Inside Jessica Kain Barton s Louisville KY Home

The truth is when I walked in this house and I knew it was the house that I wanted, my husband was on a conference call and he had his earbuds in the whole time and he walked outside and he goes, well, this house is way too big for us. And I said, no, I'm sorry. This house is our house. It's got all of the character and all of the details that I've been looking for. And, you know, I'm a designer and I've got plenty of time to decorate all those spaces. We can do this over time. I'm Jessica Kane-Barton, founder and principal of J. Catherine Interiors. And this is my home in Louisville, Kentucky. For a very, very long time after college, I went into the family business. I was really comfortable for, you know, 10 plus years after college. I was really good at what I did, but it wasn't fulfilling. And I found every waking second that I wasn't working for the firm that I was really trying to decorate my own house or reading books about design was obviously that is what fulfilled me. And it's always what I wanted to do. When the opportunity came to us to move back home, I was very excited, if not most excited about being able to find a really amazing historic home. I had very specific criteria. I knew that I really wanted a house that had good bones, that had all historic character, but hadn't been updated recently, but had been perfectly maintained. And everybody's like, okay, well, good luck with that. That sounds like a unicorn. But I was very stubborn. And I said, I will live in a basement Airbnb for years if I have to until I find the house. As soon as I pulled up to the house and I walked in, I knew it was going to be my house. It just needed a new vision. This kitchen was truly a labor of love. And to me, getting the feel right was most important. As far as the design goes, I really did have to listen to the house. I had to keep the range where it was originally. I had to keep the sink where it was originally, but I wanted it to still feel really special. But I didn't want it to feel like a traditional American kitchen. What I love about British interiors is that their kitchens feel like rooms. We kept it simple with our design choices. We painted everything the same warm white. We brought in warm white tiles and obviously a lot of unlacquered brass, but everything is super traditional and it lets the house really shine. So the tiles in this house were original and they're not just so special because they're beautiful, but because they're so patinaed. They were actually harvested out of a famous hotel here in Louisville called the Seelbach before renovation, I believe in like the forties. And they were brought into this house and saved and have been here ever since. Over time, you can see where furniture has been moved and the kitchen has been redone and there are scratches and movements, and they're not all the same. The grout lines aren't all the same, but that really, to me, just makes it all the more special. My personal style, I think, has always been kind of grounded in traditional interiors, but fun. You know, I always want them to still feel very non-pretentious and playful. When it comes to design, you should really confidently like go for it. That's why I don't believe in accent walls, you know, or anything like that. If you are going to wallpaper a room, wallpaper the room. If you really love something, then go for it. This is my living room and I love this room very much. It, to me, I think is a very great representation of the house. There's a lot of layers. I think my design taste comes out a lot in this. When we first moved in, the first thing that I did was I picked out this wallpaper, which to me just felt very British and classic and simple, but also just something that felt really unique. And then from there, I just knew that that was going to be the perfect palette to kind of introduce different things. The sofa is probably one of my favorite pieces in the house. Found this sofa for a steal, and then I was able to upholster it in a beautiful lilac velvet and then layer lots of delicious pillows on top of it. When decorating the space, there are a few things that I knew that I just kind of had to have. And one of them was a wall of botanicals. I wanted to have a gallery rail. Obviously it's a great trick to be able to also avoid nail holes. It's not something that I was afraid of in this house, but I did it because the aesthetics and it just felt like something just super special and layered. I love color, and I love pattern, and I love prints, and I love furniture, and I love old furniture, and I love all of those. But I think it's really important when you are connecting all of those things to make sure that there is a through line. And it doesn't have to be obvious to somebody else, but it should be obvious to you. And so a lot of times it's a color. For me in my house, it's randomly lilac, and it just kind of weaves its way in. So this room is technically called the conservatory, but we call it our family room. And we really love this room. This is where we hang out. This is where we watch movies. And the first piece of furniture that I got for this room was I had this sofa made. It is very long, and I always say that my one regret in the probably the whole house is that it could have been 12 inches longer and six inches deeper, but I love it. We enveloped the entire room in the same striped wallpaper and then carried that same stripe and fabric form on all of the Romans. I went with the seam so that way they could have just one giant window treatment on each window with the swag in the middle. And then because I'm just a little extra, especially in my own home, I did add the key tassels to the actual Roman shades. This is our dining room. I think when designing it, it was really important because there's so much texturally and print going on in the room next door that it felt like a bit of a respite between going to the next space. And so I wanted it to feel very cozy and very luxurious and layered, but without it being very loud. And so I kind of always knew I wanted to use like a chocolate wall covering. I also was not able to do a skirted table in my entry, which was always kind of my dream. So what I do is I treat my dining table when not in use as kind of a skirted table. So this is one of my favorite Schumacher silk checks. And then my favorite thing in the entire room is my chandelier, which was outside of my budget. And so I reached out to the antique store. I asked if they would split it up for me and for payment. So I always joke and say that's my layaway chandelier. Because I was keeping this room so simple, it was really important that all of the pieces felt very special. Like the more you looked at something, the more detailed it was up close. And so I loved this Bellini silk by Schumacher. I wanted to make sure that I did a little over the top with these. So I did goblet pleats and I did a double ruffle and they, a double pleated ruffle, and I love them so much. And they make me very happy. A favorite design tip or trick I would say would be buy what you love. I don't think you're ever going to regret buying something that you love. The few things that I regret in the process are things that in the moment I thought, well I'll just revisit and I'll come back to this or maybe I'll grab it. If it is something that you can do in the moment, or even if you have to save and you have to go back and get it, if you love it when you bought it, you will love it after it is installed. So I actually love a colorful bedroom, truly. I just finished one that might be my all-time favorite, but for me personally in my home, because I work with so many colors and textures all day, it was really important for me to have a mental respite. So that way I could wake up in the morning and feel kind of rejuvenated. It's just lots of layers of ivory and cream and white and just the softest amount of a few, one textile actually, that I just really love that I've threaded throughout. I love an auction and my favorite ever auction item that I've ever won are these Mary Tyler Moore lamps, is what they call them, because they came out of her estate. But really they're these gorgeous lamps that were made by Christopher Spitzmiller in collaboration with Claire Potter. And so they're different. I have one on each side of my bed and they are just so beautiful and they're so intricate and it goes back to that, buy what you love and you'll never regret it. And I can't tell you how happy they make me. This is my favorite room in the house because I can't believe it's my bathroom. And I actually love baths and I take them all the time. We did so many rounds of drawings to make sure that these alcoves with these vanities just really made sense. And just like the kitchen, the bathroom feels like a room. I sit in the chair and I return emails during bath time. And as you can see, everybody loves this room, including Tuck, my first baby. And you can find him sleeping in here 95% of the day. This is our guest bedroom. And there's something about this room, the color, and then this Schumacher fabric that I had wanted to use for forever. And when I saw it with the color in this room, I just knew it was kind of kismet and meant to be. And I just really felt like all of these pieces together, whether it be the full guard on the wall or the pale pink lampshades, just really made this room feel special. One of the reasons why I love using prints and colors so much is because as somebody who hosts and as somebody who has a small child and has friends with lots of small children who are constantly over in our house, and I want them to feel comfortable. What I love about a print is it doesn't matter because you don't know what it is. And so I say all the time, like, I don't know, is that a leaf on that chair or is it where my son got peanut butter on it? Like it doesn't matter because you can't tell and no one else can. So we're just going to live our life. And the best part about little kids and being able to use printed fabric is that they're a perfect combination because you never know. So when designing Duncan's room, it was really important to make it feel playful and fun, but also create a space that would grow with him. So we selected a really beautiful kind of simple striped wallpaper. We had so much fun just kind of picking and designing different things from his bedding. In fact, he had a lot to say about his little pillow over here because he wanted it to match his fabric in here, which he says reminds him of a forest. And so it's been really fun to just create a space where he feels comfortable to create and do his Legos and his art and, you know, be a kid. We feel the love in this house. And I think that was something that we had before we even started decorating it. And now it just kind of feels like the house appreciates it. It's where my family feels comfortable and happy. For me, when your home feels like the place that you want to be and that it can kind of hug you on those tough days, that's as important as the good days. When I see my son laying on the floor with his legs up on the sofa and his Legos everywhere and he's eating pizza in the hallway, to me, that means we have done it. We're living in this house. We're comfortable in this house. We feel at home. It feels like after a long time and a long process, we're here. We finally get to enjoy it. We get to live our life.