After more than 20 years of collaborating on design and construction projects, Natalie Fey’s longtime clients invited her back to give their 5,000-square-foot Foxcroft home a refresh. Now empty nesters, they wanted a space to entertain friends and family and showcase their extensive art collection, a mix of inherited and newly-commissioned pieces.
The project included a kitchen renovation, a new scullery and updates to the dining, family, and formal living rooms. They replaced the red oak floors on the first level with five-inch white oak and added custom wood molding in the foyer to showcase paintings by American artists Francis Drexel Smith and Bernard Childs.
Fey, owner and lead designer at Celadon Interiors, worked alongside the team at Houghland Architecture and the builders at Andrew Roby on the yearlong project.
To set the stage for a grand entrance, Fey installed a checkerboard floor. “(The husband) doesn’t chime in too much, but he ran this by me,” Fey says. “I said, ‘Absolutely!’ This is the perfect spot to do it.” Instead of pricey marble, they found a porcelain lookalike at Surface Studio.
She swapped out a dated chandelier with geometric lanterns from Circa Lighting and added a faux bois (French for false wood) stair runner from Stark Carpet. A mid-century settee and circular table with bone inlay ground the space.
In the family room, Fey reworked the built-in shelves by adding fluted cabinet doors at the bottom and wallpaper to the back. The bookcases house a collection of southwestern objects and accessories inherited by the homeowner’s mother. She revamped the fireplace with a new mantel and Carrara marble-tiled surround. The homeowner had a painting commissioned by family friend and artist, Duke Beardsley.
“We pulled the orange color out of the painting to make the ottoman,” Fey says. “It’s a custom size made by Hickory Chair Furniture Co., so we waited a long time for it, but it was so worth it.”
For the kitchen, she went with classic white cabinets, a textured white Walker Zanger porcelain backsplash and quartz countertops. The custom stainless steel vent hood has aged brass bands that complement the burnished brass on the pendant lights. Fey upholstered the barstools, from A. Hoke Ltd., in a quadrille fabric to pull in the blue from the scullery.
To create space for a scullery, they removed the wall separating the kitchen and home office and relocated the office to the second floor. The new scullery got herringbone grasscloth wallpaper, custom blue cabinets, and patterned floor tile from Surface Studio.
“We knew we were going to color-wash the scullery, but weren’t sure if we’d go blue or green,” Fey says. “Once we saw this tile, it answered our question.”
The globe wall sconces from Circa Lighting complement the gold fixtures.
Fey wallpapered the dining room in a floral pattern from Thibaut, updated the fireplace with cast stone and dressed the windows with the same linen panels as the living room. She paired the homeowners’ Colony Furniture dining table with new chairs upholstered in ultra suede. The Demi-Lune console tables, also from Colony, hold red Chinese urns that the homeowner collected years ago.
In the formal living room, Fey replaced the wood fireplace mantel with cast stone and covered the walls in a celadon grasscloth from Thibaut.
“It instantly warms a room and basically gives you a warm hug,” she says. “That was our starting point. The rest of the fabrics came in from there.”
“What’s great about these clients is that they fully trust me and my ideas, and that’s from working together for 20 years,” Fey says. “I love how we created a space for them to show off their art collection while making updates and incorporating colors, fabrics and all of the details.”
"The bookcases house a collection of southwestern objects and accessories inherited by the homeowner’s mother."