A Farmhouse in the City

A century-old East Memphis home blends features from the past with present-day renovations.

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When the farmhouse was built on Walnut Grove Road circa 1919, “East Memphis” stopped at East Parkway. “It was probably on a much bigger piece of property at that time,” says architect Charles Shipp, who is in charge of the renovation.

Over the next century, as families came and went, and the land its inhabitants farmed was sold off and subdivided, newer developments surrounded the house. By the time the current owner, who asked to remain anonymous, first visited in 2004, it wasn’t in the best shape. “Somebody else would’ve torn this house down,” she says. “Many people would say it should have been torn down. But I didn’t want to tear it down.”

Coming from a home in Central Gardens, which was built around the same time, the homeowner and her family were familiar with the challenges ahead. “We wanted to move to East Memphis for the kids’ schools, a bigger yard, and just more space,” she says. “But we didn’t want eight-foot ceilings. In East Memphis, that rules out a lot of houses … So we started looking at older homes. I mean, we love, love, love older homes. I would drive past this house when it was for sale every day when I took my daughter to school. I just kept looking over at it. We have a house in Maine that’s an old, white clapboard. This house appealed to me, because it reminded me of New England.”

The homeowner enlisted architect Charles Shipp to spearhead the renovations. “Updating homes from that era used to be probably 90 percent of what I did,” Shipp says. “Now it’s probably a little more than half of what I do, and the rest is new houses.”

Shipp had designed updates for the homeowner’s previous domicile, so she trusted him with this much larger project. “Here was the checklist: Walk-in pantry, laundry room, conveniently located large master bath, and large master closet,” she says. “All the things that we did not ever have in any of our older homes in Central Garden. Here was our chance to have those things, and that’s largely what the new part of the house is.”

The architect recalls, “It looked like a fairly unassuming farmhouse, nicely done. It is set farther back from the road than some of the others in the neighborhood, and it’s not that visible from the street. When we started to add on to it to make it function the way that they wanted to, we tried to keep that character intact. That’s what led to some of the layout, as well as how it was detailed.”

It wasn’t immediately obvious from the street that the farmhouse had been renovated before. The dining room was unusually large for a house of this era, and a previous inhabitant had installed a large, curved bank of windows along the room’s back wall. “I really wanted to keep it a glass room, but Charles said it was not very workable,” says the homeowner. “It was in terrible shape. So we basically tore the back out of the house, and then built an addition.”

Shipp added a more conventional set of windows to preserve the natural light in what became the family room. When they asked for a screened porch, Shipp found the perfect spot. “Should the porch go here? Or should the porch go there?”, the homeowner remembers wondering. “Charles came over one day, and said, ‘We’re going to add a door here, and we’re going to put the porch here. He liked the idea of it not being right up against that part of the house, because it would have been dark.”

Shipp recalls, “The client was very easy to work with and amenable to what we discussed. We were trying to keep the character intact, and do it in a way that lived like a new house, but didn’t look like a new house.”

Evolving an Interior

“I like a good house. I don’t like to just fill up a house with stuff,” says Hope Wilkinson.

The designer has handled big commercial projects, small residential projects, and everything in between. The best results, she says, come from establishing long-term relationships with a client. “I worked for an architecture firm that was all about the photo op. Once you get out of that, you’re like, ‘People. That’s why I like houses, because people live there, and they’re invested in it … I feel like once you get in someone’s brain with what their house should be, it starts telling you what to do.”

Wilkinson had done previous work for the homeowner’s Central Gardens dwelling, and was tapped to decorate the new space. “Since it was a renovation, the house already was what the house needed to be,” she says. “So we were just trying to make the old part look like it’s been here forever — which Charles is great at. I think he’s the best in town.”

It’s important to set the mood at the entrance to a home, so the living room, which runs along the front of the house, was the first priority. “[They] like antiques, so we like to source old and unusual kinds of things and then mix in a little bit of contemporary stuff,” says Wilkinson.

Visitors are greeted by an antique piano, which the busy homeowner says she doesn’t get to play as often as she would like. The elegant curves of a Swedish Mora clock catch the eye on the far wall. The clocks are “like artwork; it’s almost sculpture,” says the designer.

The Mora was not part of the first wave of accoutrements, says Wilkinson. The homeowner requested one after her mother passed away, as a kind of memorial. Wilkinson sourced the piece from a Texas broker who travels to Europe every year to find the rare clocks.

Not only did the clock fulfill the homeowner’s needs, but it also solved a persistent design problem. The two doors that lead from the living room to the family room are offset slightly, creating an asymmetry. “You have a center line on the far end, but not really down here,” says Wilkinson. “This was a great kind of vertical to make it feel a little more like a foyer, without having to hang a bunch of stuff.”

Like any good farmhouse, this one was built with a welcoming fireplace. It wasn’t being used when she bought the house, but the homeowner made sure it was renovated to host fires safely once again. “I feel like this is kind of the winter room, where it’s warm and cozy and there’s a fireplace,” says Wilkinson. The adjacent family room, with its big windows, “is more like the summer room.”

An eye-catching painting above the fireplace is by Memphis artist Anne Siems. In the wintertime, the homeowner can be found lounging by the fire, book in hand. “There are books all over this house — and she reads the books!” says Wilkinson. “We were laughing earlier, because I said, ‘I’m not color-coding your books!’”

Kitchen Confidence

Compared to many contemporary kitchens, the farmhouse’s kitchen is not big. But the homeowner doesn’t mind, saying, “The layout is fabulous.”

Wilkinson says the homeowner, who is an avid and serious cook, was quite specific about her needs. “She’s not into name brands. She didn’t want the range that looks the prettiest. She wanted the one with the most fire.”

The kitchen’s central island is not marble, like most kitchen islands in new construction, but wood. “The wood top was a big deal for me, because I wanted it to feel more like furniture, and not so built-in,” says Wilkinson. “The good thing about a wood top is that it can always be refinished. If it was white marble and it got stained, it’d be harder to do. But I like it just for the warmth. When she’s cooking, that’s where she works. I always like a kitchen where kids aren’t running through your space. This gives her a triangle where nobody else has to be where she needs to be. It’s very tight and efficient compared to a lot of new houses I’ve worked on where the kitchen islands are 12 feet long.”

Over the island is a vaulted ceiling which Shipp added during the design phase. “The vaulted ceiling — that was super fun!” laughs Wilkinson.

It’s a striking effect for the room, but installing the vault introduced a lot of unexpected challenges. “Kitchens need a lot of light,” says Shipp. “But you don’t want 20 can lights in a vaulted ceiling, because you can’t use can lights on an angle. You’ll end up looking straight into them, and they’re not shining where you want them to be shining.”

Wilkinson came up with an unorthodox solution that proved to be effective in many awkward lighting situations. Taut silver cables crisscross the ceiling below the vault, with small, directional lights suspended from them. “I had been to Europe, and these cable lights are how they light up old castles,” Wilkinson says. “They’re very flexible and adjustable. We could add to them. But when we did these [around 2007], you didn’t see them in houses. The electricians didn’t know how to install them. They were a bit ahead of their time. It’s counterintuitive to put something super-modern in a really old house. But they still work, and they still look good.”

In the nearby dining room, the eight-seat table is simple, rustic, and unusually slender. “This isn’t a formal house,” says Wilkinson. “So the dining room is comfortable, not stuffy. I prefer a skinny table. They’re very hard to find, but old French tables are usually long and skinny.”

Wilkinson says the practice of serving meals family-style, which involves setting out serving plates down the middle of the table, is not as prominent anymore. “People are going to be in the kitchen anyway. We usually don’t have a bunch of stuff down the middle of the table. You get to see the person you’re talking to, and you’re not reaching way across the table. And if people are sitting here, it’s just so much nicer to have more room to move around the table instead of having to shimmy behind chairs.”

Finding Your Colors

Like the rest of the house, the dining room’s dominant shades are light and neutral, with splashes of color from art on the walls and rugs on the floor. “When I meet people, I feel like there’s a color that they should be in,” says Wilkinson. For this client, “it’s like a Tiffany, or kind of a light aqua … All the walls are almost the same, neutral color. She has great art, great stuff. I don’t need a paint color to make it feel like a house. We recently repainted, and did everything close to the same colors. The walls and trim should not be the thing that you look in and see.”

The wooden floors are broken up with vintage floor coverings. “We love the authenticity of an old rug,” says Wilkinson. “The most colorful rugs are probably the newest thing that we’ve done. They’re like art on the floor. It’s a lot easier to live on a patterned rug than a solid tan rug, because they hide things. She doesn’t mind wear and tear, which I think is also nice for a house to have. Not everything’s new and crisp.”

On one side of the table is a vintage bar cart made of brass and glass. The piece was inherited by the homeowner. “It’s so cool that, instead of shoving it in the corner, we wanted to make it the thing you see.”

Wilkinson says for her, an ideal client starts with a base of favorite furniture and furnishings that she can build upon. “It’s the stuff that makes a house comfortable,” she says. “Things that have some age and some patina, you know? That’s what makes it feel like you can exist in there and not mess it up. I especially like when they have a base of things that are interesting — because sometimes it’s hard to find interesting things.”

Wilkinson says this is just one example of how a long-term relationship with a designer can help keep a home looking fresh. “Every now and then, we’ll check in and [the homeowner] will be like, ‘I just need you to walk through my house.’ So we’ll walk through, and I’ll say, ‘That looks tired.’ When you bring something in, it doesn’t stay fresh forever … It’s fun to revisit a house. We haven’t changed the drapery since day one. It was good from the start. But we’ve moved things around. I like that kind of long-term, making a house a home kind of thing — not just making a house good on day one.”