, Virginia to Cambridge, Massachusetts, they found their dream home on a street known as "Professor's Row". Built in 1902, the home has only had two previous owners — the last of which was a well-known Harvard professor who lived there with his family for 54 years. "Derek and I feel as if we are stewards of this house. We wanted to honor the house by maintaining many of its original elements as well as make it represent our style and lifestyle. I think we have begun to do that. It has felt like home very quickly," says Ellen.
When they were house-hunting, Ellen and Derek knew they wanted a spacious "wonderful old house that did not need gutting" (many of the houses in Cambridge are being gutted). Their wish was granted: their new house was already in great condition, so they have been spared major structural renovations, though the electrical system was updated to adhere to current codes. Every room was painted and the wood floors were refinished. And then Ellen set about redecorating. She emphasized that the decorating is a work in progress and much more remains to be done!
Ellen enlisted the help of a local interior designer, Debra Szidon of Cocoon Home Design. Ellen says, "I had a vision and Debra has helped me fulfill it. We have made many trips to find furniture, fabrics and colors together (and she also has brought a lot to me that she has sourced herself). She has a wonderful eye and is so very talented. She is also a really great friend. We have done all this together while maintaining our friendship!" Debra tends to have a more modern sensibility compared with Ellen's more traditional tastes. "It has been fun working together because we tend to have different styles but we have meshed well and are both really excited with the results," Ellen explains.
The decorating was a collaboration between Ellen and Debra, who was not hired to completely decorate the home. Debra did help Ellen and Derek choose paint colors, wallpaper and some of the furniture; however, many of the rooms (including the living room) Ellen decorated herself, using furniture the family brought with them from their old house in Alexandria.
Ellen and Debra chose not to paint over the heavy wood trim that punctuates most rooms in the home. Rather, they have lightened the home's mood with pale and shimmery wall coverings, cheery fabrics and furniture made from softer, golden wood, either antiques or contemporary pieces hand-made in New England. Lovely little vignettes abound, especially in the dining room, where an apple painting by Grant Drumheller hangs above a solitary dining room chair (Image 4).
Dining Room (Images 1-4)
The dining room had a silver tone on tone wallpaper that was pretty but very dated and old. Says Ellen: "I am not really a 'wallpaper' person but it inspired me to find a wallpaper in gold tones that would complement our furniture and the rug. We love the way it turned out!" They settled on a delicately detailed glass-beaded wallpaper called Stardust from Omexco and had the walls painted in Farrow & Ball Lime White and Off White. The chairs by the window are by R Jones and are covered in Kravet Couture Marble House in sage. The French 19th century dining room table, chairs and buffet were purchased at Hastening Antiques in Middleburg, Virginia. The rug is Tibetan.
Foyer: (Images 5-7)
The grand and spacious foyer has been a major redecorating project, Ellen says. Their first purchase was a French antique sideboard from European Country Antiques in Cambridge. "I knew I wanted a strong piece there to anchor the room, Ellen explains. They found the Hanna bench by Oly at Hudson in Boston. Originally the bench was covered in Kelly Wearstler's Bengal Bazaar fabric but Ellen felt it was not quite right for the space. After mulling over various options (as documented on Debra's blog), Ellen and Debra settled on Brunschwig and Fils Dzhambul Stripe and Romo Delano (blue) with a Donghia Ikat accent pillow. The window seat (original to the house) is covered in Brentano Canyon (Juniper) and has accent pillows in Donghia Sachin and Donghia Ikat. The walls are painted in Benjamin Moore White Marigold and the trim is Simple White.
Kitchen (Image 8)
The previous owner's is a carpenter and he custom finished the kitchen. Says Ellen, "we did not have to take on a kitchen renovation, which was very nice since he did a lovely job!" The table in the kitchen nook is from Lake and Mountain Home in Harvard, Massachusetts and the bench cushion fabric was found at Zimmans in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Living Room (Images 9 & 10)
The living room originally had dark wood bookshelves around half of the room. Both avid readers who love books Ellen says she "didn't want that heavy feeling in the living room." The shelves were removed and walls painted a lovely bluish color, Benjamin Moore Silver Sage, to go with the rug and furnishings. "We love the color and think it complements the dark wood very nicely," says Ellen. The room is cozy and family-friendly, with a slightly more masculine feel than the dining room. The coffee table is an antique French iron gate with a glass top. The sleigh chair is by Charles Shackleton. All the accent pillows are covered in Robert Allen fabrics. The built-in bench next to the fire place has a custom cushion covered in Brentano Rapunzel. One of the lamps (the other is in the foyer) is a vintage Venetian glass lamp purchased from Reside in Cambridge. The paintings are by Tom Curry and Grant Drumheller.
Thank you for sharing, Ellen, Derek (and Debra)! Your hard work has paid off beautifully. And we appreciate all the sourcing detail and links!
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love the dining room hutch
Wow, I love all the woodwork and built-ins. As someone who used to live in Cambridge, I'm envious of your find! It looks like you're great keepers of the legacy of this house.
i know this area very well! wonderful wood work & architectural details!
Love the wallpaper!
The dining room is beautiful, love all the medium wood tones and the light that comes into the space.
Those builtins are amazing! I find myself a little surprised that an interior decorator was used to furnish this house. The dining room I totally get, but the living room furniture seems a bit random to me.
OMG YES...so many people are gutting every single house sold in Cambridge. It makes me so sad :-(. Congrats on being rich and having a lovely home! I am eternally jealous from my 3rd floor 630 sq ft apartment I can barely afford.
I'm in love with the window seat! And all the other built ins. Older homes are beautiful. Nice to see you were able to keep true to the beauty of the architechture.
Love the home, especially the window nook, built-ins, and window detailing. Just lovely.
Beautiful structure. How fine to find a place with such good 'bones'.
Really love the woodwork in this house. It is so warm and it makes me wish the trim in my home had never been painted.
The dining room is so pretty, but the rest of it looks pretty drab.
I admire the woodworks around the staircase, but other than that, this looks and feels a little too dated for me.
I, too, am surprised that a decorator was involved. It feels unfinished. The house is certainly lovely and the furniture is mostly fine, I think just changes to the textiles (especially the window seat) and some new accessories would freshen it right up.
There's a difference between a house that feels like it hasn't changed in half a century and a house that feels current but where the historic details have been preserved.
Hello all. Catrin (post's author) here. Just wanted to let you know that the links to Cocoon Home Design have been fixed (Sorry!). Also, I have made a few changes to underscore that Debra, the decorator, was NOT hired to provide a full-service treatment of the house. She helped with certain discrete aspects of the decorating; namely, paint colors, wallpaper choices and some furniture choices/upholstery. Many of the rooms, including the living room, were decorated by Ellen and Derek, using their own furniture.
Thanks!
I'm curious to learn the name of the Harvard professor who lived there for many years.
I'm drooling over the built-in hutch.
Love the details in this home and the natural wood. My eye is drawn to the fabulous bench in the foyer and the great fabric on the banquet. This home does not seem quite finished to me though. There seems to be a serious lack of art work on the walls in most rooms and the only walls that show any personality are in the dining room, with that great pattern. I think some historic colors on the walls would warm things up, and I'm not thinking anything in the white family! Window treatments with some texture and/or pattern would give these rooms more personality. It does say above "much more remains to be done", so maybe this home can be revisited at a later date?
nicely done- i would have brought more light into the over all design. the continuity works-have you ever thought of using 'anaglypta' wallpaper??? i think it would work for u'r space :) good work over all.
thanks for the share.
Exquisite and very expressive of the best of Cantabrigian style.
Full tour please!
I think this home is absolutely beautiful and am glad AT has something different (traditional) on here in comparison to a lot of the mid-century design we see. I like the wall-paper and think a lot of the furniture works, the dining room table especially. I can envision many lovely evenings and dinner parties there. I do think that new upholstery on some (most) of the pieces would make this home sparkle.
I have an old home in this area and have the built-ins in the dining room as well. Were the glass doors added I wonder? If so, that is a great idea.
On the other hand, as lovely as this home is, I am a little disappointed with a home tour of a professionally interior designed home. Am I the only one who peers onto this website for homeowner-inspired decor?
Beautiful home, but it seems like it's missing something. I agree with other posters, this is sort of a let-down of a house tour.
I love the alcove with the built in seating. I just want to snuggle up with a blanket and a book.
I appreciate the direction the homeowners are going in with the late 1800's/early 1900's furniture but the space is not ready for AT. At this stage maybe it is better for a "This Old House" type of site?
On another note, it would be nice to see more home tours where antiques have been successfully used...
Love the house, hate the furnishings.
I like the wallpaper in the dining room.
Otherwise, the house feels a bit too gloomy to me - too much of dark wood everywhere, I would paint it (I do understand though that in order to reflect the orig. style, it should be unpainted).
Why no window treatments at all?
Lovely house and beautifully done. Preserves the Cambridge spirit . . .
I would love to know where they got that easy chair in the dining room. I love it.
I think the house is extraordinary, as are some of the individual pieces.
But... the house bears all the hallmarks of decorating (and I specifically use the word "decorating" and not "design") of an inexperienced layperson.
Proportions are wrong -- for example, the chandelier in the dining room is lovely, but is far, far too small for the space. The side chairs in the dining room are the wrong shape; they are jarring.
Artwork is too small to make any sort of an impact and just floats aimlessly on the walls.
While I LOVE whites and off-whites (and am often on AT directing people to Donald Kaufman's whites, the best in the trade), here the colour scheme, especially when combined with the strongly coloured and varied textiles, simply does not work. The off-white walls, instead of providing a design thread to draw all the rooms together, are simply anemic and bland.
Part of it is that this house, for whatever reason, did not photograph well. But the real reason is that there is seemingly no design or overall vision for the house except buying individual pieces and fabrics that the homeowner's like on a one-off basis. That is no way to design the interior of a house. You need a plan, and you need to occasionally subsume a preference for the effect it will have on the overall scheme. There are but few people who can do this subconsciously, magically choosing just the right object, colour and fabric to make a room sing, keeping everything coordinated in their head. Everyone else needs more of a plan, more structure and discipline, in order to create a beautiful space.
The settee in the foyer is beautiful, and the fabrics interesting, but the piece does not relate in any way to its surroundings. It is beautiful, but undermines a cohesive design. Similarly, the window seat in the foyer is beautiful, and is attractively upholstered, but does not make as much of an impression as such a magical and cozy element rightly should. The foyer is not welcoming and does not give the sense of having arrived in a special place, which is very much a lost opportunity. The lack of window coverings in the principal rooms seems to indicate a design quandary, as there isn't enough of a design in place to guide the selection of a fabric that would have such a major impact.
My advice would be to refrain from selecting any further fabrics or other purchases, and hire Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz to design the space. This is a very special house, and can easily be an amazing space. Even though you may be comfortable with the choices made so far, good designers such as the Katzes can make it much better -- better than you ever dreamed possible. The Katzes were design columnists in the Boston Globe for a decade; Cheryl Katz's original background was in fashion design, and so she has a particular ability with fabrics and pattern, while Jeffrey is an architect, and so brings that sensibility to their work.
I am a big fan of their work, and still have a clipping from a mid-'90s project of theirs featured in Metropolitan Home. A workman's cottage in Cambridge, their use of colour and fabric, their marriage of antiques with modern pieces and works of art in that project is nothing less than masterful. They would be the perfect choice to bring together the many threads you have started in your magnificent house project.
Love the wallpaper in the dining room!
The house itself is beautiful. I agree that the furnishings seem, in another poster's words, "stodgy and dull." There's nothing with any visual impact here. I think the owners would benefit by having a decorator help them liven things up on the choice of furnishings.
ayla, if they had turned the lights on for the pictures I'm sure the rooms would actually look quite inviting.
I agree that no design risks were taken here. You can keep the house and then go wild with your art and your furnishings. I'll bet that brightly done settee in the foyer was a real stretch for this couple and in design terms, they really haven't gone far enough.
Lovely house - I am not looking at furniture or art, but at the bones. Jealous of the builtins and window seats.
The dining room wall paper is very classy.
While I love the house, I think you may have posted a bit too early to truly appreciate what you have/will be adding to make it more of a home.
I tend to agree with a few of the comments where they said the lack of artwork is one major drawback in the home.
I know that collecting and hanging artwork takes many years to do properly - and buying a truckload at some starving artist sale is not the route to go!
All that said, I congratulate you for posting your home on AT and look forward to see your place once you settle into more completely.
I get that this is a really nice house, with the decorating a work in progress. Love the dining room furniture. Agree the style of the chairs by the window is a bit jarring with the rest of the dining room's furniture, but at least they look comfy. I would put a lower and different chandelier over the table - but I bet the one here is the one that came with the house - they can always change it later.
Love that the doors were refinished, and the wood that was not already painted not painted. Good job of lightening up the effect of the dark woodwork in the living room with losing the bookcases and using lighter wood tones in furniture - it works. The white painted furniture pieces (settee in foyer, table next to fireplace in living room) don't work for me - I prefer the look of the lighter wood pieces.
I also would have also gone with slightly darker hued historical wall colors. They like the dining room wallpaper - maybe they can pull the living room together with paint when they address that room again. Historical hued paint would soften the effect of the dark woodwork more than the lighter paint does, I think. The dark woodwork effect in the living room also would be lightened with curtain panels that cover the side portion of the window woodwork. But before chosing curtains, I'd change some of the fabrics - the two on chairs in there seem to contrast poorly with the rug, as does the addition of the plaid or striped tablecover in the corner. I'd start with the rug and the couch, and then build other fabrics that look good with them. I'd even swap the living room and dining room rugs - just to see if the rooms would benefit from having different light/dark rugs than they do - I think they might (though not necessarily these exact rugs.)
As to the foyer, I agree the settee is jarring with the staircase style - but some like that sort of juxtaposition. (That looks very much like the current style of designery to me.) The console doesn't make much of a statement - at least in that picture. I might also consider a case piece where the settee is, and a seating piece where the console is. The inglenook seat cushions are begging for something with a pattern, lighter than that green, at least to me.
I'd also have done a different tone fabric on the kitchen seat - this one I find too bright, too jarring with the furniture.
But, I love the house. I like the old professor house look. I like slow decorating, the trial and error decorating that happens over years, adding stuff bit by bit, sometimes moving stuff to different rooms, sometimes changing things later decided to be not quite right. I like that way of decorating better than designer designed places - they look more real, and like real people live there (rather than looking like magazine photo shoots.) I like some amount of random-seeming personal choice in the furnishings, rather than perfection of design. This place has some stuff right, some odd choices, and more to be done over time.
I suspect that this house is much nicer in person than the photo's show. . . most of them seem to be taken at slightly awkward angles that don't do a lot for the spaces or decor shown. (And I sympathize with this, being myself too photographically-challenged to ever offer up pictures of my home, even if I should get up the courage to submit it to the tender mercies of AT!) One big challenge that the photographer seems to be struggling with is the lack of large quantities of bright, natural light. Typical, I would think, in a big old gorgeous house of this type.