A Historic Alabama Home with Timeless Elegance _ House Tour

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Mary Pat Weiss. Welcome to my home in Birmingham, Alabama. I can't wait to show you around. Come on in. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, my name is Mary Pat Weiss. I am the creator of TripVignette, a travel newsletter. I live here in Birmingham, Alabama. Welcome to my home. The house, I am told, is about 100 years old. We were told when we purchased the house that it was built around 1933, so we're coming up on about 100 years. I actually bought the house, and my husband didn't even have the chance to see the house. We FaceTimed, and I sent him some pictures, and he loved it too. But he trusted me and we knew that if we didn't jump on it, that somebody else would, but we immediately fell in love with the charm and just the beauty and the street and the character. It has big open rooms, you know, a couple of fireplaces, and we just absolutely fell in love with the tradition of the home and we wanted to make it our own. We've lived here since 2019 and over that time, We've had countless people come and tell us stories about this house. That they grew up here, they came to play here as a child, or they knew someone that lived here. So we live on a very busy street, so it is a house that people know. One of the previous owners had a giant ceramic elephant for our football team, the Crimson Tide, out in front for many years. So a lot of people ask me, do I live in the elephant house? But you know, a lot of people have a lot of memories attached to this house because of How old it is and how many people have lived in it. We want this house to be around for another 100 years and it's been wonderful just bringing it back to life and making it something beautiful, not only for us, but for our community and for our street. We're walking into my living room, which is a great open space, more of a formal space. This is where we spend our holidays, where we gather with our family. We made some changes to it a couple of years ago, adding this yellow, which I just absolutely love. We really started with this yellow fabric that I fell in love with. I don't know what it is about yellow, but I'm really drawn to it. So we did these two chairs. I have had these two chairs for probably 20 years. I bought them. It was one of the most expensive things I had ever bought were these two chairs. My friend convinced me to buy them. I was sick to my stomach because of how much they cost. The two of them were less than a thousand dollars. And 20 years later, I've had them recovered twice. And now they're in this beautiful yellow fabric. And they always remind me of my friend who convinced me to buy them, which was a very smart purchase. And it's just. Great, you know, that if you invest in something and it's good quality, you'll have it forever. So I love the changes we made to the yellow. We have these yellow drapes up here and this beautiful clock. I bought this little swan actually at a great store in Birmingham called Leaf and Petal. They have the sweetest things and I just love this swan and you can put a little plant in it and it's just sort of a nice. Kind of whimsical addition to our living room. But again, this is where we hang out with family and friends, especially during the holidays. I love that it's open and it leads to our main family room. My twins' portraits are here, which they do not like, but I happen to love. We got them done when they were about five years old, and they're very, very precious to me. But you know, you can see here on our coffee table, we have more Jamaica. Jamaica's everywhere in our house. We have a lot of representations from all my travels here. This is something I got in Tokyo. This is Claridge's, my favorite hotel in London. I have not one, but two books from the Carlisle in New York, which is a very special hotel for me. It's actually where my husband and I got engaged and just a place that I absolutely love. So we have, I love the coffee table books. I also collect paperweights, which I've collected on my travels and just all kinds of little, you know, matches and coasters and things like that. So just a little bit of personality here in my living room. So a lot of the pieces in this room were chosen by Melanie Pounds, my interior designer. She has a fabulous eye, particularly with furniture, and she's selected most all of the furniture in this room that you're seeing. She picked out this clock, this beautiful table with the Asian print. She picked out these marble columns. I love marble, and so she did such a wonderful job picking out these beautiful columns to to flank either side of the fireplace fireplace but Melanie designed this entire room and obviously selected this beautiful yellow fabric and then the pillows on both of the sofas that really complement the yellow on the drapes. So the rug in this space we purchased at a local Birmingham company called Lily Cat. They have a selection of vintage and antique rugs and all kinds of colors. She has an incredible Instagram account and she has just a fabulous variety of rugs and that's where we got this one in the living room. So we also have an incredible selection of art throughout the house. I really do love art and again Melanie Pounds my interior designer selected this beautiful antique painting Painting of the ocean on either side. This is some artwork that belonged to my grandmother, which is very special to me. And so it's just lovely having those. Two gold prints of a lighthouse on either side of the ocean and also just something that's very personal to me and flanked by these foo dogs which were gifts to me from my mother. I just wanted to highlight these lamps that I love. This is another purchase that I made many many years ago on a whim probably spent more than I was comfortable spending at the time but I bought them at a An antique store in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. called Jean Pierre, which I'm not even sure is there anymore, but I love them because they reminded me of the sea. They remind me of jellyfish. I just love the shape. I love the gold and their Murano lamps. So just a really special pair of lamps in this room that I love. I'm the writer and creator of a travel newsletter called Trip Vignette. It is a bi-weekly newsletter in which I feature all kinds of things, but mainly travel stories. I have a lot of content, a lot of stories on trips that I've taken with family and friends to London, to Paris, to Jamaica, where my family spends a lot of time. I have stories on cruises that I've taken or a long weekend in New York. So every trip I take, I write a story on the place that I've been. I publish a guide, restaurant guides, museum guides. I might feature just one museum exhibit. For example, I featured an exhibit on the Chanel exhibition. A few years ago in Paris. So essentially whatever is interesting to me and I think that people will like, I've published it on TripVignette. The guide is really meant to take the challenge and the stress out of travel and put together a real, honest, newsletter with guidance for people traveling with their families, with friends, with senior citizens. I like to travel with my parents and my in-laws so it really there's something for everyone but I've featured probably 50 places that I've been and have published different guides. Right off the living room is our family room. This is a giant room and it has been very challenging to figure out the right furniture configuration for this space. It's had many variations but I think we've finally landed on the one that makes the most sense for us. We put the TV above. The fireplace, which has been wonderful to watch sports, to watch movies, to hang out. And we have a ton of seating, as you can see, so that nobody feels like they don't have a place to sit. We have multiple couches. I absolutely love stripes, so I love all the stripes and all the floral in the room. You can see we have a... Giant photograph of Jamaica, which is right down the street from a hotel where we love to go called Round Hill. And this just makes everybody in my family happy because it reminds us of being on vacation in our favorite place. And we have, you know, Boy Scouts meetings in here. We have family and friends, holidays, all kinds of things. And this room as well, we have a lot of different Treasures from my travels over here on the right. We have these beautiful butterflies. These are real butterflies. If you've ever been to De Rolin in Paris, they have a butterfly room, which is absolutely incredible. And you can go and pick out the butterflies that you like and create your own frame as I did here. And then you can check it and carry it on the plane back home. And so I absolutely love these butterflies and they remind me of being in Paris. We also have We have another prayer. I have a print from the Carlyle in New York, which is a bartender holding a tray of my favorite drink, a dirty martini, and I just love the green that matches the olives. It's a happy memory just having this in our family room every day. I bought these hurricane lamps from a great spot in town in Birmingham. called Found Birmingham. It is a really cool antique store and they have different auctions and they have an online presence on Instagram and they have some really cool things. And the star reminds me of my newsletter on TripVignette because I have stars all over my newsletter and it's just the feature on my bi-weekly newsletter. There is so much light from this window in our, in this room, and it makes it really special. We changed the configuration. I will say that was one of the first changes that Melanie made to this space was realizing that by putting a sofa on either side, we would be blocking the walkway to the window and we would be blocking the light. So the changes that she made in this space really open it up and then give you access to this. Beautiful light and, you know, our yard and all the trees and we're able to watch the kids play. So that change has made such a huge difference in the space and for how we use it. So we even have a coffee table book from our favorite hotel, Round Hill. You can see here we love the green and white stripes. And then, of course, you've got stripes on our couch here. So we absolutely love. Having this book here, and then we can, you know, look through it and see all of our favorite people and all of our favorite places where we like to go and Round Hill. I bought these geometric shapes. Again, it's probably been 20 years. I got them on Etsy. I think they were about $20 a piece, and they have been with me ever since. And they have been in our house in Washington. They've been in our house here. It's just an example of You know art does not need to be expensive. You can buy you know just some fun geographic prints on Etsy and frame them and you know they make such an impact. They're they're different than anything else I have in my house and I absolutely love that Melanie chose to put them in our family room Well, welcome to my entryway. This space was very plain when we purchased the house. Everything was all white. And as you can see, it's not plain anymore. We recently in the last year or so put in this marble wallpaper, which I absolutely love. You don't need much else in a space like this with wallpaper like this. I will show you these mirrors. I actually, I love mirrors. I have them all, you know, all over our home. My favorite is this gold mirror on top. It came from the Sir John Soane Museum in London, which is a place I would highly recommend and I've written about on my newsletter. It is just a super, super cool, unique museum in London belonging to Sir John Soane, who was a famous collector and architect and just all around interesting person. And you can go and tour his home, but he has these mirrors and you can buy a reproduction in the gift shop. Very inexpensive, Just around, like, I think... $20 or $30, I'm remembering, but I love how it looks in this space with the silver and the gold mirror. I also have this beautiful landscape that was drawn by a talented, very close friend of mine, Kathy Thornton, who does these amazing landscapes. And I love having something from my childhood in the space. But yeah, so this is our foyer. So welcome to our dining room. This is a really important space in our home and I think largely because it is an older home, we don't have a traditional kitchen with a traditional table and chairs. So if we're having a family dinner or if we're having holidays, you know special birthday, this is the room that we are in and it's very light-filled and we have so many memories here of spending Thanksgiving and Dinner parties and birthdays and that type of thing. I've set the table with just a lot of mementos from my travels and you know, also some fun purchases here in Birmingham. These are also from the same store I mentioned earlier called Found this is a beautiful flower from France. I've got some birds from Japan. This is a beautiful seaweed tabletop. decor from KRB in New York City, which is a super cool store. If you've never been to KRB, they have some really fun stuff. And then, you know, just for me, it's really fun to have my grandmother's china here, which is two of my favorite colors, green and gold. And it's just very special to have my grandmother's china on the table. We've got some great botanical prints here. And we've got a butterfly, we've got a beetle, we've got some flowers. And these are from A store called Prince Charming that's based in Birmingham and they also have a really cool Instagram account and an online presence and so again these were probably 10 or 15 dollars from Prince Charming and you know we had them framed in these beautiful frames and they really do make the space and I love all the colors and the designs they're all different and all unique. I had this buffet in my house in Maryland, and it works perfectly in this house. Again, being an old home, we don't have a ton of storage, so it's important to have a nice piece of furniture to put your extra plates and napkins and cutlery and that type of thing. We love these blue and white vases. I think they kind of... Complement the tablecloth. This tablecloth is really special to me. This is something I bought in Venice on a trip. And there's a beautiful store in the square, the main square right there in Venice that just has the most incredible Italian linens. And they take them out of the cupboard and Put them on the table for you and they're all just this beautiful Italian linen and so I splurged with this one and it's on my table every single day but it's just such a happy memory of being in Venice with a group of friends and it's just such a beautiful, beautiful piece and it stays on my table all year long. We're on our way to our breakfast room which I think is just one of the most charming parts of the house. When we bought the house we were not sure what we were going to do in here. I mean this is very much set up for 1933 not 2026. It's very small but we do have meals in here I would say but primarily this is a space that my children use to do their homework and hang out and And, you know, You know, sit after school and do their schoolwork, but it's very close to the kitchen, so it's a nice place for the kids to be and for me to be close to them when I'm, you know, making dinner and they're doing their schoolwork, you know, they can go kind of back and forth, but I just think this is such a charming little space, and it's got these old bookshelves that we've filled with cookbooks. I do love to cook. And it's just, I love this, the charm of this and the history, you know, just thinking about how people have used the space over the years as a traditional breakfast room. You know, you can picture a family in here having a proper breakfast and, you know, 1933. And now fast forward, we have our smartphones and our computers and are using AI to do, you know, different things. So it's nice to have this, this historical room in the house and to have I have a modern function. These are two prints that are very important to me. This is my childhood home. That's a pen and ink drawing that I gave as a Christmas present to my entire family one year. And then likewise, this is an important family home for my husband's family in Connecticut. And we had one of these drawings done for his family for for a holiday one year. And so I love having these two together, you know, an important place for my family, an important place for his family, and just sort of Emphasizes what family means to us. So I had a very special English teacher, as I think a lot of people do, that made an impression on me. Her name was Anne Boozer. I grew up in a very small town and went to a very small high school. And one of our assignments in this English class was that we all had to take a subscription to The New Yorker. I was... Born and raised in a very small town, and it was a magical childhood. But getting that subscription to The New Yorker at age 15 just opened my eyes and helped me understand that the world is big and there was a lot to see. She also had us write essays. which are essentially what Trip Vignettes is. It's a series of essays, very similar to the ones I wrote in ninth grade. Obviously a little more sophisticated at this point, but I loved writing those essays for her. And yes, I certainly learned in ninth grade English class that I loved writing, I loved expressing myself. And I really love putting together guides because I really find that it's helpful for people because it's been useful to me. to read a guide and make the trip all the more special because trips are expensive, they're time consuming, and you don't really want to wing it. You want to make sure that your time makes sense for you and that you're not spinning your wheels, running around town, not knowing where to go out to eat or what restaurant to go to or what museum to go to. So now we're moving in from the breakfast room into the kitchen. We spend the majority of our time here in this room. This is an interesting space because when we bought the house, this Island was not here. So that was a challenge to think of how we were going to fill the space because it definitely felt very empty. Um, so that was one consideration. And then another consideration was that we needed more storage. So From that, this island was born. And I can't imagine the space without it. It has hidden trash cans. It has tons of storage under here. My kids sit here on the bar stools. My friends sit here on the bar stools. So that's been a really wonderful addition to the space. We have a lot of more travel-inspired artwork in this room, more Jamaica. Jamaica on the top, Jamaica on the bottom. And then this is just an image from a hotel in Italy called the Mezzanine that we also have loved, have visited and loved. And then of course, there's great light in here looking out onto our porch. It's very close to the porch so we can take food out, you know, we can take wine out and it's great having that proximity to the outside. This is brand new, this bar space that we have literally just added in the last couple weeks. It has been being built for quite a while, but it turned out so beautifully. This is Melanie Pound's design and she brought her vision to life with this bar. It is just amazing. We have a water filter, we have an ice maker, we have a wine fridge, and she did these incredible Incredible mirrored doors where I can put all my wine glasses and all my glassware here. She installed these two incredible refrigerators, mini fridges, which are so great for my boys and their friends when they come over. All their sodas, all their Gatorade, all their things are here. And it's also an adult space as well. We have a coffee station and it's a place to store all of my trays, but it just turned out so, so, so beautifully and we're so happy with it. And I I think it'll really change how we use the space because it's so close to the porch and to the kitchen and to the family room that, you know, our guests can come in here, make a drink, get a Coke, get some water, get some ice and either go hang out on the porch or in the family room or back to the kitchen. So this has just been such a game changer for our house. And again, in an old house, you need tons of storage. So this is just such an incredible solution, just right here in this walkway that leads out to the porch. So another thing I love about this space is this incredible metallic wallpaper on the ceiling. It's sort of a gold shimmery feel to it. And she added a sunlight light fixture, which I just think is so beautiful and really compliments the gold wallpaper and just makes the whole space feel very warm and inviting. So welcome to our porch. This is right off of our kitchen, and it's an incredible space. We renovated the space a couple of years ago now. The porch was here, but it was much smaller, and so we built it out and we added this fireplace. We added the television. And we pushed it back a little bit so that we could have a grill and we added this great furniture here and it has been such a terrific addition for our home. For our family, even in the summer and the spring, we have a fan here so that we can sit outdoors and enjoy it. It is great for football season. We love to come out here, build a fire, watch all the football games, and just enjoy being outside. So this table was selected by our landscape architect, Todd Dorland. He's with TMD Designs, and he's actually responsible for all... All of the exterior of our house and has phenomenal taste. He even designed these beautiful lanterns from Brandino Brass here in Birmingham. These lamps were actually vases that we turned into lamps. My mother loves to turn a vase into a lamp and so she did that here and I think they turned out great and it's nice to have another option for lighting outside rather than just overhead lighting. So it's just a very special mood at night to have these lamps on. I love the addition of this spiral staircase. It's one of my favorite things included in the renovation of our back porch. What I love about it the most is this little symbol that you can see down here on the landing of the stairs and all the way down the spiral staircase. This little symbol is also on our shutters on the front porch and so it's just nice that he tied that symbol from the front all the way back into this beautiful Spiral staircase. Welcome to the playroom. This is a great space for my boys, for their friends. They hang out in here, watch sports, their football. We have this green and white Stripe wallpaper that I just absolutely love. So there's a lot of green going on in here. Green pillows, green wallpaper. I love the addition of these brass lanterns. They just add sort of a tailored look to the space and they are so nice at night when the kids are watching TV in here. We have a lot of family photos and a lot of travel books as well. One of my favorite things in this space is this folk artist. This is another example of art from my hometown in Talladega. This is an artist named Tommy Moorhead, who is no longer living. But I love this portrait that he did of an Alabamian named Butch Anthony. And supposedly this is a... Fortune telling rooster. So I just think what's more Alabama than that? A fortune telling rooster. And I just love this. I've had this for many, many years. And it reminds me of home. And it reminds me of Tommy, who was just a very important figure in my hometown and has done a ton of just incredible artwork. So welcome to our office. More green in this room. Lots of green coming from the playroom into the office. This is an antique desk and I bought this incredible lamp at a beautiful shop here in Birmingham called Clementine. We also have a travel poster in here. This is from a film called Always at the Carlyle about the Carlyle Hotel documentary, which just will make you fall in love with that hotel. So I love having that here. And then we have this Pretty little plaid chair that we got at a flea market and recovered in this pretty fabric. So this is a tiny space. We weren't really sure what to do with it, but it works perfectly as an office. So this is a new addition, a new... Mirror that I bought for my home. I wasn't really sure where to put it, but I fell in love with it at the Antiques of the Gardens of Birmingham this year, which is an incredible event that is hosted by the Birmingham Botanical Gardens every year. We have speakers and lectures and it's just such an incredible community event. But they also have antique dealers that come in from all over the country. And this was my special treasure that I bought this year. And the dealer told me it's a It's a bridal mirror, so it was something that... Brides took with them in the 1800s and 1900s as you know something that they took to their future home and the detail is just so incredible. It has these two birds and of course the gold which I love and it was just such a special purchase from this great event in Birmingham. I would say the outside of the house is the reason that we bought the house. It just was so beautiful from the street. I just love the classic traditional feel of the home. I grew up in a small town where there were a lot of beautiful historical homes, and it really reminded me of that. And I just absolutely love the columns. I love the shutters. I love just the yard work. And just the whole feel from the road looking at the house. I also love the detail on our shutters. You don't see a lot of shutters like this, but that was something that was very important to me to keep these shutters and to keep the little details that you see. So you can see that the lower shutters have a little detail, which is sort of a triangle detail. And then When you look up top, you can see a different symbol on the top. This is more of like a three-leaf clover type of a detail. I absolutely love it. Because it's an old house, some of the shutters were rotten and we had to replace them. So a few of these are the same shutters that were here when I purchased the house, but several of them we had to have redone because of the wear and tear on the home. We also had to redo all of these columns. That was a project we did, it's been about a year or so ago now, Again, it's a 100-year-old house, so these things happen in an older home. You really have to love an old home to be able to take care of it. We replaced all these columns. We also added these benches. These benches were handmade by a local person here in town. We really could not find something we liked online, so we had these handmade. I love the little ball detail underneath that. them and they're just more for aesthetics but they really add a nice anchor on either side of the porch. Other details that Todd Dorland features in our home is he built this entire beautiful kind of cutting garden and with the boxwoods and he added the gravel he built this beautiful gate over here and so it's just such a nice pretty sort of Cotswolds-y feeling on the side of our house. One of my favorite things that we've recently added to the home is these awnings. And you can just see this gorgeous detail. The wrought iron on the awnings matches the wrought iron gate going into the door. And there's one on each side. I love the detail of the awning and just the ivy, which I just think is so beautiful. And in the summer, This vine flowers on either side into these beautiful yellow flowers and it's just so gorgeous when it blooms but I absolutely love the ivy and it's all on the stairs and on the side of the house and goes up on top of these two doors. If you look at the front of the home there's also two gas lanterns that match the lantern over the front door and they've patinaed very nicely. They've been here for many years but they just add such a nice Addition to the entryway of the home. Well, the word home means to me being surrounded by friends and family. I will say that home has taken on a new meaning for me. I lived in Washington, D.C. for 20 years after I graduated law school and moved back home where I was born and raised here in Alabama. And it's been so wonderful to raise my two boys in the place where I was raised. I'm close to my parents. They're about 45 minutes away in my hometown of Talladega, Alabama. And they're able to come and visit me. We have dinners together. It's just so nice being able to have an organic night together or weekend together or lunch together, have them come and see my children's games or Boy Scouts events or just be together. So this house has provided us with so many memories. We love living here. Birmingham and Alabama in general is just such a special place. And so I think the meaning for me of home is Alabama, where I was born and raised and where I'm raising my own children. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.