- Welcome back to Houzz TV live,
I'm Rick Spence and with me today is Sara Hillery,
with Sara Hillery Interior Design
in beautiful Richmond, Virginia.
And she's been kind enough to show us
her kitchen and her beautiful living room.
Thanks for taking the time today.
Give me a little feel for this home.
- So this is a Dutch colonial set in Richmond, Virginia,
built in 1971 to look like the Waynesburg Tavern,
the folks who originally built it,
they did a really good job.
They brought in old reclaimed wood floors
that are heart pine.
And then the fireplace, of course, you know,
it's modeled after cooking fireplace.
Traditionally, it would have been called the keeping room,
one of the main reasons we bought this house.
- So let's start in the family room
with that amazing fireplace.
You saw the brick, you saw the wood.
Some people might not have embraced the wood like this.
Tell me what you did to make it your own.
- So I'll be honest,
the thought occurred to me to paint it
because painted paneling has been very popular as of late,
and it would certainly lighten up the room.
But given that we live in Virginia on the East coast
where we get four seasons, you kind of want a cozy spot.
And it's one of those, once you paint it,
you really can't go back.
It's got the beautiful heart pine everywhere,
and so it's very smooth, it's not knotty pine
like you see in a lot of seventies homes
that was like the inexpensive version.
We wanted to lighten it up using decorative techniques
and really kind of keep the wood intact.
So we have kind of brought light and color to the space
by putting down a seagrass rug,
that's lighter than our floors.
Incorporating lighting, there was no overhead lighting
in this house other than a ceiling fan,
they'd put cans in which I'm not always a big fan of,
but in these homes that are very long with low ceilings
where the light doesn't penetrate quite as far,
you know, you kind of really need those.
- Now before this space felt a little bit more like a den,
sort of like an afterthought.
What are some of the key things you did to make it
just more inviting as a place to hang out
versus like a secondary room?
- Well, I think the first thing
is by getting two regular large scaled sofas,
that sort of flanked the fireplace.
So by putting in the seating by the fireplace,
I feel like it created a cozy sort of nook
to begin with.
And then that also allowed for this free space
in a u-shape to kind of walk around.
The coffee table came from my husband's family side,
it was this old ship crate top from the world war two ships,
where they would like load supplies.
It survived offices and apartments and college dorms,
and now it's here getting the loved by dogs and children.
- That's something you just can't go pick up,
that's really cool.
- Not only do we have the sofas,
but we also created a little desk space
so that we had a place to sit down and go through mail,
or write letters,
gets used frequently as a bar for entertaining.
We just wanted to create little nooks.
There's also a chair in this room that is my morning chair,
it's where I love to sit,
and catch up on the news, or you know,
read a book and kind of grab a few minutes to myself.
- That looks like a magical little spot
to wake up in the morning
- It is,
and I drink a lot of coffee,
so, you know, it's close to the bar and the kitchen
so I can get my coffee and wake up on my own time.
- When you have a space like this
with a lot of hard surfaces,
like wood and brick and some other things,
did you think acoustically about softening it
to make it a little bit cozier and quieter in there?
- Definitely.
So I have three layers of floor coverings
for sound absorption and softness.
I've got my thick rug pad,
and then I've got a custom cut seagrass rug
that kind of goes around the shape of the room.
And then on top of that, I also have an antique heriz rug
that sort of anchors that seating space,
so that we get some of that sound absorption
from the various layers.
- Yeah, that's really nice.
And how nice to have all this built in storage
in the bookshelves?
- So I'm a book collector,
I love travel and bringing things back from my trips,
just as little tokens and memory savers.
So, they're ever changing, they're never just the same.
- I think Santa could actually really fit
down that fireplace.
- I think so.
- I think one year he's gonna have to make
a real appearance.
- Oh, definitely.
At Christmas, we used to be in the living room
now it's in here,
because the children prefer it.
- Who's the big guy on the wall there.
- I found him down at High Point Market,
actually in the Antique Center,
and just loved it.
I was like, I love the scale.
It's a hand painting on silk.
This room in my house is truly a reflection
of my collections and things from travel.
Every home should tell its story,
and this room is full of stores.
- This one thing looks like pennies
or something like old collectible.
- Yeah, there are old wax seals off letters.
- Oh, how cool is that?
- Each one has a different seal, they have like cracks.
The coloring of the red wax
is just a little different in each one.
So I feel like they sort of tell their own story,
which I don't know, I love things with history
and a story to share.
- Love that.
Let's go into the kitchen.
It's like going into another era.
- And yeah, it was,
I think it was the original seventies kitchen
and the previous owners had done some work
and then we removed a wall,
that gave us an extra four feet of space
basically for the kitchen.
- And it's not a massive kitchen,
it's just much more of functional now.
So tell me about the main things you did in this space.
- So, by removing that wall and opening up this space,
I really wanted it to feel like a continuation
of the rest of the house.
So we put in, reclaimed heart pine floors
and we had someone nailing the nail holes,
going across each board.
You know, we did inset cabinetry,
just trying to make it look like old world
and like furniture.
- Yeah, it's very nice,
a really simple approach with your pulls
on your cabinetry as well.
- I do, I love that.
You know, there's a time for big pulls
and they'd certainly add a lot of fun and flash,
but in here, you know, it is a colonial style home,
and I do have a lot of antiques.
So I wanted to sort of play that bridge
of, you know, a modern layout
with maybe some overall details.
The drawer frames are flat,
and the doors are shaker with the beads,
which is a more modern approach I would say
into to some degree.
But the little pulls are just understated
and functional and they work well.
They don't really detract from everything else going on.
- Your island is fairly narrow,
but by having it protrude that way,
you get a lot more usable space
and it still makes it workable in that smaller area.
So tell me about the strategy with the Island.
- Yes, so this is called a captain's cut.
For the countertop shape,
I use it quite a lot when it's a little bit tighter,
you know, when you don't have the room
to have those straight corners and have just a rectangle.
So it sort of pulls back and gives you egress space
at the sides where you need it,
and then knee space that we needed
in order to fit all the counter stools up underneath.
Created more surface for us
than if we had just done a rectangular slab.
- And what about the bar's stools?
In this situation, it seems like not having a back
is a good idea.
- Absolutely.
I'm a big fan because everybody congregates at the island,
if you don't have to have a back,
if you can have something that tucks up underneath,
it makes that island more of a workspace
in terms of standing.
So this way, a lot of times if I'm entertaining
or doing hors d'oeuvres, we put the food out
and everybody sort of grazes while I cook and we chat,
and then we can migrate to other places.
But it allows for standing conversation
more so than if you're reaching over
the back of a bar stool.
- Tell me about your lighting
and what you had to do in there.
- This room had one fan as the lighting in this space,
so we added overhead lights.
We also have lighting within the cabinetry.
I have under cabinet lighting,
and also the decorative pendant lighting.
Because it's a Dutch colonial,
I thought the lantern was highly appropriate,
and that are very simple and style.
It also by, you know,
if you're considering adding the pendant lighting,
what it does, is it also lights up and not just down,
and so it illuminates your ceiling
and makes your ceilings feel taller.
They created a lot of strong verticals
to really emphasize the ceiling height.
- Is that a chicken wire?
- It is, it's not chicken wire,
but it's like it it's a more formal, brass wire.
I love it because it allows you to see through,
but it gives you that protective barrier,
so it's don't have to be quite so neat as clear glass.
All of my upper cabinets are pretty much open
in representation because I've got the chicken wire,
and the ones by the stove, I've got the glass by the sink
and then I've got mirror at the bar.
So, I really was trying to, again, open up the space,
make it feel like the depth went all the way back
since the space is not a huge kitchen,
it's just a way to trick your eye
into thinking that there's more than that.
- Tell me about your little dining nook there.
- This is probably my second favorite spot in the house,
only because we do have this bay window.
So I get to look out over the yard,
and I can see where the kids are playing
and it just gets great natural light.
So this is kind of where we eat every meal,
old antique, walnut table that I bought at a college.
I used these ghost chairs
to sort of keep the space feeling light and airy,
despite having a dark table on a dark floor.
- Tell me about that collection behind you.
- Oh my gosh, this is inexpensive art.
When we bought the house,
there was a pile of oyster shells in the front yard
I used as the mulch I would say.
So I just picked up a few, cleaned them up,
and I was like, these are cool.
And I bought some ready-made frames
and painted the back and mounted them myself.
So inexpensive, you know,
design on a dime art.
- How fan is that?
Now what about the lighting fixture
above your dining up there?
- Also an antique?
There's a theme here, right?
I brought this back from Houston,
used to hang in my dining room in our previous house.
Sort of fit perfectly over this table
and it's light, it's open,
it has a little bit of crystal on it
to reflect the light coming through,
which my kids just get ecstatic about
when we get the rainbows from a little prism at the end.
- Oh yeah. - So, it's a favorite.
All right, let's go to the most important part
of the kitchen, your bar.
- I was gonna say which part.
I vote that the most important.
Oh yeah, I love this bar.
I'm so happy to have it.
We use it in the morning,
I'm a huge coffee drinker starting,
you know, at seven in the morning until sometimes noon
or two in the afternoon, depending on what I have going on,
you know, nighttime rolls around, it switches roles.
You know, the kids fill their water cups up
for dinner at this little water faucet,
and then we also use it for wine and cocktails.
You know, we wanted this to feel like a hutch.
This is actually a load bearing space
when the ceiling is dropped,
which is why the cabinets,
don't go up quite as high as the other spaces,
so we just created an elongated freeze above the doors
to make it feel like the cabinetry,
went all the way to the ceiling when it doesn't.
- What are the colors in there?
What is the color of the cabinetry?
It's not a pure white.
- No, it's a off white,
and I painted the cabinets and the walls and the trim
throughout my house the same,
so that, it sort of creates an envelope of this space
is what I tell clients.
If you create this great envelope,
then you can put anything in it and it won't clash,
so done the same for myself,
'cause I love the things,
you can tell by the number of objects
within my cabinets themselves.
I have different, plates and dinnerware
that I mix and match.
And I've got a collection of bud vases and pictures.
And when you have different colors,
it becomes the focal point if you know, in a space.
So I wanted everything to just recede
and allow for the objects to be
where they're kind of star of the show.
- What's the name of the paint color?
- Oh it's marshmallow by Sherwin Williams.
- Marshmallow.
- Yeah, I know it sounds so good,
I'm a sugar lover, admittedly.
So I was like, man, this is too good to be true.
- You went for it just on the name, just admit it.
- I Know, I did,
well that and it's warm.
It has like this great sort of orange cast to it.
So, it adds warmth in a space
so that when you're, a lot of times, when you do white,
you start white or pure white?
It has a little bit of gray to it,
and can feel cool.
I prefer warmer environments.
I wanted a cozy feel,
so just by putting that tinge of orange in the paint
I felt like it sort of achieved what I was after.
- It makes sense
'cause it's just like when you cook a marshmallow perfectly,
it gets that perfect golden brown.
So this is just before it starts turning golden brown.
- That's right.
That's exactly right.
- Well, thank you so much for taking the time with us today,
we really appreciate it.
All your wonderful clients and all your great projects,
and hopefully we'll get a chance to come see you in person,
do a story with you.
And, thank you again for taking the time.
Really appreciate it, Sara.
- Thanks so much,
and thanks again for having me.
- All right, we'll see you soon.
- Bye, take care.
- Bye bye. - Bye.