HOME TOUR | A Full Pandemic Renovation of a Picturesque Family Residence in Maryland

I think people typically hire our firm, they like that we have like an edgy approach I think to design and that we incorporate a lot of beautiful art into our design that you might not typically see and we take a lot of risks so I think people looking to do that are very intrigued by our work. My name is Zoe Feldman and I am the president of Zoe Feldman Design. Our clients often describe our work as colorful but really I think what we're typically doing is we're using color as a way to modernize our spaces to take classic designs and make them feel a bit more modern so a classic silhouette and then using color to modernize it. So today we're in Chevy Chase, Maryland which is an amazing suburb of D.C. It's very metropolitan still but it's just on the cusp of Washington D.C. So I chose to focus on this project for the designer home tour because I had so much fun doing this with Susan Tynan who I am obsessed with and has become a very dear friend but also I'm in awe of because she built this beautiful business called Framebridge. I'm such an enormous fan of art and the idea was like how can we show art in interesting and different ways. There were a few different goals and there typically are for any given client and in this case they were moving from Georgetown which is typically very small living and in the center of Washington D.C. They're a family of four and so it needed to be family friendly. The children are quite young and so it was sort of how do we engage this new large space and make it part adult and part family friendly. Our process to start is typically with what we call concept development so we get to know the client well. They say a bunch of words and sentences to us and then we interpret them. We also use a lot of inspirational imagery to communicate to the client and understand how they might want to use color, how far they're willing to go. So we really just start with a bunch of informative interviews and pictures. The entryway is interesting because this is where the whole project actually started. We found this amazing photograph that they really responded to with this bright entry. Susan was a bit more hesitant to engage the color but her husband Peter was like yes let's do it and this color was one of the first choices we made. It's obviously got an enormous amount of personality so it helped to dictate how we would engage the rooms off of it, the dining room and the living room. I thought this would be a great way to showcase a lot of the art and show that you don't need to have white walls. As a way to help modernize the stairs and create a little more impact we blacked them out with this sort of it's actually more of an off black. It has this kind of ashy grayish black tone and we painted as you can see the treads, the risers, the baluster, the banisters, the whole thing and put this cool it's actually a polypropylene runner and so they don't have to worry about the dog and the children and spilling. So now we're in the dining room. The clients were concerned that this room was very small. I actually love a small dining room because it creates a deeper sense of intimacy so rather than trying to make a small room feel large we did what we call creating a jewel box effect where we took a moody color in this case a beautiful blue and we painted all of the woodwork in this deep warm blue and then found this great wallpaper that almost reads as a solid but has this sort of light feather touch to it. We brought it up above the woodwork and then actually wrapped it on the ceiling so you feel ensconced in the color. In order to sort of break up the moodiness of the room we wanted to have a few unexpected moments so we engaged these blushed chairs which created some levity and also found some pop inside of this existing cabinet that hadn't been dealt with in a really long time. We knew that we needed to do something with this because it just felt very dated so we engaged the interior with this like beautiful saturated fun yellow which repeats itself actually on the light. Now you're in the living room. This room to me was the most challenging from a construction standpoint and from how we engaged the room. Prior to engaging us the room did not have these built-ins so we created these built-ins as a way you can see it's a very long room with somewhat low ceilings which can be hard to to deal with and so we separated the spaces and created a more intimate space with the built-ins and offer more of an opportunity to showcase framed art in an unusual way and it also created a nice little vestibule to walk into the back of the house and also to go outside. We ripped out the old mantle that was too tall and too uninteresting and we put in this beautiful vintage Carrara marble mantle that has sort of an homage to like the old Brooklyn brownstones. The leopard rug was one of the first things we found that she fell in love with. We knew we wanted to use that and so that became sort of the foundation for how we selected all the different textiles and fabrics and textures. I think that most people agree that leopard is somewhat of a neutral even though it has a bit of a chaotic crazy pattern. It's also great because it hides all of your spills so it would excel in two areas both aesthetically and also functionally. We layered in a whole bunch of decorative pieces as we often do. We really like to showcase books and art and vases and you know pieces from their travel to kind of like bring personality into the space so it really feels like their home. So now we're in the breakfast room slash family room which is the heartbeat of this home in particular. Everyone's always looking for storage and we're always looking to offer storage. So prior to this being here there was just a sort of funny storage piece that didn't really make a lot of sense and didn't hide much so we created this beautiful piece that is really functioning as like an additional pantry, additional storage and also hiding some things that aren't great looking and can't be moved and then off of it we created this breakfast nook. We used a vegan leather which is an incredible piece of machinery essentially and for anyone who has children or pets I mean you can paint my children do and then just wipe it off so it's amazing and it will never fail you. I think one of the questions we get asked a lot is all right I don't have a huge art budget so how can I have art in my home and for people who have children or maybe like nieces and nephews they're very close to our grandchildren one of the things that we turn to often is children's art because you can see it's actually incredibly artistic and when clustered together like this in a gallery wall it really personalizes the space it makes the space feel very warm and like happy and so I would encourage anyone to don't just throw those out like I often do save them and frame them and make them into a cool art installation. Now we're in the family room which we knew was the most important room especially from a functional space for the clients they really wanted to become here they love to watch television they both have crazy hectic jobs and tv is really a reprieve I think from their natural life and so this became very important we anchored the room with a large sectional you can see there's lots of like whites and linens it needed to feel very light and airy similar to the architecture of the room. In the powder room we did really a complete departure which is what we typically do in powder rooms because it's just a moment like many jobs the client fell in love with a wallpaper these like cool Chinese dragons and this became the foundation for the room we pulled up the existing floor and it's so small and not too expensive to do a tiny little room like this so we use this beautiful marble mosaic and then we found this really cool cement sink and like this mint green it just kind of finished off the space and it's this cool little spot. I would summarize the end result of this project as having this beautiful tension in the design and by that I mean in the front of the house we have this very moody feeling in the dining room layers of dark colors and even moody art and as we move into the living room it feels a bit lighter and then as we move into the back of the house you get a feeling of levity casualness with cane and linen and it just makes you want to lay on the sectional and watch television.