Never an Old Barn a Little Paint couldn’t Hurt...

From the exterior views, Farmdale Cottage is shaping up. It is looking like a real house. “Never an old barn a little paint couldn’t hurt!” That’s my mantra these days.

Painting has started. Gallons upon gallons of Valspar and Ben Moore are soaking into my pine board and batten, and I am loving it! Shutters have been made and are awaiting their installation. I even spread some pine straw around the foundation to keep the mud from splattering on my custom brick blend. This folks, I’m afraid, will be the extent of my landscaping. It’ll be all I can afford! Inside Farmdale is another story.

So much work is being done where we can’t see, but I must appreciate it nonetheless. Wiring and plumbing and HVAC are running a subfloor marathon. Miles of wires and yards of pipe shall ensure that I can turn on my lights and have running water – a fete accomplis for my neck of the woods – ha! My floors are here but not installed – waiting on walls. Some the shiplap boards are awaiting to be installed for walls too, but we must pass inspection. First inspection failed as it always does in my county. The old “the hip bone is connected to the leg bone…”song is so apropos for building a home – it runs through my mind all the time. Can’t put the insulation in until the wiring and plumbing passes inspection. “It’ll fail the first time, trust me…” I was constantly reassured by my contractors. “What a joy…” was all I could muster. After the passing inspection, insulation, walls and ceiling finishing can take place. “The leg bone is connected to the knee bone…” la la la…

Seeing paint and progress outside makes the interior look too far ill advanced than the exterior. The railings are starting to take shape and the bones of the house are really visible. I love my chimney and the old brick on my back hallway wall and soon to be floors. I decided to paint the brick on the rear façade of the house for added texture and that “added on over time” look and feel. My floors are antique heart pine planed from nearly two hundred year old beams. The beams once spanned a cotton mill and now will be underfoot for me and my friends and family. A few beams left untouched and boasting their patina of flaking paint, will span my kitchen. Oh the stories they could tell! My house smells divine – fresh cut lumber, fat lighter (heart pine) and some paint… if I could bottle it I would!

I’m still a long ways from being able to move in, but there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. A glimmering match lit in the cave maybe?

So here’s the painting schedule thus far:

Board and batten body of the house: a custom blend but for a quick match Valspar “Dark Chocolate” will give you a great color.

Shutters: another custom blend by Benjamin Moore. “Zeus” by Sherwin Williams will get you close to it.

Trim, columns and railings: “Linen White” by Benjamin Moore. This is my “go to” white and I love it with the dark brown with a hint of green.

Painted Brick: Valspar “Gentle Lamb” – the name alone made me want it but it is the perfect neutral cream – not yellow but not gray either. The primer is still on the brick but Gentle Lamb cannot frolic onto my brick fast enough!

I’ll post some finished shots of the paint job, but what’s going up now is so fun! Paint goes on quick and is instant gratification. Deciding on the scheme is what will send you to the looney bin. Speaking of heading to the nut house, I just about checked in there recently. Enter my banker, my builder and my accountant – the three horsemen of the apocalypse – ha! No these gents just have to reign me in and keep me on the straight and narrow. I wouldn’t won’t their jobs working with me! Ha!

So after meeting with my banker and my accountant, my builder was next in the firing squad.  This is a dark, Southern gothic even macabre comedy or sorts. My builder gave me the final projections for completion costs. I looked at that gigantic, huge, mind-numbing figure five times my calculated tally and I just smiled. I said “thank you” and walked away. My builder, who I work with on nearly every design job and know quite well, grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. “You ok, James?” I just kept smiling. Smiling that dumb smile of bewilderment a person can express only in total shock.

In my mind, I was talking but nothing was coming out of my mouth… just an odd smile. My builder asked me again, “James, are you ok?” I somehow managed a nod in the affirmative but my builder was not convinced. “James, say something. You ok?” my builder kept asking. Finally, after what I thought was an eternity, I spoke. What I said I’m sure did not make any audible sense. My builder just looked and said, “James, you were silent – for so long. You didn’t say anything at all. I told you about…” and he went on and on about lumber and paint and brick delivery etc. etc. etc., while I simply stood there and smiled in silence. “James, don’t ever do that to me again. I was really worried!”

“What did I do that worried you so?” I replied. My builder said, “James, you were silent. You were quiet. You didn’t say a word. I knew something was wrong!!!” Silence is not a natural reaction for me, y’all. After meeting with the Big Three, dumb silence with a wry smile was all I could afford.

So, somehow I must now finish Farmdale but not in the quintupled budget as of late. Sweat equity is going to be key, but I love being a part of the process. At least the outside looks kinda/sorta/almost done. Keeping up appearances is what I’m doing now, y’all! Let’s just hope the inside will come together before I enter another silence.

From Farmdale to your homes, happy fall y’all!

John Deere and Farmdale....Green!

Paint. Paint may send me to the looney bin. Well, not necessarily paint proper but the process of selecting a color. Selecting a color, mind you, when you have known your whole long life that you want a dark stained or painted house with blueish-green shutters and a silver/gray/galvanized roof. The latter is more so the culprit for near insanity.




So the roof is installed and it is WHITE!!!! Styrofoam white. Sandy white - like the Gulf. Cloud white.

Ok, technically my roof is not "white." It IS the color I selected and always dreamed about... yet...when installed, the galvanized silver/gray LOOKS white on my roof's pitch. It even glows as moonlight does through the magnolias and pines. Cue "Georgia on my Mind" and "Stars fell on Alabama" and most any other country song involving moonlight.

Moonlight... there's the name for my roof. Not sliver, not gray, not galvanized - moonlight. After throwing a fit to my poor aunt and sister as if I were an emotionally disturbed child, and swearing I was going to throw it onto our road for all of Perry to pick apart and run over, I decided to keep the roof and tweak my color scheme. Thus, this is really why paint almost sent me to the looney bin - retrofitting a new palette to a moonlight hued roof.

Eighteen paint samples later, I landed on a selection for the board and batten pine siding for Farmdale. You see, y'all, I don't just have the main body board and batten to contend with, I have foundation panels, second story clapboard siding and then the coordinating shutters, mullions, trim, corner boards and painted brick too. I had all that picked out and selected before the roof's lunar eclipse. Square one for the paint selection was were I found myself.

"If I must select my colors again, they better be pretty names." The poor gals at James Farmer Inc had to hear my color and roof rants for days. I was a beast. Unconsolable and irrational I was... All because the roof wasn't exactly what I had imagined. From Sherwin Dubs to Ben Moore to Valspar's all stars, I zebra striped Farmdale with eighteen samples of paint. From green to gray, white to cream, tan to toupe, brown to darker brown, I employed my sister Meredith and my Aunt Kathy and we painted all the samples. And then the names -and stars I guess too - started to line up for ol' Farmdale... Linen White, Gentle Lamb, Gina's Eyes and Afternoon Nap, Mountain Hideaway...Colors with delightful names all started rising to the top ranks and file! Even with the roof's lunar loveliness!

Then, as life would have it, my final two siding selections came down to Crater and Dragon's Breath... Come on!! Really? Not the prettiest names but the colors seemed right. So, Farmdale shall end up being a custom color somewhere between the oddly named aforementioned colors. Farmdale Green I shall call it. It's a green/brown/gray/gold/mossy/moodycolor that I'm liking a lot.

I firmly believe that every person is entitled to one legitimate NBD in their life (nervous breakdown for those whose family doesn't have acronyms for everything like mine). Any additional NBDs are just selfish and annoying. I daily must decide if today is the day I shall have mine. Will I have it at Ace Hardware while unable to find the right tint of furniture wax? On a ladder at a client's house while hanging art? Or maybe at Chickfila on one of my multiple daily pilgrimages for tea? "No James... Not here not now." I tell myself.  "Save your NBD for somewhere else and another time... Ok buddy?"

What usually sobers my mind from a quandary such as this is a dose of reality. I live in a southerly world of pretty places and people. Many people do not. The roof will protect me from the rain which is more than many folks have. So, I am thankful for my roof. I am thrilled with my custom color selections and I am most of all, hopefully a little more compassionate towards bewildered people with terribly awkward facial expressions in the paint aisle.

I want to approach them, tell them it'll be alright and that we should all be glad to have a roof and walls to paint.

From Farmdale to your homes, I hope  all is well.

 

 

Cashiers is my Happy Place - The 2013 Designers Showhouse

Ever since childhood, when Mama and Daddy would pile us into the Suburban and start our northerly trek to Cashiers from Middle Georgia, I have relished the very thought of heading to those sacred hills.

A feeling washes over me in Cashiers - a calmness bathed in hay-fern scented air and cool summer nights. Cashiers is like summer camp for grownups! The same childhood anticipation and delight - somewhat akin to Christmas morning - still surges my soul the night before I leave for the mountains.

For the past four summers, I have had the utmost pleasure and so much fun really of being a part of the Cashiers Historical Society's Designers Showhouse - the pinnacle of my summer and a highlight of my year. This last summer, the thrill was monumental, for I was selected as the designer for the main living room! Y'all, this room, née, I say great hall from a lodge more so, was truly the peak experience to show some design prowess.

The space was nearly a thousand square feet and required vast amounts of furniture. Thankfully, I own a small shop, but more thankfully I have friends in the design business to loan me fabulous finds to fill up the space. Filling up though is not the goal- proper placement and designing a lifestyle was to be the ultimate achievement.

My amazingly talented friend Kathleen Rivers served as Showhouse Chair and immediately presented me with my first challenge- paint! The room had little wall space but a vast, sloping ceiling and leftover bits of odds and end paneling that, that, along with the shag carpet mind you, enveloped you into a time capsule of midcentury style - but not the chic midcentury style one desires!

I went to my go-to colors of Benjamin Moore's Linen White for the walls and Ice Cap for the ceiling - which took some convincing but delivered a thrilling result. The mountain views at this home are nothing short of breathtaking - almost more Montana than North Carolina - and I needed to recreate that sky and light into the living room. My said colors proved the pudding! For the floor, wall-to-wall sisal blanketed and further anchored the nature-inspired palette.

 

Since this space is a living room, I decided to create such a room - a room for living! Dining, sitting, visiting and entertaining all had to fit within the space for a true living room.

Anchoring the room was a French beret table my wonderful friend Sally loaned me from her eponymous shop, Dovetail Antiques, in Cashiers. The table was literally one of the heaviest and most challenging pieces (they had to walk it down a sloping knoll and then up stairs and across a deck) my buddies from McCorquedale Transfer even installed for me, but I knew it was the table. Plus, Ollie, the stuffed otter who was to be the table's centerpiece, was going to look so handsome atop this sensational table and epicenter of the tableau in turn. My friend Jason Moattar loaned me the tribal, diamond-patterned rug that kept the dinging space anchored with an earthiness and casualness that the Cashiers' style affords – tradition with a twist!

Three seating areas then served as a triumvirate of grouping for which to relax, converse, enjoy a fire from the dueling fireplaces or simply take in the scenery. The two fireplace seating areas were duets of leather wing chairs from Holland and Company complete with an Irish pine coffee table for one grouping and a simple, heavy woven white upholstered ottoman for the other. Thus these accouterments gave each spot a place for display, propping up your feet or even a casual dinner. My dear and super-talented friend, Carrie Beskin, loaned me two limed French wine tables that I used for side tables - I'm a sucker for limed wood and Carrie was so kind to loan me hers. Blue and white lamps given a contemporary twist with acrylic bases and flowers and family photos dotted the tables too and, thus, brought personal touches to the room.

 

My buddy Beau Holland lent me a gracious stack of stag horns to crest the soaring walls along with a pair of handsome leather club chairs that I paired with a white sofa, limed pine and zinc tables, a driftwood and glass coffee table and a Black Forest carving (a family piece my sisters and cousins will have to fight me for‼!). Wispy, gauzy white linen hung simply from bamboo rods on the five sets of French doors leading to the deck and awesome views beyond. The deck was simple in its decor with antique hickory rockers, garden stools in shades of aqua, jade and celadon and some iron turkeys nestled into faux bois planters of fern and hosta. My always gracious and fellow gardener Judy at the Village Gardener in Cashiers outfitted the awe-inspired hanging baskets that suspended and catapulted into the mountain forest with summer plantings that fair so well in the mountains.

 

Shelves stacked with books new and old, a Bavarian fish set and some vintage art further gave the room purpose as a place to study, read and boast a collection. A short wall in height and width still got the grand treatment with a Jacobean chest and fabulous pine bullseye mirror from Beau Holland and some of my favorite things too - my French needlepoint bird chairs, my vintage Audubon prints, a splash of blue and white and my favorite green Italian bowl filled to the brim with North Carolina apples! A pair of French iron candlesticks turned lamps shed the light on this subject matter. This wall and its symmetry and balance were a fun counterpoint to the white sofa and dark leather chairs on the opposite wall. High and low in colors and weights and even textures are so fulfilling to layer upon a room and house. A pop of turquoise in the Clarence House dragonfly pillows on the needlepoint demonstrates such a layering credo. 

Speaking of pillows, brown plaids and checks along with blue ikats and stripes all found their way into my scheme. Blue and brown and white with whispers of green became the calling card of the room (along with quirky taxidermy of course) and thus reflected the nature just outside. And since the land at this home is a phenomenal horse riding retreat, large equestrian canvases by the uber talented Meredith Keith, from Birmingham accented the antique timber mantles and were guarded by white temple jars that with another pair too became a part of the room's design.

With Cashiers acting as my happy place since childhood, putting together a great room of favorite things made it even more so of a happy place as a "grown up." I hope y'all enjoy these photos of reflection and remembrance of such a joyful experience for me. I was in terrific company with the other designers, and I can assuredly say that this Showhouse was a happy place for all!

 

 photography by Emily Followill

(before pics)

St. Philip and Thomas Jefferson – James Farmer and Maggie Griffin

A canonized evangelical and an American forefather aren’t often a likely pair, though the latter pair certainly is! I can always count on my dearest pal Maggie Griffin to be on board for fun! And I cannot thank her enough for all her planning and hard work too – she is always the best!!!

For this year’s Cathedral Antique Show, I was honored to be selected as a designer for ‘Inspiration Avenue’, which was a collection of fab folks and fellow designers who were all inspired by a historical character for which a room was designed. For this Farmer, ol’ TJ was top on the list – especially after my recent trip to Tuckahoe!

 

Maggie and I thought that Mr. Jefferson probably knew how to throw a great dinner party at Monticello. He would invite his friends such as George and Martha (Washington of course), John and Abigail (Adams of course) and James and Dolly (Madison mind you) to feast upon French fish plates he probably procured whilst serving as minster to France. TJ too probably sent back to his Virginia home some other trappings from France – maybe a tapestry, velvet mutton leg chairs and books too!

 

Other trapping may have been more aboriginal in nature or inspired there from. Lewis and Clark no doubt influenced the décor with renderings and artwork alike of the flora and fauna seen on their Jefferson commissioned journey across America. Too, I felt a nod to the recently succeeded from British Empire was still apropos, so an English oak and walnut dining table anchored the space.

 

Many eras influenced Jefferson’s lifetime including the ever en vogue dose of Chinoiserie as seen in the blue and white temple jars, lamps and décor on the Sheraton style sideboard. As Napoleon and the French empire grew across “the pond,” Jefferson and the world too were inspired and influenced by the empire style, which became quite popular in the American South. I loved that this inspiration point allowed me to use the “Napp Chest” that once belong to Napoleon Granade – my great, great, great grandfather. I am flattered to have it now as my dressing chest currently, but I am merely the keeper for a short time. Napp Yelton shall use it once he is ready! 

Taking cues from Jefferson’s life at Tuckahoe and Monticello, his ministering to France and his service as President and statesman too, I felt so inclined and inspired to create this space in his honor. Even the Palladian Blue wall color nodded to Jefferson’s delight in Palladio’s architecture and love for balance and symmetry. I hope y’all enjoy this little tour of TJ’s dining room – Maggie and I had a ball!

Feast your eyes on the rest of these photos and be sure to visit Bellissimo and Bella for more deets on TJ’s dining room!

“Downtown… you can always go, Downtown.”

Thank you Petula Clark. Thank you because this song is eternally branded in my mind during my commute to the office. And whilst at the office, and whilst leaving the office and whilst… it’s catchy y’all, real catchy! My beloved Dolly Parton has a version as I’m sure you all know. I digress…

 

Welcome to James Farmer Incorporated’s international H.Q.! “Perrydise” is a classically, Southern small town surrounded by pecan groves, peach orchards, farm fields and timberlands. Anchored with a “Main Street” of shops and restaurants, our main street, though, is actually “Carroll Street.” Perry, Georgia,  does have a Main Street too, for the record, but Carroll Street is our downtown’s commercial thoroughfare.