There's no business like show houses There's no business like show houses (September 05, 2003)

Twenty-six rooms showcase the work of local decorators

by Carol Blitzer

Glass beads. Soft drapes. Warm, sunny colors. After a six-year hiatus, the ASID Designer Showcase 2003 is back, presenting a unique challenge for the 30 interior designers who transformed the rooms -- a rare treat for the thousands of viewers expected between Sept. 11 and Oct. 5.

Instead of refurbishing an older home, the designers tackled a brand-new, 13,000-plus-square-foot home in West Atherton. All the fixtures were already in the nine full bathrooms and two half baths. The kitchen was complete, minus the accessories.

The only thing missing were the finishing touches that transform a new house into a home.

Visitors enter through a foyer that Palo Alto designer Lynn Hollyn calls a garden oasis, which blends the outside and the inside seamlessly. An antique planter even holds the same flowers as the exterior garden.

Throughout the home one is constantly aware of the extensive gardens, visible through large -- and often uncovered -- windows. Many rooms incorporate subtle shades of green, picked up from the foliage immediately outside.

The colors are warm, yet soft -- the richness of sweet butter or the fluidity of sun-drenched sand. The colors flow easily from space to space, sometimes more intense, such as in the formal living room by Design 2, San Jose, then lightening up in the family room, and brightening up in the kitchen.

The highlights of the less-formal family room -- yes, this house is big enough to have two -- are a dog bed slip-covered in brocade and a giant antique French wall clock. Marcia Miller, of Miller Stein, Palo Alto, calls it a "cozy space for a real family." Taking their cues from the garden views, they opted for sheer, gray-aqua (close to the color of the eucalyptus trees outside) drapes with a leaf-pleated pattern.

"It's furnished luxuriously, but the fabrics are practical and inviting," Miller said, noting that tapestry and chenille don't show dirt or wear. Even the drapes are a microfiber rather than the more fragile silk that they resemble.

Penny Chin, of Elements in Design, Redwood Shores, turned her attention to accessorizing the new kitchen, bringing in dishes from France, Italy and England. She subtly mixed antique brass and bronze hardware, as well as a new polished English brass that she calls "less brassy than American brass." Her piece de resistance is a huge faucet by KWC that she says was needed to balance the immense room. It features pull-down air spray and soap dispenser.

Occasionally, the designers were thrown curve balls. Heidi Davis of Los Gatos worked around a guest bathroom with very modern fittings. "It was so different from the other rooms," she acknowledged, then set to work pulling a traditional feel into the room through painted murals that were wallpapered onto the walls.

Likewise, in the basement, Douglas Dolezal of Miller/Dolezal Design Group, Portola Valley, was given a long, narrow room to metamorphose into a guest sanctuary. The first thing his team did was upholster the walls with sage fabric and add a mirror to give the illusion of width. Two queen-size beds with antiqued headboards fill the otherwise daunting space, now a charming contrast of new and old.

Those with bedrooms at least started with large, airy rooms. Marcia Cox (Marcia Cox Interiors, Menlo Park) layered fabrics in the terrace guest suite, which not only has its own bathroom, but a balcony as well. Picking up the square pattern from the bathroom tiles, she had linens custom made to coordinate. Her duvet cover features sheer silk embroidered with "window-pane" squares over a solid buttercream cotton taffeta. "I wanted it sunny, happy. This house has such light," she said.

To tie the bathroom into the suite, she added an opalescent finish to the walls, then had a mural painted that looks like the view out the terrace. The mural not only incorporated all the colors in the bedroom, but added faux marble to match the tub trim.

Down the hall, Los Altos designer Kim Kaneshiro designed her bedroom suite as a woman's "retreat for renewal," spinning a story about a woman executive or doctor who gets calls in the middle of the night and needs both a work and sleep space.

Kaneshiro softened and feminized the walls with a hand-stenciled pattern, and a larger hand-scrolled motif on the soffit. A mural in the adjoining bathroom extends onto multiple walls. "It felt barren and cold. (The mural) added character and warmth," she said.

Many of the touches were from Italy, from the Murano glass lamp and Florentine side table to the Venetian lamp and scroll chair. The comfortable chair is a French antique.

A show house is a lot of work, but it's also a tremendous opportunity to showcase creativity. Julie Gonzalez took a huge -- and cold and plain -- master bathroom and created a warm sanctuary. "The space lent itself to a centered lounge piece, but it felt too free-floating. We needed to change the volume and create a new space," she said. What pulls it all together is a backdrop drape that starts under the skylight.

Perhaps the best part of attending a show house -- in addition to gawking at the nine-bedroom, five-fireplace and four-car-garage wonder -- is exposure to a bevy of stand-out ideas -- and the opportunity to find out how you can adapt them to your own situation. These include:

** You can find ready-made silk drapes at the Silk Trading Company in San Francisco; they're height adjustable because they "puddle" on the floor (see woman's retreat).

** An ergonomic chair can be slip-covered in sheer fabric, for a more "feminine" look (see college student's quarters); also note the Pottery Barn glass beads.

** Beams are not necessarily what you think. What looks like wood is actually stucco in Palo Alto designer Joseph Hittinger's wine cellar.

** A mural can brighten a bathroom, while tying it into surrounding rooms (see downstairs guest bath, terrace guest suite and women's retreat).

** Or check out the hand-painted floor cloths by Josef Lysowski in Rise Krag's creative retreat for children.

And, if what you really want is the whole thing, the newly built home by Creative Habitat is on the market. The asking price? $12.9 million. Carol Blitzer is an assistant editor for the Weekly. She can be e-mailed at cblitzer@paweekly.com.
What: 2003 ASID Designer Showcase When: Sept. 11-Oct. 5; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Fridays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Where: A home in West Atherton; on Thursdays and Fridays, pick up a free shuttle at the Atherton Caltrain station (Fair Oaks and Station lanes); on Saturdays and Sundays, pick up the shuttle at Las Lomitas Elementary School, 299 Alameda de las Pulgas, Atherton. Rubber-soled shoes are recommended. Tickets: $30 in advance (visit www.asidcap.org or drop by Waterworks in Palo Alto (322-8445), or the Stephen Miller Gallery (327-5040) or Flegel's (326-9661) in Menlo Park; $35 at the door Info: Proceeds benefit the Peninsula and East Bay Chapters of Habitat for Humanity and ASID California Peninsula Chapter.