Playing by the Rules: The Faulkner 14
Many interior designers, when pressed for useful advice, will say, “It’s impossible to generalize--there are no hard and fast rules.” Not Frank Faulkner. An artist who also practices interior design (he says) by default or (we say) by popular demand, Faulkner speaks of his sideline in maxims, as though he were patiently relating for the umpteenth time the formula for a perfect vinaigrette. The other thing Frank Faulkner does all the time is buy and sell houses in Hudson, his first in 1982, well ahead of the pack, for $35,000. Presently living with his partner Philip Kesinger in his fourteenth, on 5th Street, he has recently purchased his fifteenth, on 4th. True to form, he claims he’s not sure he ever wants to leave his present address for the new one, which (as always, when he first buys them) is a wreck. But if past performance is any indication, the magical place you see here will be on the block before the paint on the new one is dry. So to preserve #14 for posterity, we asked Faulkner to reduce what he’s done there to a list of rules, one for each house in Hudson he’s loved and left--the Faulkner 14.
Rule 1
Make it a Pavilion; Add French Doors
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“This was the last cheap house in Hudson--an old carriage house with nasty metal awnings and an attached garage lined with baby blue vinyl. I thought I might use it as a painting studio. I didn’t have it inspected before I bought it, then afterward I discovered the sills were totally rotted--just another in my succession of Mr. Wrongs. Since I had to rebuild the whole thing, I thought why not make it a pavilion. In 18th-century France, court etiquette was so murderous that nobles had to have a place to get away. So they built modest (by palace standards) pavilions. These little pleasure palaces outside of Versailles are like lanterns--you can see through them from front to back--and their classical layout tells you how to move through them. Every house I do, I think of as a pavilion.”
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Rule 2
Bring in Light and Life
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“They are the two most important things a room can have. Sunshine, breezes, plants, books, of course, but also sparkle--mirrors, candles--lend vitality.”
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Rules 3 & 4
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Curtains Should Blend
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“Curtains should match the color of the wall as closely as possible. The cheaper the fabric, the better, so they can be very full. And they should always be unlined. I usually do them out of muslin with brass grommets at the top, so I can hang them from a simple rod with white plastic shower rings. I always tell myself the rings are ivory.”
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Treasure Threadbare Rugs
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“I am a member of a confederation called The Rotten Rug Society. Nothing is more hideous than a new Oriental rug or a brightly colored one.” The painting is Faulkner’s Cold Sun.
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Rules 5 & 6
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Upholstery Should be Anonymous
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“What’s interesting here is the Mark Beard painting and the board-room photographs, not the chairs. As a rule, upholstered furniture should be the least eye-catching thing in a room. And I nearly always slipcover it. I like slipcovers to be a little baggy--they should look as if the housekeeper ran them up in her spare time.”
Use Color Cautiously
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“I love color but I use it very respectfully. Generally, I employ a huge range of non-color colors that go from the whitest whites to the darkest darks and everything in between.”
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Rule 7
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Trust Symmetry
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“When you shop, look for pairs. If perfect symmetry isn’t possible, then aim for balance by using things of equal volume.”
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Rules 8 & 9
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Mix the Humble with the Refined
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“I like Mark Hampton’s maxim, ‘If it looks good, it is good.’ I’d just as soon take a piece of junk and tart it up as buy an expensive antique. I’ll often spend as much as $40 a weekend at Mark’s Antiques or at Dan the Man’s Flea Market [both on Warren Street, Hudson], and I’ll find things that give me more joy then an antique with the highest provenance. If I do have something good, I’ll put something humble next to it, to de-glaze the good thing--make it less pompous. This sepia print was in Hudson Antiques Center for at least two years. I finally bought it and hung it over this rather good Biedermeier chest of drawers. I can’t tell you the number of decorators who’ve since asked to buy it from me. Yet it sat there for two years, unloved and unwanted, for no money.”
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Distrust New Wood
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“I don’t like wood that isn’t old, dark or distressed--for anything; furniture, floors. I hate floors that get sanded, then covered with orange polyurethane. I paint floors unless they are very dark or very light, as in our kitchen, like scrubbed Swedish pine.”
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Rule 10
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Nothing is Sacred--Paint it, Strip it, Bleach it!
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“When I found this Gothic cupboard in a flea market, it had a starved dark brown varnish finish. I’ve painted it, over the years, white, gray-green, several shades of red (you’ll never see me use a clear, true red--I like orange-reds, corals) and, finally, as it is now, black-overlay with some red showing through. I sometimes buy good quality department store lamps in lacquered brass or bronze, then bring them home, prime them with Bin, and gesso them.” [Bin is a primer available at hardware stores; Gesso, the thick white material artist’s use to prime canvasses, is available at art supply stores.]
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Rule 11
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Play with Scale
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“The dealers I most respect--Vince Mulford in Hudson, Michael Trapp in West Cornwall--have an incredible understanding of scale. It’s an instinct: Nothing’s more fun than an overscaled piece of furniture when it’s right, yet I’ve bought huge sofas and had to get rid of them. Even if you’ve spent a lot of money for something, if it doesn’t work, throw it out. Otherwise, it holds the entire room hostage.”
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Rule 12
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Spend as Little as Possible on Kitchens and Bathrooms
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“Fancy kitchens depress me. I think kitchens and baths should be simple and utilitarian.”
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Rule 13
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If It’s Gloomy, Paint it Gray
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“When we finally got it all stripped down, there was a little bit of gloom. You can’t force cheer just by painting everything yellow, it never works, so throughout the house, I painted all the walls gray [Benjamin Moore’s ‘Nimbus’], and used the same color cut by half with white on the ceiling and the woodwork. The floors are also painted gray [Benjamin Moore’s ‘Shadow’] On furniture, I like to use a Walmart flat latex in a color they call Aluminum that is the perfect French gray.”
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Rule 14
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Collect Busts
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“They’re classical and whimsical at the same time. And I love plaster as a material--in nearly every room, there’s some object that’s made of plaster, and often it will be a bust. This wrestler is by the same artist, Mark Beard, who did the painting of the fencer in the living room.”
Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 04/30/08 at 04:43 PM (3) Comments • Permalink
Hands On: Stone Walls and Stone or Brick Paving
Nothing classes up a property like a bit of stone hardscape. It is that rarity in design--a thing that is at once humble and grand (indoors, a fine old wood floor makes a similar contribution). This Saturday (or, in case of rain, Sunday), at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, Mark Mendel (left), the master mason with Monterey Masonry will give a hands-on workshop on the basics of building stone walls. After teaching us how to evaluate stone, then plan and layout a freestanding wall, Mendel will demonstrate cutting and fitting. Then students will apply what they have just learned by helping to build a garden wall.
In the afternoon, Mendel will continue with another program that focuses on flatwork--paths, terraces, edging, walkways--and his range of materials will now extend to include brick. After instruction in how to evaluate a project and choose the best material for it, students will participate in the construction of a patterned brick terrace.
Pre-registration required
Saturday, April 26 (or, in case of rain, Sunday, April 27)
Morning workshop (9 a.m. - 1 p.m): “Stone Walls for the Garden”
Afternoon workshop (2 p.m. - 5 p.m.): “Paving with Brick and Stone”
Half day, $50 ($45 for Botanical Gardens members); full day, $90 ($81 for members)
Dress: outdoor work clothes, heavy-duty gloves, and safety glasses.
Berkshire Botanical Gardens
Intersection Routes 102 & 183; Stockbridge; 413.298.3926
Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 04/22/08 at 08:17 AM (2) Comments • Permalink
A Tiny House With A Big Heart
When you visit Kimberly Rock and Eric Haggard’s doll-sized house on Main Street in Falls Village, it’s immediately apparent that they’re a child-centered family. The grandest room in their 1840s eyebrow colonial is their daughters’ playroom, an addition they built for Jessy, 5, and Jordan, 3. Like many busy, doting parents in the digital age, they obsessively document their children’s lives, downloading thousands of images that rarely find their way out of their computer’s hard drive and into photo albums or picture frames. Ironically, Kimberly and Eric own a company called Pulp Products that designs and manufactures winsome photo albums and scrap books (but you know what they say about the shoemaker’s children . . .) Now, Kimberly and Eric have started a business that makes it convenient to creatively custom frame your digital photos without breaking the bank (or leaving your house). They call their company Real Memories, because their mission is to help people commemorate and celebrate life’s joyous moments. “We think our website will help 
Jordan and Jessy painting at an Offi chalkboard table in their playroom.
people connect to the people they love,” says Kimberly. “It’s especially good for sending gifts to grandparents, aunts, uncles, bridesmaids.” A year in development, Real Memories was designed to be as personalized as a website can be. Once you upload your photo, you choose the size of the picture and mat and then you select from one of two dozen wooden frame styles. Then your picture is printed, matted, assembled and gift-wrapped at the Real Memories factory in downtown Torrington, CT. “Other companies will frame your photos but no one else gives you this many options for personalization,” says Eric, noting that you can add a custom caption—elegantly letter-pressed in gold or silver—to any mat for $4.50.
Their belief that small details make all the difference is evident in the way they renovated and decorated their house, adding a stone wall and white picket fence that enhance its historic character. Alas, there was little to save on the inside. “We basically gutted it, and we did almost everything ourselves” says Kimberly. “The first day we owned it Eric took a crowbar and started knocking down walls.” And what began as a weekend house for two stressed-out New Yorkers evolved into a full-time residence for a family of four. “That’s why we had to build the playroom. There are only two bedroom upstairs and the girls’ is so tiny that they sleep in bunk beds.”
The center of the house is the kitchen, which bridges the cozy, autumnal living room and the airy, pastel playroom. The kitchen has dark wood cabinets and walls of pale yellow wainscoting that are hung with the children’s artwork, along with a large painting, Tuscan Table, by Eric’s mother, Marijune, who now divides her time between Seattle and Mexico. The breakfast nook is piled with colorful pillows that make it a comfy place to hang out with a cup of tea or take a nap. Around the corner, there’s a bathroom with a clawfoot tub, which makes it possible for Kimberly to make dinner and bathe the girls at the same time. “Eric thought of that,” she says. “It is such a small house that we had to use every inch creatively. He designed it so the girls could run around the house in circles. and we used to let them ride their tricycles around the house when the weather was bad.” Now that’s what you call giving your children real memories.
The girls’ artwork is hung with clothespins on a wire line from Ikea on the kitchen walls.. The jaunty block-printed linen pendant shade is from Room & Board
The kitchen island is one giant cutting board made of end-grain cherry. They splurged on a Viking stove and hood. “We cook for our kids almost every night,” says Kimberly, who has a serious Guido’s habit.
The Haggards planned ahead so when the girls start getting homework, they will have a cheerful corner to work. The antique cupboard hides the television. The walls of the skylit playroom are painted Pale Sea Mist by Benjamin Moore. The rag rug came from the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair
The long table in the living room was purchased at an antiques fair in Kinderhook and it came with a story; the seller said it had been his family’s wheat threshing table back in Wisconsin. The Haggards found the fireplace mantle at Keystone, in Hudson. “I spent 20 hours sanding and refnishing it with Bree Wax,” says Kimberly.
A REAL DEAL
Real Memories is offering Rural Intelligence readers a 15% discount on orders.
Enter code: Intro15rm
Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/16/08 at 07:14 AM (1) Comments • Permalink
A Garden Blog Especially for Us
Margaret Roach was planning to finally spend some quality time in her Columbia County garden when she left her executive job at Martha Stewart Omnimedia in New York City and moved to her weekend house this winter. But like her former boss, Roach is apparently indefatigable and ambitious so it’s hard to believe that she only decided to start her gardening blog—which is dedicated to Hudson Valley/Berkshires Zone 5B— a few weeks ago, because A Way To Garden already feels like it’s a website in full bloom. Of course, Roach was the gardening editor of Martha Stewart Living for ages, and she has both an encyclopedic and instinctive understanding of the gardener’s life. She feels liberated to be writing about gardening again after many years in management positions. “I wanted to bring my garden self back to life,” says Roach, who did not want to blog into a void so she’s started advertising on WKZE. “I’m not exactly sure what motivated me to to do that but I wanted an audience,” she says. The only downside of her new venture is that she is not spending as much time as she planned to in the garden because she’s so busy blogging. “It’s very addictive,” she says.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/14/08 at 06:58 PM (2) Comments • Permalink
Hudson: Revising History on Warren Street
Hudson resident Belinda Breese relates the saga of her house, one of the town’s earliest and among its proudest. Built in the late 18th century by a whaler from Providence, R.I., it later became a brothel; still later, welfare apartments. Now it has come full circle and resumed its rightful place as one of the jewels of Warren Street.
In 1784 two Quakers from Revolutionary War-torn Nantucket and Providence, sailed up the Hudson River looking for a safe place to resurrect the decimated whaling industry. They moored at Claverack Landing, a small Dutch settlement, where they negotiated with the locals to buy land on which to build a town and whaling port. One of the men, Thomas Jenkins, built the clapboard house that is now 103 Warren Street. His sons, who would become fabulously successful by the standards of their day, built the two grand brick houses next door, one of which is now the headquarters for the local branch of the DAR.
One hundred years later, the whaling trade had brought wealth to Hudson and sin to the lower part of Warren and adjacent Diamond (now Columbia) Streets. The streets near the port were lined with brothels, bars, and gambling parlors. Yet another century after that, in 2003, my real estate agent, Tom Swope, brought me to see what he described as “one of the best houses in Hudson.” By then, lower Warren Street had become a neighborhood of rundown houses, many of them subdivided into “Section 8 Housing"--welfare apartments. The shabby aluminum-sided place Tom showed me that day was in shambles. Inhabited by four families, it was dark and rank. I told Tom I wasn’t in the business of putting people out of their homes and fled.
After the tenants moved out, Tom begged me to return and give the house a second chance. Its historic assets, which he extolled as though they were museum-quality artifacts, were two closet doors in an upstairs bedroom and some wainscoting and a bit of molding in the front hall that he claimed dated from 1784. To my eye, the molding looked exactly like picture molding from Williams Lumber that had been painted over and over. Yet something drew me to the place, and, eventually, I took the plunge. Picking through the debris on closing day, I found a dusty lamp in the basement. The base was a saucy Spanish senorita, arms raised as if to hold a long-gone shade, the sole remnant of the house’s flamboyant past.
Fortunately, a sympathetic friend quickly introduced me to Reggie Young, of Project Management Studio, a miracle worker with an artist’s eye and an intimate knowledge of old houses. He became my guide, my best friend, my collaborator. He also proved to be a first-rate finder of old moldings, fixtures, mantles, door frames, and window glass. He and his team of talented artisans turned a crack house into a gem.
Under the aluminum siding, we discovered pine clapboard. It was in decent condition, though it looked as if it hadn’t been painted in more than two hundred years. The color resembled dried oak leaves, and it was so beautiful, I couldn’t think of another color I would prefer. To preserve the wood yet replicate the look, Jules Anderson and Reggie painted the clapboard pale mustard then rubbed in a purplish/raw umber glaze that was created for us by Michael Black of Liberty Paints. In the end (above), it exactly matched an oak leaf I had picked up in a parking lot.
We turned two small rooms into one large living room, patching the floor where a center fireplace had originally been. Much to the horror of the local Preservation Police, we rubbed white and a touch of raw umber stain into the pumpkin pine floors. At Keystone in Hudson, we found the neo-classical mantle and three of the window frames, which came from a house in Western New York State. Then David Wright, a brillliant, self-educated restoration carpenter replicated four more. The room is decorated with family heirlooms, including a Venetian child’s desk, one of a pair of screens my father brought back from Japan, and a Dutch painting of a little girl, mixed with furniture from local junk shops.
When we tore the house apart, we found ghost marks indicating that the original staircase had been in the center of the house, typical of Nantucket and Providence houses. Sometime in the 1920’s, the old staircase had been removed, and a new one was put in a different place. We put the stairs back in their original position but made them less narrow and steep (left). Again, eyebrows shot up among strict preservationists, but an architect friend, Robert Godwin, reasoned that the original owners would have preferred larger rooms and more gracious staircases had the technology existed then to heat them properly. To make the walls in the library (right) look like aged plaster, we mixed coffee grounds into wet plaster before troweling it on. The moldings and doors were salvaged from an old house on Union Street, and we found the mantle at Mark and Larry Antiques in Hudson. The bookcases are painted custom-blended bitter chocolate brown.
The original kitchen, with its cooking fireplace, complete with oven, is now the dining room. The original fire surround had been ripped out and the hole covered with sheetrock. Reggie found an old fire surround in Millbrook that was exactly the right size and even had the cutout for a beehive oven. All it needed was a mantle.
The new kitchen fills the footprint of one that was added in 1830. Opening to the garden are three pairs of 10’ mahogany doors that came, complete with their original fittings, from Buenos Aires via E-bay. The concrete floor has radiant heat, the cabinets are painted black, and the counters are recycled white marble from a demolished building in Albany.
This bedroom (left) had the only significant historic details remaining in the house--a pair of 18th-century closets flanking the fireplace. The replacement mantle came from Mark and Larry Antiques in Hudson. A guest bedroom (right) was rendered semi-private when we eliminated the ceiling and part of one wall so we’d be able to stand at the base of the new staircase and look up the stairwell to the old brick chimneys in the attic and to the peak of the roof.
A friend picked up the mirror that’s now in the master bath on the street in Manhattan. It was in pieces and had been sitting in her basement for years gathering dust, so we had to reassemble it. The old cupboard was only partially painted, so after Reggie added the shelves on the side, I swished blue milk paint over everything to blend the new wood with the old, and the unpainted with the painted. The counter is an old pine table.
Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 02/23/08 at 02:34 PM (0) Comments • Permalink
