The Bruns Breathtaking Bucolic Colonial

published Jun 14, 2010

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Name: Ken and Lynn-Anne Bruns (plus our 4 kids, 2 dogs & 2 bunnies)
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina
Size: 4500 square feet
Years lived in: 4

Lynn-Ann Bruns runs a successful design business and has the home of my dreams. It feels lived in, comfortable and is well designed through and through. The Bruns travel a great deal and have lived all over the world – their home reflects a combination of their adventures and great sense of style. Often times it can be tricky to decorate and design such a large space, but the Bruns took it one step at a time with results that took my breath away!

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

The Bruns home contains great furniture, repruposed items and upcycled ideas. Their spaces are light, bright and full of fun nooks of collected treasures. It isn’t until you’ve taken the entire tour that you catch your breath. Although the home is large (so the floor plan might not be easy to discern in a large batch of photographs) we’re pretty sure you’ll get the feel for things as you work your way through. Keep your eye out for the amazing kitchen remodel and all the little details including a fabulous outdoor retreat, you’re sure to fall in love just like I did!

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Apartment Therapy Survey:

Our style: family funky, with a lot of vintage, and pretty.

Inspiration: 1. Geography: We’ve lived in lots of places, including the UK, coastal California, Gulf Coast Florida, the Midwest, as well as North Carolina — twice. We travel a lot, so we have loads of interesting things and a fearless, imaginative attitude. 2. History: That of our countries — the US and the UK — and our family.

Favorite Element: The kitchen. We live there, really. It was a pain to do (this house had its original 40 year old kitchen, and it was in poor condition), but now it works perfectly for big family dinners, cookie baking parties, dessert for 80, or just me and our five year old painting and doing playdough.

Biggest Challenge: The renovation. It took a year as we converted the attic (it was unfinished with just a pull down ladder), redid all the bathrooms, renovated the kitchen, scrubbed, painted, and decorated every surface.

What Friends Say: It really reflects our family’s spirit, and it’s really individual and imaginative.

Biggest Embarrassment: Serious weed issues as we don’t like to use pesticides and weeding is extremely low on the priority list.

Proudest DIY: Demo in master bath; loads of shelving; old furniture, reinvented; beadboard; a crazy paving flagstone patio (i broke my little finger!).

Biggest Indulgence: A new kitchen (as you can imagine), and the attic conversion.

Best advice: Use your imagination, and trite but true — buy what you love. Also, buy used or vintage and don’t be afraid to take risks with color.

Dream source: I really need to go on a serious rummage around the back roads of places like Norway, Romania, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Resources:

Paint:
Master Bedroom: Farrow & Ball Powder Blue
Caroline’s Room: (with the polar bear oilcloth) Benjamin Moore’s Jamaican Aqua
Living Room: Benjamin Moore’s Palladian Blue (cut in half)
Dining Room: Glidden Seven Lakes
Kitchen and Family Room: Benjamin Moore’s Wythe Blue
Laundry Room: Farrow & Ball Dead Salmon
Attic Playroom: Benjamin Moore chalkboard paint and Decorator’s White

Quilts and Throws:
All vintage from consignment and secondhand shops, and the occasional thrift store. My favorite vintage sources in Charlotte are Southend Exchange (the absolute best antiques and treasures in Charlotte) and Sleepy Poet Antique Mall (full disclosure: Caroline and i have a space there with a business partner, but it is an absolute treasure trove).

Kitchen:
Table: Crate & Barrel Big Sur
Chairs: vintage Eames and DWR Be Pop
Counters: seagrass limestone
Chandelier: Canopy Designs
Red stools: vintage Cal Poly chem lab stools, from the Mission thrift store, powdercoated red

Living Room:
Baker sofas
Pottery Barn Seahorse Lamps
Southend Exchange vintage Maritime oil
Great Grandma’s dresser
Bungalow5 Brigitte table
Ikea and West Elm side tables

Family Room:
Vintage tag sale settees
French farm table (cut down, not by me)
West Elm Parsons desk
Ikea PS cabinets (3) for toy storage
Roost cubes
Madegoods Butterfly Capiz shell chandelier

Caroline’s Room:
Vintage quilt: local consignment shop
Swinging chair: habitat (uk)
Polar bear oilcloth: john lewis (uk)
Dresser: Pottery Barn Kids, with funky knobs
Yellow sofa: tag sale
Cabinet: secondhand shop, painted and papered inside
White side table: West Elm
Bed: Land of Nod
Vintage office cabinet: got at a longtime local hardware store when it closed down

Kids’ Bath:
Herbeau sink and faucet
Dal tile Rittenhouse square tile wainscot in arctic white
Restoration Hardware sconces
Star mirror: Colony, charlotte

Teddy’s Room:
Puppy: magis, through CB2
Bed: Land of Nod
Lamp: Oopsy Daisy
Blue Star: vintage signage, Sarasota Architectural Salvage
Swinging chair: Habitat (uk)
Space fabric: Osborne & Little
Zigzag throw: Goodwill

Attic Playroom:
Shelves: a weekend project by my husband and I — just lumber and inexpensive brackets, painted white and attached to the wall. Total cost $150. Oh, and lots of books.
Eames rocker: eastendimports.com
Granny throw: Goodwill
Hex table: West Elm
Sofa: 20 year old This End Up sofa painted black by our kids, with cushions recovered in calico corners fabric.
Otter: Oscar, hails from the Philippines via a guy at Metrolina Expo Flea Market. Yeah, i know, that doesn’t help. Sorry!
Flooring: cork

Master Bedroom:
Painting: tag sale
Shells: vintage
Books: all about decorating and collecting, lots of funny and fun vintage ones
Blue glass lamps: estate sale — check out the finials 🙂
Lampshades: Anthropologie
Cane chair: Habitat restore with Pottery Barn crewel euro and West Elm sheepskin lumbar

Garden:
Chairs: vintage, collected at tag sales and secondhand shops, and spray painted

Little Library at the top of the Stairs:
Shelves and brackets: Ikea
Woolly cuckoo clock: Anthropologie

Dining Room:
Table: Guy Chaddock
Chairs: vintage louis-esque, with silk scraps front and back and Pottery Barn velvet panel cut up for seats
Curtains: blue velvet, Pottery Barn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

(Thanks, Bruns Family!)

Images: Lynn-Anne Bruns

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