3 minute read
Lady in Waiting
Architect BRANDON INGRAM and designer MALLORY MATHISON GLENN team up to feather a resplendent empty nest in Griffin, Georgia
Written by CAROLINE MCKENZIE
Photographed by JEFF HERR
“This house looks like no other on the street. You can’t help but get a smile on your face when you see it,” says architect Brandon Ingram of the facade he conceptualized as a garden cottage in the city. The shutters, painted in Farrow & Ball Calke Green, give the exterior a verdant look, as do the trellis-inset columns.
“It’s so you!” That’s the resounding sentiment when guests walk in Harriet’s vivacious entryway. Mathison Glenn closely studied her existing pieces to create the coral-aqua scheme, which repeats throughout the house.
Harriet Newton is a firm believer that an empty nest need not feel, ahem, empty. When she and husband John were looking to downsize from the 5,000-square-foot Griffin, Georgia, home where they’d raised their family to something smaller in scale, Harriet was adamant that the only thing modest about it should be its size. “My needs had changed, but my style had not,” explains Harriet. “I still love color. I still love hosting. I still love having a good time!”
To achieve that nothing-too-boring, nothing-too-spare aesthetic, Harriet partnered with a dream team if there ever was one—architect Brandon Ingram and interior designer Mallory Mathison Glenn. Their first order of business: transforming the exterior of the lackluster 2,500-square-foot home the couple had purchased. The house had been right in terms of size and location (John’s brother lives on the same street), but the 1950s facade was tired, dated and, as Ingram describes, just all-around boring. “This was an exercise in adding,” he explains of the outside overhaul. “It needed larger windows, x-brace trellises, and a little eyebrow dormer up top to make it sing.” Also added: crisp white paint on the drab brown brick and cheery, new green shutters.
Inside, things took on similar joie de vivre. Rooms were taken down to studs and reconfigured for better flow. A particularly unfortunate blemish on the original floor plan was a kitchen sequestered to a front corner of the home. “This change was essential for us,” explains Harriet. “We live to host and needed a kitchen that was in the center of it all.” Throughout the renovation, Ingram and Mathison Glenn worked closely with one another to plan for architectural elements that would complement the decor. “I was able to scale up or dial back millwork, window casings and so forth based on what I knew Mallory had in store,” he explains.
And what did she have in store? Colorful, pattern-filled rooms that echoed the look of Harriet’s former home in a lively new way. “Harriet and I are both drawn to bright colors like aqua, green and coral,” Mathison Glenn says. “With every project you have to walk in your client’s footsteps. But with this one it felt like we were walking in the same shoes.”
From room to room, Mathison Glenn deployed a one-two punch of daring hues and family heirlooms. The combination makes for spaces rooted in the past, but also joyfully alive in the present—just like the woman who calls them home. As Harriet explains: “It’s just so livable and so easy. It’s a pretty house, but better than that, it’s a happy house."
There’s no such thing as too much chinoiserie, says Mathison Glenn, who used the motif throughout the home. In the living room, it makes an appearance by way of Harriet’s beloved skirted table and wingback chair. The designer took the discontinued Clarence House print to ADAC and other venues to pull together the additional items in the room. Elements like the aqua walls and striped jute rug update the numerous family antiques.
A technicolored abstract painting by Macon, Georgia artist Joe Adams provides an artful foil to the living room’s many traditional elements.
The house may be new to the Newton’s but it has all the comforts of a forever home thanks to Mathison Glenn’s use of numerous family antiques.
Mathison Glenn elevated the simple powder room with a marble-topped antique vanity and a Pierre Frey wallpaper featuring a whimsical meandering chinoiserie print.
The homeowners tripled their cook space in the newly, and smartly designed, downsized home.
The jewel-box air is fully complete with a wallpapered eiling, pale-blue cabinetry and gleaming brass accents, visible on the La Cornue range.
Mathison Glenn colormatched the grout to the cabinetry for a soft finish.
The den is a case study in patience. “If we’d done a demo on day one, the bow window and brick fl oors would have been gone,” says Ingram. “But the more we studied the space and how it related to new updates the more they felt like keepers.”
The home’s custom millwork takes a casual turn in the family room with inset v-groove paneling.
Symmetry reigns in the master bathroom. “When color is involved, symmetrical cabinetry and windows can have a calming effect on a room,” Ingram explains.
The whole-house color palette takes a pause in the guest bedroom where soft shades of lavender were put front and center instead. “The Newtons’ daughter lives in Atlanta, but they wanted her to feel like she had a place at the new house,” says Mathison Glenn, who worked with her to cultivate the space.
“I like to make bed skirts look like little ball gowns,” says Mathison Glenn of the billowy accent that anchors the swathed-in-blue master bedroom. With the understanding it would be a pattern-filled space, Ingram dialed back the architectural flourishes save the slim chair rail that provides just the right visual respite.
Ingram sketched numerous options for the patio doors before landing on this notched-out design, which is also mimicked on the home’s gates. “The size of the home gave the opportunity to surprise and delight with diff erent fl ourishes from room to room. Too much of one motif would have overwhelmed,” he says.
