Interior Designer's Own Home Tour- A 1980's Tudor Reimagined

Hi everyone, I'm Virginia Toledo of Toledo Geller Interiors. You guys have heard a lot about my house, Toledo Tudor, and I'm finally ready to show you some of my spaces. Come on in. Our home is located in a beautiful lakeside community in northern New Jersey. Many of our childhood friends and family live far, far away, and we really wanted to give them something special when they made the trek to visit us. We are big entertainers, love having family over, and I'm a sucker for lavish details. Because it's surrounded by so many trees, it's kind of hard to see the house from the road. I sort of ran with that and thought about how I could create spaces in the house that would inspire and delight our guests when visiting. Starting with the foyer, the first thing I did was changed up the floor from its original combination of a 1980s ceramic tile mixed with a hardwood floor and thought I had to really go big here. Again, I wanted to wow and delight my friends and family from the very first moment they opened the door. A combination of Carrara and Bardiglio marble in different sizes of a checkerboard did the trick for me here. There was a wall previously in this location. It really prevented any natural light to escape into the foyer, and it created for a much darker space. With that, I decided to remove that wall, and that allowed me to seal some of the natural light from the southern yard, and it made a huge impact. The other thing I wanted to do here was to add some more architectural interest. Leaning into both that English and Spanish design aesthetic, which is all about texture on texture and paneling and really taking care to embellish as much as we can, and leaning into that maximalist spirit, I had these walls cladded with this amazing paneling and painted it in the most sublime color, and it truly is both interesting and relaxing all at once. I initially loved the grand staircase in this house, and I could envision my daughter taking her prom picture here and got all of the feels. But one thing really drove me nuts, and it was that at the very top of the stair, where the hallway for the private quarters begins, instead of a railing, they had a half wall very 80s, that created a barrier of sorts, and also made the hallway upstairs feel a lot narrower. I got super lucky, because I thought, hey, I could incorporate a curved railing here and create a much better flow and design impact. And when I reached out to our stair supplier, lo and behold, they had actually been the fabricator of the original stair, and had all of the information on the railing and on the post, and were able to create the new custom rounded railing I needed perfectly. And then I thought I was done. But in true designer fashion, we're really never done. I felt that the foyer was just missing something. And while it felt very dramatic, and that's what I was going for, it was losing the hominess that I also feel is super important when I'm entertaining and have friends and family over. I've sought to find a wallpaper that tied more so into that English country vibe that certainly makes its way into some of the rooms, and I found the perfect chocolate check wallpaper that we had applied to the ceiling, and it transformed the space and gave me the coziness that I was after. I love a formal dinner party, and when I think about a formal dinner party, I don't think about the stuffy dinner parties of yesteryear, but I do like to embellish details and have a little fun with how we dress and the food we serve. However, with this room situated right off of the foyer, I needed to try really hard to make this room feel distinct and super special. Starting with the walls, I found the most beautiful wallpaper from Designer's Guild that is actually a mural of a Japanese garden. That really brought the whimsical, almost fantasy-like vibe that I wanted for our house. I wanted to really have a little fun and give our friends and family a feeling of an escape when they had dinner with us. Moving on from the walls, I turned my eyes to the ceiling. In a 1980s house, we all know the ceilings are as plain as they can be, and they're often only eight feet high. Because I needed to embellish the ceilings with some architectural interest, I did a little research into all of the Moorish inspiration that I wanted to infuse in the house, and I came across this beautiful motif that we could have painted in the most rich, deep teal color that I carried around the perimeter molding, as well as all of the casing and base molding in the room. I also had the ceiling done in a high-gloss finish in a contrasting lighter blue. Think about the candlelight reflecting onto that surface and how romantic that feels. One thing about this room that's really fun and interesting is that the banquets that now flank the console cabinet, which lived in my previous house, along with the dining chairs and dining tables, so that is to say that we can repurpose furniture when we move from one house to another, is that these banquets were once one banquette, and I know you guys have all seen it. It's the really long purple banquette in my previous house that was about 12 feet long. The problem was it did not fit anywhere in this house in that length because it was custom made for that previous sunroom. I had it cut up into two smaller sections, and I like to say that she had a little bit of a glow-up. She went from being a solid purple banquette to a now tiger print in a combination of turquoise and navy. When I am having a formal dinner party, I really needed the kitchen to be out of sight, but it is on the other side of this dining room. With that, I had a butler door installed and had it upholstered in leather in the most rich sort of caramel color that's just super delicious, and gave it a contrast piping in an ivory color. That gives me the ability to close off the mess I might have going on in the kitchen while enjoying my friends and family. Welcome to the library and the Gus, which is the bar in our home. The Gus was named after our good friend who's no longer with us. He embodied everything about Southern hospitality. You were sure to have a good meal and a good drink when you visited him, and so we're keeping his memory alive by honoring his name at the bar in our home, which we use quite often. Not just for drinking, but for having coffee, and sometimes we even have our family meals here. It is the only room that has a television on this level, so most nights we'll find us together here as a family watching TV and cozying up. But at other times, it's where our guests will come after having dinner in our dining room and enjoy an after-dinner cocktail. When we first purchased the home, this room was a library, and it certainly inspired us to think about all the ways we could use this room. It had beautiful cabinetry and a rolling ladder. It was originally from the Plaza Hotel, learned that later, but cool fun fact. We really thought about how we could make it a multi-purpose room. It had all the right bones with the dark stained finishes on the floors and on the bookcases, but functionally, we needed it to serve in a few different ways. And really wanting to incorporate a bar in here, I had to figure out how I could create zones for the various tasks in this room without it feeling overwhelming. That's how the shape of the bar developed. A rectilinear bar would have cut too far into the room and not given me enough space for the furniture I needed in here. A U-shape or a horseshoe-shaped bar is what really gave me the opportunity to create enough bar stools for ample seating, while also satisfying all of the storage requirements I needed on the backside of that bar. The beautiful curved shape really inspired me to think about how I could treat the facade of the bar. And with that, I thought about a variety of different ideas. In fact, I started with thinking I'd have it tiled, but ultimately had it upholstered in a sort of bulbous channeled leather front, and I couldn't be happier with it. It really gives off a pubby yet chic vibe to the space. I grounded the room with an area rug by Annie Selke in a beautiful tone-on-tone combination of blues. But really what drew me to the rug was the pattern. It had a geometric, almost Morse-inspired pattern to it that really pulled in the look I was going for. Next, on the walls, I really wanted to be true about finding vendors that were from the countries that I was trying to bring into the space. And Gaston y Daniela, a fabric and wallpaper house out of Spain, were the perfect fit here. Their chocolate brown paper with a white stamped motif was the perfect combination to swab all of my walls and ceilings in this space. The ceilings in this room are also very interesting. There's a combination of bolted ceilings here that create some interesting geometry, but also allow for really tall windows. I worked with the shade store for the drapery in this room, and it couldn't have been an easier process. They have a variety of options that I could choose from, and I ended up selecting a fabric pattern that had a very fresh ground and a windowpane sort of pattern in the most beautiful sienna red color that complemented a lot of the warmer, richer undertones that I had going on in the room already. I wanted to give you a quick peek into the back bar. The back bar was formerly an extension of the original bookcases, and with a few quick modifications, we got a really fantastic and functional back bar. These two middle sections had wooden shelves before, got rid of those, replaced them with glass shelves in a beautiful antique mirror backsplash. A little bit of plumbing gave us a functional sink, and an ice maker and a beverage and wine refrigerator completed the functionality piece of this back bar. Welcome to my kitchen. This room has been in the making for so long. I have to admit, it took me over an entire year just to nail down the floor plan. I would create one and thought I loved it, and then saw another opportunity and scrapped it and started all over again. It was quite painful, but I'm thrilled to say that I'm done. I'm done with it, and I can actually enjoy it now. The floor plan was really tricky because I was trying to achieve quite a few things. Most importantly, direct access from the kitchen to the outside future patio. Another thing I wanted to reconfigure was the way we got from our mudroom into this kitchen, which was a major thoroughfare, and that required moving a bathroom and relocating a hallway. The previous hallway that connected this kitchen to the mudroom was really dark and windowless. I saw an opportunity to reconfigure the kitchen in such a way that we can access the mudroom by a hallway that was along an exterior wall, and that gave me an opportunity to do a really large picture window. And it has become one of our favorite spots in the house, and the dogs spend a lot of time in the sun there. And I've even done a yoga class or two there myself. I have always loved a kitchen that didn't feel too showy and was rooted in the function of the kitchen. I do a lot of cooking. I enjoy it. It is really a pastime for me. And I wanted to give myself a kitchen that felt really comfortable but elegant. I also wanted to introduce as many different materials as I could that supported my love for tile and really interesting panhewn and patinaed finishes that feel like they have some time to them. I chose a smaller two-by-six terracotta tile, hand-painted in Morocco, and chose to do two different colors. One that is sort of this sandy camel color combined with an ivory tone, and did it in an alternating pattern. It was a painstaking job for my tile installers, and I am so glad that they stuck to it because it took them so long to do. But it really does provide such a beautiful grounding to this whole space. It's really the thing people comment on the most. With that, you'd think that I'd choose just one color for all of the cabinetry, or maybe two. But no, I did three different finishes on the cabinetry. The perimeter cabinetry is done in a beautiful Farrow & Ball creamy white color, combined with base cabinets in this really soft green paint color, also by Farrow & Ball. The island has a very light-colored stained oak material, and I feel like it looks like a large piece of furniture instead of a clunky, heavy island. As a designer, I have access to many materials, and it can become quite challenging to make a decision because we always feel like the next best material is going to be presented to us at any time. And selecting my countertop was no different. It took me months. I wouldn't stop until I found the perfect top. It's a beautiful marble from Turkey, and it has this beautiful sort of gray, light blue undertone and striking white veins. We really took time to lay out all of the different pieces so that we could maximize the placement of these beautiful veins, and were able to do it along the top of the island as well as the backsplash at the range. And over by that range, you'll notice that there is a rough wooden beam, and I just love the story behind that. That beam was salvaged from the original kitchen. The original kitchen had a sequence of beams that I loved, but just didn't work with this layout. So I have them saved to use in various places in the house, and one of them found its way over the range. Welcome to the morning room. A lot of people call it a breakfast room. I like to call it a morning room because it really is where we spend our mornings. This room was formerly an extension of the kitchen, and while you can say that it is that way today, I chose to define the room and keep it a little less open than the previous layout had. Previously, this room had a partition off to the right side here, and you accessed this room from the foyer via a rather narrow kind of opening. I decided to widen that and define the walls in this room by using what I'll call interior windows or panels that infused some glass along with some wood paneling. And that allowed us to borrow natural light from the adjacent rooms and keep this room sunlit. We previously had sliding doors out to the deck, which you could argue would be very functional, but I really didn't want this kitchen to be a thoroughfare from this part of the house. In trying to make this room feel special and unique unto itself and not just merely an extension of an open sort of kitchen plan, I thought about how I could look to the ceiling and define that more clearly. Like I did in the dining room, I wanted to apply some embellishment to the ceiling plane, and I studied a variety of different ideas, but ultimately designed a molding profile that gave me a sense of an exaggerated bobbin molding detail, with the spheres being a little larger than you would normally see and spaced out a little bit wider. It was the ultimate finishing touch in this room. In fact, I lived with this room without that embellishment for several months, and the room was fine, but it wasn't until those details were applied that the room really became magical. This area of the kitchen is a really unique space. It formerly served as an extension of the breakfast room that occupied this space before and had a pair of sliding doors to the left. In the planning phase of the kitchen, I decided to think about how could I use this space in a way that would allow me to spend more time in that zone, a space that is used for a variety of reasons, primarily for additional storage for things like smaller appliances that I didn't want to store in the primary kitchen. It also serves as additional workspace that we use for baking, rolling out pastries, that sort of thing. It's also a place that we use when we are having larger parties and we're using catering services. Another thing I thought about in terms of the planning of this space was integrating another dishwasher, so we now have two dishwashers in our kitchen, one at the island and another one here. Another detail that was in the plans from day one was the idea of having bistro shelves in front of the picture window. And I needed it because I have a vast collection of cake stands that I've collected for many years. Many of them are vintage. In fact, most of the dishes in my home are from consignment shops and antique shops. I have no intention on stopping this addiction. So I needed to prepare for the expansion of my collection. And these bistro shelves perched in front of the picture window was a great solution for me. And I'm really excited to be able to expand my collection now. We're standing in my powder room. It is so small, but that doesn't mean that I had to sacrifice on style here. It previously had a slightly different configuration. By modifying the location of the sink that was previously on the wall behind me to the wall that is the focal wall when you enter into the room created a huge difference. It allowed for more counter space and allowed me to create a little bit of drama on that feature wall. Some things that I incorporated in here were tons of molding work. Again, you don't have to skimp on style just because it is a small room. In fact, it allows you to play that up so much more. Think about it. You have a lot less surface so you can go bigger. I incorporated dental molding, molding that was reminiscent of Moorish arches along the crown, a bobbin molding along the base. And this combination of molding work painted in a rich, rich red sienna color was exactly what I needed to create a beautiful backdrop in what would be a dramatic powder room. The thought here was that we wanted to keep the lighting really low. Think about a powder room in the swankiest hotel or restaurant that you're visiting and that when you go in there and look in the mirror, you always look fabulous. And I wanted my guests to have that experience when they visited us. I designed a countertop that was floating and didn't have a base to it to visually enlarge the room. And I chose to use the same marble material on the sink as I did on the countertop in order to blur the lines between the two. Lastly, the floor is comprised of the same blue, gray marble that you find on these pieces in conjunction with the beautiful white marble that we find in the foyer, along with a little bit of zing in a red marble. And the trio of those three materials in a very unique custom pattern really sets the stage for a wow factor in the space. Feel free to take a selfie. We're standing in the guest bedroom at our home where we love to host our out-of-town friends and family. This room feels like you are sitting in a treetop. When you look out of the windows here, you're surrounded by the tops of all the trees. And so I thought, what better way than to create a cozy feeling in here and celebrate what we see beyond the windows by painting this room from top to bottom, ceilings included in a really rich, rich dark green color. Starting with the floor, I decided on an anti-selkie plaid that really gave me a sense of that English bed and breakfast kind of feel that I was after in terms of the vibe in this room. It spans the room in a black and white color way and allowed me to really have fun with bedding and different patterns that could play off of it. I didn't want to forget about some of those interesting details and patterns that we find in Moorish and Spanish design. I thought about how could I do that in this room and I chose to use the headboard design and shape as a way to incorporate that sort of motif. We used a sort of stepped detail along the top edge of the headboard. We decided to further embellish the shape by using a black and white ticking pattern fabric along the thickness of the headboard edge. We also incorporated a similar version of that step detail along the cornice board on the window treatments on the primary window façade. We are in my daughter's bedroom. She is a teenager and grew out of the colorful bedroom I had dreamed up for her in our previous house. This time around, she asked me to give her a much more monochromatic palette in her room, but I didn't want it to feel sort of sterile or not cozy enough. So I thought about how I could mix different textures and patterns in order to create some interest and depth in the room. I used a great rug from Annie Selke from the Marie Flanagan collection, which is absolutely fabulous. And this particular rug has a really bold pattern on it while being neutral. And it also has different piles in the carpet, so a lot of texture, which gives a lot of interest. Finally, it has these really chunky tassels that I think plays into sort of a global aesthetic that we've used around the house as we've been pulling influences from English, Spanish, Moorish architecture and design. I covered the walls in a beautiful wallpaper that is silvery gray in tone, but has this beautiful faux bois pattern on it. So it's really subtle and just gives the right amount of interest without being overwhelming. It's almost like something that's there, but not there and kind of makes you think. I complimented the pattern on the rug with a striped fabric on the window drapery. That pattern is a lot quieter, but also has a lot of interest to it and lets the light filter in really beautifully. I coordinated that with a Roman shade that I was able to customize with the shade store that has a very clean white linen background, but then has sort of like this punctuation mark with these accent trim tapes that go down the center of the Roman shade. I topped it all off with a French style drapery rod in a beautiful brass finish that gave the room a sophisticated style for a girl that's soon going to college. Can't believe it. This room was large enough for her to have a sofa in the room and like many teenage girls, she has her girlfriends over quite often as they're watching TV, doing TikTok videos, and enjoying life as a teen. I thought how wonderful would it be for her to have her own place to hang in her room and I found the coolest shaped sofa on Craigslist. Remember your girl loves a good consignment find. And I reupholstered it in this fabric that has a globally inspired pattern on it, but is also super durable and tough. The fabric can be bleached, which is super important because we also have our pooches in here quite often and they tend to sleep on that sofa. Thank you so much for watching. It's been great fun showing you everything we've done so far. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. Salute!