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!

She's a Brick....House

Sticks and stones... Well hand-hewn cedar beams and antique bricks more so.

Farmdale is coming along. Each day brings a new element to life. Slowly and surely it will come together and a home - my home - will be ready to move in! I cannot wait!

Though I have lived in Middle Georgia my entire life, I have always loved A. Hays Town's architecture and his perfect capturing of the Arcadian, Creole and Louisiana vernacular. Though Farmdale is not a bayou cottage, I did take some inspiration from those fantasist, soul-stirring homes with my bricks and beams - hopefully evoking some of that Louisiana/Hays Town essence. Thankfully, my fantastic architects poised my home to adapt to such a style.

 

Bricks and beams are from the earth and land. These elements can be awesome bridges to connect our homes to our land, thus keeping our homes grounded, in tune with place and apropos for their settings. I love the tints and textures of the antique bricks and how they were further blended with a new brick in my blend from my friends at Cherokee Brick in Macon - still keeping it local and Southern. But these bricks tell a story...

My bricks are molded from the clay and dirt of Middle Georgia - a constitution many of us can relate too. When we boast dirt on our hands, we boast a connection to our past. These bricks are reminders of the hands before mine that were stained and dirtied and even nourished by our native soil. These bricks have heard hymns and sermons, witnessed weddings and funerals, and now they will now be a part of dinner parties, holidays and fun times for family and friends. I believe Southerners are keen on knowing our people - knowing our people's roots and the soil they run and grow in is so special too.

 

The bricks above the foundation are going to be painted - 

I adore painted brick and had to have some at Farmdale!

Farmdale is sited in a glade within my family's wooded land. Lots and lots of oaks from live to red to water to laurel canopy the woodland terrain and large pines and cedars dot the wooded landscape - these are some of my favorite trees and a natural choice for my home.

Cedar beams (stamped with my initials mind you) will span my living room and heart pine beams from a cotton warehouse will don the ceiling in the kitchen. My floors are planed from the same heart pine beams - ancient lumber structuring a Southern agrarian mainstay in one life and giving me a floor and foundation for mine.

 

My back hallway - a narrow gallery - boasts the antique brick, a handsome hewned cedar beam and sturdy cedar columns. Their perfume is intoxicating - clean, woody, earthy and soulful. These sticks and stones - bricks and beams - are probably my favorite elements of the home's construction. Sure, I can't wait for fabrics and furnishings, but there's just something so everlasting and timeless and meaningful about the earth and land forming foundations for my home.

As any true Southern gent, I know my people and where they're from.  Furthermore, I know my bricks and heart pine - and where they're from too... true Southern fashion.

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.

 

 

Farmdale

If any of y’all have ever built a house from the ground up, you KNOW it is a process. You pay lots and lots of money for things you don’t even see – foundations, encapsulation, ductwork, bracing, cinderblocks that you’re just going to cover with brick... but… you’ve got to have these things before you can have your Georgia pine board and batten siding, your antique bricks (and their expensive mortar mind you), your “tin” roof and your shutters. Ahhh, shutters. Those will probably be a post in and of themselves.

 

To build from the ground up or renovate or whatever your house’s project may be, you must have a great team. Thankfully, I have such a team. Every morning, they see me bouncing out of my suburban (clad in plaid and some sort of loafer), and they know that I’ll scale any scaffolding, race across any roof, load up any ladder or meet them wherever their working to investigate the progress. Pester – maybe – but that has such a negative connotation. I prefer “check in” for that allows me to “check out” and let them finish their task at hand. If I didn’t “check out” and head back to JFI, then I’d probably stay all day on the job site and rearrange the kitchen layout a dozen times, move the steps at least once and start painting. I am terrific at starting a paint job – finishing one is NOT my strong suit. I am good with color, so maybe I should stick with selection rather than application.

 

 

I’ve known several of the guys building Farmdale Cottage since we were kids. Most all of them have worked with me on clients’ homes around Middle Georgia, and I find that very comforting. There is a trust factor and comradery almost with these guys, for we’ve moved furniture and walls together, transformed outdated bathrooms and kitchens together and now, we’re building Farmdale together.

 

My sister Maggie captured all these action shots and some construction details. I don’t covet the guys from Wall 2 Wall Construction working in this summer heat, but I do appreciate them doing so. The brick foundation is almost complete, the roof is starting this week, windows and doors arrived and some are even being installed. I’m still a good ways away from planning my first dinner party (which I’m afraid will probably be delivery pizza and paper plates until I get all moved and settled in), but I cannot wait nonetheless. Big Napp had a slogan when our church was moving from the old sanctuary to the new one – “joy of the journey.” It is a journey – amen to that right? But the joy comes in the little things – the little steps – that all slowly but surely come together and create the journey proper. The journey is the story.

 

 

 

So, from the Georgia Red Clay piles of Farmdale to you, thanks y’all for letting me share some of my joy on this journey.

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)