September 1, 2024Merritt Hawley found she had to stretch a bit to successfully reboot this house in charming Carmel Valley, California, and not just because it extends across some 10,000 square feet. The owners, for whom she’d taken on a variety of smaller projects before, asked her to go beyond her usual role of architect — the vocation for which she trained at Cal Poly and Columbia — to assume decorating duties as well.
“Somehow I ended up doing the interiors. I still don’t quite know how that happened,” she says, tongue firmly in cheek. And she’s happy it did. “I do enjoy doing both a lot — maybe because I’m such a control freak. It’s nice to do soup to nuts.”
Her first task in tackling the project: Giving a more human-scale feel to the sprawling structure, which she describes as “someone’s dream house from the nineteen nineties,” with an Arts-and-Crafts-esque exterior and a more muddled, Tuscan interior, plus endlessly long hallways. “They seemed enormous, like you could roller-skate down them,” she recalls.
Hawley, whose studio — MAP Architect — is based in nearby Monterey, began by introducing a series of arcades to break up these alleyways of circulation, then added warm, welcoming vestibule-like areas to certain rooms, wood paneling and wainscotting to others and sliding doors here and there to break up a few additional spaces.
From there, she followed the lead of her clients, a couple with two school-aged children she describes as “really great to work with. They have excellent taste, fantastic art, a beautiful rug collection.” They’d mapped out a particular decorating journey. “The husband said, ‘Let’s pretend we inherited our great aunt’s historic house in the English countryside and we’re bringing our California aesthetic to it.’ They wanted it to feel like a combination of the two.”
To the designer, that meant adding character and timelessness by selecting slightly quirky — but not precious or fusty — antiques and vintage pieces to mix in with contemporary ones. The family room, for instance, centers on a new, clean-lined solid-blue sofa, but the designer surrounded it with a pedestal games table and a French turned walnut side table from Umbrella, both 19th century, as well as a traditional wing chair upholstered in a floral print. The bridge between classic English country estate and California contemporary? A wall-mounted console from Knoll. The goal, Hawley says, was to get the mix “to feel natural and not too contrived.”
She seems to have succeeded — perhaps too well. The clients are living happily in their completed home, but they’ve caught the renovation and redecoration bug.
“They just bought a new house, and we’re going to do it for them, too,” says the designer, who finds that homeowners she works with often enjoy the process so much they want to become architects themselves. By collaborating with her, however, “they get to foster a childhood fantasy of being a designer. I’m happy to help them with that.” Call it vicarious vocational living at its finest.
Entry Hall
Hawley added panels of flocked linen to the walls of the foyer’s rotunda, softening the architectural envelope. She placed an antique pedestal table in the center, topping it with a garlic vase the homeowners bought in Italy. The stair wall displays a series of vintage horse paintings the clients found in Idaho, while the walls of the hallway off the entry are lined with Bole sconces from Workstead.
Living Room
This space “is a nice eclectic mix of things,” says Hawley. She gathered the furniture in a central vignette, rather than creating multiple seating areas, “so it felt like a cluttered cozy English living room, even though it’s just an enormous space.” Vintage items — including a slouchy flame-stitch-upholstered wingback chair from Bradbury Art & Antiques, a pair of leather slipper chairs, various side tables from 1stDibs and a mid-century-modern Swedish floor lamp from Modernity — give it a collected look. Even the contemporary pieces, like the wood-framed Max Rollitt sofa and George Smith scroll-arm couch (foreground), have the look of the past about them. The painting on the left is by Julie Speidel, the one on the right by Susan Bennerstrom.
Dining Room
A gauze-and-bentwood chandelier, purchased in Prague, hangs over a vintage Schmieg and Kotzian table surrounded by William IV dining chairs. Hawley commissioned local artist Nora Cavallaro to paint the agave-inspired murals. Without that, “you just had this mush of walls,” she notes, referring to the lackluster architecture. Beyond the dining room, she created a games area in what was “another enormous hallway.” The table is from Paris’s Clignancourt flea market and the chairs were already in the clients’ collection, while the work on the wall behind, a 1960s painting by John Baxter, was a gift from the artist to the parents of one of the homeowners.
Kitchen
Hawley imbued the open kitchen with character by adding deVol faucets, a darkly stained spool-leg island that looks like a piece of antique furniture and a floor-to-ceiling tile surround for the La Cornue range. “I wanted the room to feel like a nod to the working kitchen of an old country house,” she says. “But we kept a really stark palette, because you’re just passing through. It’s almost just part of a hallway.”
Family Room
The house’s collected, old-new mix continues in this more casual sitting area, where the contemporary sectional and ottomans, the latter from Lawson-Fenning, present a fairly neutral counterpoint to a group of interesting vintage pieces: side tables from 1stDibs, a mid-century Knoll floating credenza, a mahogany pedestal table. The multicolor rug is from Maharam, and the pendant light is Roman and Williams. In the hall seen through the doorway, a green-framed Pani Jurek mirror from Savannah Bay Gallery hangs on a wall.
Guest Room
A pair of brightly hued Slim Aarons prints and curtains made from a House of Hackney botanical print enliven this guest room, where a custom Shaker-style bench sits at the foot of a contemporary leather-wrapped bed. The vintage floating nightstand is from 1stDibs.
Primary Bedroom
“This was another huge room,” Hawley says. “I love the coral color, which helped to bring the scale down.” Side tables from Lawson-Fenning flank the bed, while a kidney-shaped burl-wood desk by Laszlo Hoenig, found at Marylebone Antiques, sits in the window. A 1950s Silvio Cavatorta velvet side chair, from Spirit Gallery via 1stDibs, pulls up to it. The milk-glass floor lamp is from Get Back Inc. The art over the bed is by Carol Summers, and the artwork between the windows is by Jean Arp.
