Preserving Place

A Greenbrier Native Buys The Land Surrounding His Property And Builds A Home With Plenty Of Privacy

BY HOLLIE DEESE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILLIAM DESHAZER

Andy Legate and his wife, Wanda, had just gone through a major renovation on their home and were ready to relax and enjoy when life threw them a curveball.

“We were already in our forever home,” Wanda says, laughing. “But then we went to this land auction, and I realized I was going to be doing this all over again.”

Andy, a Greenbrier native and owner of Springfield Steel, says he only intended to see who was buying the land around them. After all, a big development would have them considering moving to a place less crowded.

But it was the mindset of keeping development from encroaching on his own backyard that inspired him and a friend to go in on the land together. That day. Basically, on a whim.

“I had no intentions of buying anything,” swears Andy, who ended up going in on 60 acres that day. “But when we got there, it was a big old farm. And I said, ‘Well, let’s get a number together.’ So we bid on it and wound up with it.”

Andy took 33 acres, and his bidding partner took 24. And pretty soon he and Wanda began the process of building again. So in the spirit of community they turned to local resources to help create a forever home — one last time.

“We live in our space,” Andy says. “I don’t like to go so far as to say that you’re not scared to get the floor dirty when you walk in, but I don’t feel like you’re in a made-up space where you can’t touch anything.”

Steve Stringer, a longtime custom home builder that Andy met on an earlier project, was chosen to create the space, and designer Shaun Dougherty of SDI Designs was selected to help push them out of their comfort zone — while keeping all the comforts of home.

“She just really did a great job of listening to me, and also bringing me out of my comfort zone and getting me to look at things a little differently, which was great,” Wanda says.

Dougherty, who began her career at Renaissance Tile and Bath before working at Marc-Michaels Interior Design in Florida, loves to take risks with design, but she knows how to make them work in a traditional space.

“I like to have fun,” Dougherty says. “I want the process to be fun. I bring a lot of humor, and I make it very relaxed. I don’t try to make it so serious because it is one of the three major things in your life — you get married, you have babies, you build a house.”

Dougherty made sure each room had unique touches, whether those were millwork, a simple furniture piece, a piece of art … there was a piece in every room that was special to Andy and Wanda that was also a bit unexpected. Wanda’s office is a perfect example of that, especially since she never had her own home office.

“I’m not sitting at the dining room table, I’m not sitting at the bar,” she says. “I have a place. I am part owner in the business, and just having that workspace is, honestly, it’s been so good.”

Dougherty made it even more special by gifting her with something to remind her how truly unique Wanda is: a neon sign behind the desk that says “What the hell.” It’s a phrase Wanda is known to say and an attitude Dougherty wants her to always embrace.

And she didn’t leave Andy out, gifting him a piece of art of one of his favorite cars, a Chevrolet SS, framed and hanging in the powder room.

“I really pulled Wanda out of her box,” Dougherty says. “She never thought in a million years that she would have a house like this, and it is beyond anything she ever would have ever done for herself. She put every ounce of trust into me and never said no to anything.”

The area Andy and Wanda agree is their favorite is the main living space, which includes the kitchen, living room and dining rooms and is, in itself, 1,200 square feet.

“We love that everybody can be in the same room together,” Wanda says.

And between weekly grandkid visits and long workdays, the comfort they find within the walls is what the Legates love best. What Dougherty achieved definitely feels like them.

“I want the design to reflect who you are and who your family is, what your lifestyle is,” Dougherty says. “I don’t necessarily go with trends because, at the end of the day, you are living in your space and you want it to feel like you.” NI

Second Time Around

HOW A DESIGNER SCOURED SUPPLIER WAREHOUSES, THE WEB AND MORE TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE SPACE

BY JOE MORRIS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAROLINE SHARPNACK

Homeowners who poke around used-goods stores are trying to thread a particularly tricky needle: find a great sofa or chair or bookcase — and do it on a budget. It can be a complicated endeavor, as one person’s “thrift” is another’s “vintage,” and is priced accordingly.

Imagine a designer whose goal is to outfit an entire home, inside and out, with vintage, antique, reclaimed and other tossed-aside and forlorn materials. It’s a holistic view of sustainable design, and it’s something that Chelsea Conrad of CircDeco has jumped into with both feet with a 1920s bungalow in East Nashville’s Cleveland Park neighborhood. The project used a wide range of products that ticked all the small-footprint boxes: Most if not all furnishings and finishings were locally or sustainably made, repurposed from other projects, antique or secondhand. And in the case of items that had to be new, they were purchased as part of a carbon offset plan created with Terrapass.

“I wanted to renovate a property from the ground up using only sustainable resources,” says Conrad, who relocated to Nashville from New York a few years ago and who studied at Academy of Art University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, or FIT.

“Our culture is so much about obsolescence: ‘cheap and cheerful,’ seasonal products, planned turnover. And beyond that, you have the grotesquely wasteful way that things are packaged — why do you get a massive box with one tiny thing in it? I wanted to get away from this ‘snacky’ mentality of home design.”

A childhood near Lake Tahoe meant an ingrained appreciation for the environment, one that was further honed by enforced home time during the COVID-19 lockdown. She saw people gutting their homes and then installing “inexpensive and brutal material” that would sunset in a year or two. Her response? The property at 1110 Pennock Ave., which she purchased with the help of Realtor and friend Brian Vance from a developer who’d let the site become a neighborhood eyesore. It was a perfect project for her business — whose very name derives from how the renewable circular economy (Circ) meets the world of interior decor and design (Deco).

“The first thing I did was get friendly with the neighbors, because they were very unhappy that the people who’d been there a long time had been kicked out,” Conrad says. “And then I started poking holes in my business plan.”

The treasure hunt begins

What that meant, for the most part, was remaining below budget caps. Finding reclaimed wood floors at a reasonable price, for instance. Or molding. Or paint. Or tile. Or furniture. The list can, and did, go on and on. After vigorous searches, the right material would turn up, or a good alternative would appear, so Conrad carried on.

“I bought some flooring that had been discontinued,” she explains. “I located a lot more items that had been returned or remained unsold. Environmentally friendly grout? I found some — in Italy. So shipping was costly, but the lesser of two evils compared to using regular grout. Then there was the women-owned tile company, which had a custom line they’d had to remake. I bought the first batch that was just sitting on their lot.”

And through it all, she questioned vendors about sustainability, employee benefits and more — so it wasn’t just about refitting and flipping on the cheap. “If you can’t readily find the information about how things are made, it’s a bad sign,” she explains. “I wanted to know how companies did things, how they treat their workers. When I found vendors who could easily answer those questions, we were able to work together.”

The result was a property with about 90% of its furnishings and materials repurposed from other projects. New purchases, such as a mattress and sheets, are made with sustainable materials as much as possible. Fixtures and fittings, when new, were purchased “open box” and usually deeply discounted. And while she’s not living in the property, she can’t bear to sell it.

“It took me two years to finish, three really if you count permitting and all the slowdowns from COVID,” Conrad says. “I had to compete with contractors who were offering workers the chance to make higher pay elsewhere for throwing up a ‘tall and skinny’ house, but I had some people really stick with me. My Realtor, Brian, was in there with my partner James and me cutting plaster out of the fireplace and more. We were watching a lot of how-to videos. It was a real family affair.”

“It was amazing, and so much fun,” she continues. “I love the puzzle of a place. When you fill a home with previously owned things, it has a richness and history you can’t find with new products. If you have an antique dresser that’s 100 years old, it tells a story. It makes the home more special. I can’t wait to do this again.”NI

Remaking 1110 Pennock

Here are some of the many artisans, vendors, builders and more who helped make the property renovation a reality:

Nelson’s Renovations LLC

Chris Bolton Plumbing & Home Improvement

Oasis Design Studio (plants)

Red Rock Tileworks

Markraft Cabinets

Real Wood Floors

The Vance Group

Jacob the Electrician

Neptaly Amaya Painting

Caroline Sharpnack Photography

GasLamp Too Antiques

Blue Door Framing

Sheri DiGiovanna Tailoring (drapes)

Above: Creating a home was remade literally from the ground, up, including new wood flooring from a line that had been discontinued, as well as paint left over from, or unused for, other projects.

At left: Shopping for “second life” home goods also included finding just the right mix of artwork and accents to pull rooms together.

Above: Creating a home out of repurposed items meant blending new pieces with vintage ones, a challenge designer Chelsea Conrad said was a lot of fun and something she’s eager to do again.