Post by waterslide on Jun 5, 2022 18:53:41 GMT
WEB-EXCLUSIVE HOME TOUR
Inside Vanessa Carlton’s Magically Cozy Rhode Island Home
The 19th-century property has room for the musician’s collected treasures, her Lord of the Rings aesthetic, and a family of wild turkeys
By Kathryn Romeyn
Photography by Erin Little
May 25, 2022
“We found it on Zillow, just like everyone did during the pandemic,” musician Vanessa Carlton says of her charming Federal post-and-beam house. She and her husband, fellow musician John McCauley, even purchased the Rhode Island home—which was built during the first few years of the 1800s—without ever seeing it in person. “We did a FaceTime walk-through,” Carlton says. “I know, it’s crazy.” And yet the house, which the couple share with their seven-year-old daughter, Sidney, has led to their “next life” in the Ocean State.
The blind commitment to a centuries-old abode is a bit more understandable considering that Carlton and McCauley, whose renovation projects have grown larger over the years, are enamored with aged dwellings. “People associate so many headaches with historic homes,” Carlton says, “but we want those enormous wide wood plank floors you can’t find anymore, the artisan work that went into these mantles, and the true divided light windows with the old glass that bends [sunrays] just so.”
When the trio arrived, they found a resident family of “intense, amazing turkeys” inhabiting the one-acre property, which abuts natural wetlands. (“This house is theirs, make no mistake!” Carlton says of their avian neighbors, who are known to sleep on the roof.) As for the house itself, “I saw an enormous amount of potential,” Carlton reflects. “[But], to be honest, it felt a little bit like a funeral home. There was a sort of austerity to everything. You felt like you were walking into a movie set, which is not how we were going to live in this house.” Soon, Carlton and her husband hired ESHI Builders to do a carefully considered renovation.
As for the decor, the first thing the singer selected for the home perfectly sums up the spirit the couple envisioned. “I’m a wallpaper freak,” Carlton admits. She picked House of Hackney’s pink Dinosauria design before even hiring Kate Gray of Brooklyn-based interiors firm Hamilton Gray.
If Carlton’s strength was identifying exactly how she wants to feel in the space, Gray’s were creating a composition to elicit those feelings and problem-solving. The musician first met the interior designer through an artistic friend, but the pairing felt karmically right when she discovered Gray was a native Rhode Islander. As for the designer, she immediately sensed her client’s vibrant imagination and collaborative energy. “I could tell it would be a really fun process,” Gray recalls.
Carlton had plenty of references of her own, as she makes “ridiculous” mood boards and mines Pinterest for old magazine clips. But Gray enjoyed turning her client onto designers such as Rosie Li and finding key new pieces Carlton could obsess over (such as the floral bed from The Inside). The designer also helped distill not only Carlton’s ideas, but also her deep stash of vintage finds and antique furniture. “It’s a beloved building up of our precious things over time,” the musician notes. She adds, “Welcome to Vanessa and John’s flea market!”
The vast majority of the furnishings are pieces Carlton has carried through her life with McCauley, which Gray was tasked with jigsawing together. “I love when I walk into a house, and I can feel [its] history because I know how much the items mean to the owners,” Carlton says. Unsurprisingly, Carlton’s home is replete with nostalgic personal touches, such as artwork made by her grandfather, a vintage brass horse sculpture identical to one her best friend owns, and an “unbelievable” Yamaha piano that was custom-made for her to play at the 2003 Grammy Awards.
The latter has a significant presence in the living room, which is undeniably the soul of the home. It’s where the couple writes music, listens to records, and eats meals. Though they’ve cozied it up to fit their modern existence, Carlton says she feels a Colonial energy when the sun begins to set, and they light the home’s many candles. “Everything doesn’t have to be electrical, you know? Trying to maintain that low glow is key to a house like this.”
That romantic notion is probably also a vestige of Carlton’s time spent in England, working on records out of Georgian farmhouses whose moody paints always stuck with her. Here, redolent paint colors such as Farrow & Ball’s Mole’s Breath and Down Pipe and Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron set the tone. Beyond gravitating toward old English houses, Carlton says her homes always need something resembling The Shire. “I don’t think that’s an official aesthetic, but Lord of the Rings is my happy place.” For her, that ethereal magic comes from the trees whose wood makes up the wide floor planks. “I feel those trees in the floors and the size of the mantles—the living room mantle is so tall that I do feel like a hobbit!”
Somewhat surprisingly, this latest chapter of the storied house took just five months to create. Carlton’s collections, curated just so, feel right at home in the 200-plus-year-old structure. “One of the most beautiful things about a house like this is that you can make it so warm and comfortable and cozy,” Carlton says. “And that…is, for me, the magic.”
Kate Gray particularly enjoyed working on this project with tradespeople, including the “super positive” cabinetmaker who built the shelves for a record player and records in what was essentially a parallelogram-shaped opening. They removed an awkward dividing wall that had been added to the center of the living room, achieving more flow, function, and warmth. A Hugh Holland photograph and nostalgic brass horse sculpture sit on the high mantle that makes Carlton feel, happily, like a hobbit.
The intricate Yamaha piano in the living room was a custom design, initially made for Carlton to play at the 2003 Grammy Awards. It wasn’t finished in time, but she later toured with it. “The piano is unbelievable,” the musician says. She adds that the space—with a Noguchi Akari pendant, vintage dining table, Bernardo Plycraft chair, and custom sofa—is now where she and McCauley write their songs. “There’s some sort of wonderful flow in this room that you just feel creative, especially in the evening,” she says.
“Never fear a wall-mounted candle holder,” Carlton says of her vintage analog fixture with a wavy candle from Gray’s friend’s West Village store, Lahn Home. Even the kitchen is all about warm and subtle lighting. The kitchen was previously painted in country blue and yellow shades that “gave me the shivers,” Gray says. Now it’s all about a black tone by Farrow & Ball.
“That little powder room was not as charming before,” Gray says and then laughs. She found a salvage sink, added paneling, and included House of Hackney’s Trematonia Onyx wallpaper. Carlton, whose eclectic little brass plant holders complete the teeny space, is a fan of making small rooms such as this feel over the top.
As a rule, Carlton doesn’t like a TV in the living room, so they placed the television in the moody study with a working fireplace. Vintage furnishings, including a Clark and Gibby desk and Ilmari Tapiovaara chair, populate the room with original divided light windows. “Nothing beats windows like these in terms of beauty, in my opinion,” Carlton says. The paint used for the walls is Down Pipe by Farrow & Ball.
“We are very use-what-you-have type people,” Carlton says of her and McCauley. “But we needed beds!” Gray found the perfect moody and dramatic floral bed from The Inside that both of them were thrilled with. “John is my favorite type of guy where it’s like, ‘Yes, bring on some gothic floral. I will sleep in that.’”
After making the decision to place the tub in the dressing room, Gray suggested custom millwork—with grasscloth panels and Rejuvenation handles—so that “you wouldn’t feel like you’re surrounded by clothes, and it could be more of a zen and relaxing space.” The cabinetmaker, she added, was game for the challenge, considering “there’s no straight line in this house. Everything’s out of level and has settled with age, so to make the cabinetry work this well was no small feat.” A vintage rug, Anthropologie chair, O&G Studio drink stand, and Urban Outfitters lamp add to the vibe.
Without Gray, the tub-addicted Carlton would not have a two-person Signature Hardware soaker in her closet. “John and I, bless our hearts, tried to figure out this 3D rendering program, and we could not find a way to get a bathtub in the primary bathroom—it looked like a bad game of checkers,” Carlton says. But Gray suggested the Georgian-esque approach of putting it in the dressing room, and then—upon it not fitting in any doorway or window—suggested cutting a hole in the staircase landing wall (which was later patched up) for the move. “Even the carpenter was like, ‘I didn’t even think of that!’ She’s a master problem-solver.” Gray is also responsible for the Rosie Li bubble sconces Carlton calls “so rad.” The musician missed the Maison C Coven wallpaper from her Nashville bathroom, so she ordered more for the room.
Carlton isn’t a fan of the bathrooms often found in historic homes. “They have layers of laminate and smell, and you just have to rip them out,” she says. In her primary bath, they used Color Atelier’s Tadelakt plaster with trim and paneling in Farrow & Ball Pavilion Gray. RH sconces, Rejuvenation ceiling lights, and Waterworks plumbing round out the freshly elevated room.
The graphic TileBar tile for the primary bathroom steam shower was the second thing Carlton found for the house. “I was clearly going for mega patterns,” she says. “I’d never seen a floral tile like that before.”
The Cole & Son wallpaper in the guest bedroom is another tie to the family’s beloved Nashville house, which featured the same wallcovering blue. The eclectic ground-floor room also features a Beni Ourain Carpets rug, vintage settee from Etsy, flea market side table, and olive tree wall hanging.
The Cole & Son Nuvolette wallpaper on the ceiling pays homage to the family’s former Nashville home, which the couple sold without a proper goodbye. They wanted to honor the abode with some carried-over design elements. Carlton spent a significant amount of time browsing through 1stDibs to get the blown-glass light, while Gray found the vintage Kartell Componibili nightstand on eBay. Nonetheless, Carlton and McCauley’s daughter, Sidney, was very opinionated about exactly how she wanted her room to look.
Gray and Carlton reimagined the oddly shaped closet in Sidney’s room, painting it Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink and hanging an Anthropologie pendant.
The pink House of Hackney Dinosauria wallpaper was the very first thing Carlton picked out for the home, even before hiring a designer. Decorator Kate Gray ran with it, especially when designing seven-year-old Sidney’s bathroom. Gray added an Anthropologie medicine cabinet, Sazerac Stitches sconces, and a pistachio faucet from The Water Monopoly that she had pinned at her desk for a decade.
Inside Vanessa Carlton’s Magically Cozy Rhode Island Home
Inside Vanessa Carlton’s Magically Cozy Rhode Island Home
The 19th-century property has room for the musician’s collected treasures, her Lord of the Rings aesthetic, and a family of wild turkeys
By Kathryn Romeyn
Photography by Erin Little
May 25, 2022
“We found it on Zillow, just like everyone did during the pandemic,” musician Vanessa Carlton says of her charming Federal post-and-beam house. She and her husband, fellow musician John McCauley, even purchased the Rhode Island home—which was built during the first few years of the 1800s—without ever seeing it in person. “We did a FaceTime walk-through,” Carlton says. “I know, it’s crazy.” And yet the house, which the couple share with their seven-year-old daughter, Sidney, has led to their “next life” in the Ocean State.
The blind commitment to a centuries-old abode is a bit more understandable considering that Carlton and McCauley, whose renovation projects have grown larger over the years, are enamored with aged dwellings. “People associate so many headaches with historic homes,” Carlton says, “but we want those enormous wide wood plank floors you can’t find anymore, the artisan work that went into these mantles, and the true divided light windows with the old glass that bends [sunrays] just so.”
When the trio arrived, they found a resident family of “intense, amazing turkeys” inhabiting the one-acre property, which abuts natural wetlands. (“This house is theirs, make no mistake!” Carlton says of their avian neighbors, who are known to sleep on the roof.) As for the house itself, “I saw an enormous amount of potential,” Carlton reflects. “[But], to be honest, it felt a little bit like a funeral home. There was a sort of austerity to everything. You felt like you were walking into a movie set, which is not how we were going to live in this house.” Soon, Carlton and her husband hired ESHI Builders to do a carefully considered renovation.
As for the decor, the first thing the singer selected for the home perfectly sums up the spirit the couple envisioned. “I’m a wallpaper freak,” Carlton admits. She picked House of Hackney’s pink Dinosauria design before even hiring Kate Gray of Brooklyn-based interiors firm Hamilton Gray.
If Carlton’s strength was identifying exactly how she wants to feel in the space, Gray’s were creating a composition to elicit those feelings and problem-solving. The musician first met the interior designer through an artistic friend, but the pairing felt karmically right when she discovered Gray was a native Rhode Islander. As for the designer, she immediately sensed her client’s vibrant imagination and collaborative energy. “I could tell it would be a really fun process,” Gray recalls.
Carlton had plenty of references of her own, as she makes “ridiculous” mood boards and mines Pinterest for old magazine clips. But Gray enjoyed turning her client onto designers such as Rosie Li and finding key new pieces Carlton could obsess over (such as the floral bed from The Inside). The designer also helped distill not only Carlton’s ideas, but also her deep stash of vintage finds and antique furniture. “It’s a beloved building up of our precious things over time,” the musician notes. She adds, “Welcome to Vanessa and John’s flea market!”
The vast majority of the furnishings are pieces Carlton has carried through her life with McCauley, which Gray was tasked with jigsawing together. “I love when I walk into a house, and I can feel [its] history because I know how much the items mean to the owners,” Carlton says. Unsurprisingly, Carlton’s home is replete with nostalgic personal touches, such as artwork made by her grandfather, a vintage brass horse sculpture identical to one her best friend owns, and an “unbelievable” Yamaha piano that was custom-made for her to play at the 2003 Grammy Awards.
The latter has a significant presence in the living room, which is undeniably the soul of the home. It’s where the couple writes music, listens to records, and eats meals. Though they’ve cozied it up to fit their modern existence, Carlton says she feels a Colonial energy when the sun begins to set, and they light the home’s many candles. “Everything doesn’t have to be electrical, you know? Trying to maintain that low glow is key to a house like this.”
That romantic notion is probably also a vestige of Carlton’s time spent in England, working on records out of Georgian farmhouses whose moody paints always stuck with her. Here, redolent paint colors such as Farrow & Ball’s Mole’s Breath and Down Pipe and Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron set the tone. Beyond gravitating toward old English houses, Carlton says her homes always need something resembling The Shire. “I don’t think that’s an official aesthetic, but Lord of the Rings is my happy place.” For her, that ethereal magic comes from the trees whose wood makes up the wide floor planks. “I feel those trees in the floors and the size of the mantles—the living room mantle is so tall that I do feel like a hobbit!”
Somewhat surprisingly, this latest chapter of the storied house took just five months to create. Carlton’s collections, curated just so, feel right at home in the 200-plus-year-old structure. “One of the most beautiful things about a house like this is that you can make it so warm and comfortable and cozy,” Carlton says. “And that…is, for me, the magic.”
Kate Gray particularly enjoyed working on this project with tradespeople, including the “super positive” cabinetmaker who built the shelves for a record player and records in what was essentially a parallelogram-shaped opening. They removed an awkward dividing wall that had been added to the center of the living room, achieving more flow, function, and warmth. A Hugh Holland photograph and nostalgic brass horse sculpture sit on the high mantle that makes Carlton feel, happily, like a hobbit.
The intricate Yamaha piano in the living room was a custom design, initially made for Carlton to play at the 2003 Grammy Awards. It wasn’t finished in time, but she later toured with it. “The piano is unbelievable,” the musician says. She adds that the space—with a Noguchi Akari pendant, vintage dining table, Bernardo Plycraft chair, and custom sofa—is now where she and McCauley write their songs. “There’s some sort of wonderful flow in this room that you just feel creative, especially in the evening,” she says.
“Never fear a wall-mounted candle holder,” Carlton says of her vintage analog fixture with a wavy candle from Gray’s friend’s West Village store, Lahn Home. Even the kitchen is all about warm and subtle lighting. The kitchen was previously painted in country blue and yellow shades that “gave me the shivers,” Gray says. Now it’s all about a black tone by Farrow & Ball.
“That little powder room was not as charming before,” Gray says and then laughs. She found a salvage sink, added paneling, and included House of Hackney’s Trematonia Onyx wallpaper. Carlton, whose eclectic little brass plant holders complete the teeny space, is a fan of making small rooms such as this feel over the top.
As a rule, Carlton doesn’t like a TV in the living room, so they placed the television in the moody study with a working fireplace. Vintage furnishings, including a Clark and Gibby desk and Ilmari Tapiovaara chair, populate the room with original divided light windows. “Nothing beats windows like these in terms of beauty, in my opinion,” Carlton says. The paint used for the walls is Down Pipe by Farrow & Ball.
“We are very use-what-you-have type people,” Carlton says of her and McCauley. “But we needed beds!” Gray found the perfect moody and dramatic floral bed from The Inside that both of them were thrilled with. “John is my favorite type of guy where it’s like, ‘Yes, bring on some gothic floral. I will sleep in that.’”
After making the decision to place the tub in the dressing room, Gray suggested custom millwork—with grasscloth panels and Rejuvenation handles—so that “you wouldn’t feel like you’re surrounded by clothes, and it could be more of a zen and relaxing space.” The cabinetmaker, she added, was game for the challenge, considering “there’s no straight line in this house. Everything’s out of level and has settled with age, so to make the cabinetry work this well was no small feat.” A vintage rug, Anthropologie chair, O&G Studio drink stand, and Urban Outfitters lamp add to the vibe.
Without Gray, the tub-addicted Carlton would not have a two-person Signature Hardware soaker in her closet. “John and I, bless our hearts, tried to figure out this 3D rendering program, and we could not find a way to get a bathtub in the primary bathroom—it looked like a bad game of checkers,” Carlton says. But Gray suggested the Georgian-esque approach of putting it in the dressing room, and then—upon it not fitting in any doorway or window—suggested cutting a hole in the staircase landing wall (which was later patched up) for the move. “Even the carpenter was like, ‘I didn’t even think of that!’ She’s a master problem-solver.” Gray is also responsible for the Rosie Li bubble sconces Carlton calls “so rad.” The musician missed the Maison C Coven wallpaper from her Nashville bathroom, so she ordered more for the room.
Carlton isn’t a fan of the bathrooms often found in historic homes. “They have layers of laminate and smell, and you just have to rip them out,” she says. In her primary bath, they used Color Atelier’s Tadelakt plaster with trim and paneling in Farrow & Ball Pavilion Gray. RH sconces, Rejuvenation ceiling lights, and Waterworks plumbing round out the freshly elevated room.
The graphic TileBar tile for the primary bathroom steam shower was the second thing Carlton found for the house. “I was clearly going for mega patterns,” she says. “I’d never seen a floral tile like that before.”
The Cole & Son wallpaper in the guest bedroom is another tie to the family’s beloved Nashville house, which featured the same wallcovering blue. The eclectic ground-floor room also features a Beni Ourain Carpets rug, vintage settee from Etsy, flea market side table, and olive tree wall hanging.
The Cole & Son Nuvolette wallpaper on the ceiling pays homage to the family’s former Nashville home, which the couple sold without a proper goodbye. They wanted to honor the abode with some carried-over design elements. Carlton spent a significant amount of time browsing through 1stDibs to get the blown-glass light, while Gray found the vintage Kartell Componibili nightstand on eBay. Nonetheless, Carlton and McCauley’s daughter, Sidney, was very opinionated about exactly how she wanted her room to look.
Gray and Carlton reimagined the oddly shaped closet in Sidney’s room, painting it Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink and hanging an Anthropologie pendant.
The pink House of Hackney Dinosauria wallpaper was the very first thing Carlton picked out for the home, even before hiring a designer. Decorator Kate Gray ran with it, especially when designing seven-year-old Sidney’s bathroom. Gray added an Anthropologie medicine cabinet, Sazerac Stitches sconces, and a pistachio faucet from The Water Monopoly that she had pinned at her desk for a decade.
Inside Vanessa Carlton’s Magically Cozy Rhode Island Home
