Lexington, KY - Nestled on Forest Avenue, in a historic neighborhood characterized by its mature trees and turn-of-the-century architecture, Wyn Morris and Vicki Sword's home may have a more decorated past than most.
In the late '60s and early '70s, it was rented by a group that was reportedly making the most of communal living. Later in the '70s, it could be sighted on a curious local television series wherein bygone Lexington pop-culture icon "Happy the Clown" bumbled up the front porch with his cohort, Froggy. And through the '80s, a mother and daughter inhabited the house, letting it deteriorate to a condition reminiscent of Grey Gardens by the time they both died, at which point the home was sold in a family auction.
Morris' family purchased the home in that auction, not entirely sure what they were going to do with it. He and his sister lived there briefly, doing much of the original fix-up grunt work (lots of scraping and cleaning) before their parents moved in.
When Morris and his wife, Vicki, decided to move their family into the home in 2007, they knew they had some hurdles to cross. Perhaps the largest and most looming was to find a way for their family to exist in the longtime home of Morris' father and stepmother, who both passed away in 2006, without being constantly overwhelmed by the sadness of their loss.
"At first, the boys thought, 'Are we always going to be sad, because it reminds us so much of Grandad and Kaye's house?'" said Sword, referring to the couple's two children (Max, 12, and Owen, 6). "That's why we wanted to [add] the new parts to the house."
The other hurdles were secondary - how to import some color, along with Sword's eclectic modern taste, into the 1890s American Queen Anne style home, for example. To help address all of these obstacles, the couple enlisted Montgomery Construction, Suburban Painting, Henkel Denmark for landscaping and architect Graham Pohl of Pohl Rosa Pohl. According to Pohl, working out the various kinks and the disconnect between what the homeowners want, and what they think is possible, is often a real challenge.
"A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about how to solve the problems," Pohl said. "And while I want to get as much feedback as I possibly can, I know from experience that it's better for them to let us sketch some potential solutions and reflect on them, rather than sweat it out themselves."
Both Pohl and Sword, who was heavily involved in the details of the design, describe their designer-homeowner relationship as a "perfectly matched" team. "It doesn't always happen like that," Pohl admitted. "I think without exception, the choices that [Vicki and Wyn] have made have been what I would recommend."
That synergy, along with the time and meticulous effort spent by the designers and builders to ensure that the renovations would complement the architectural integrity of the original structure, did not go unnoticed. On May 20, the Lexington-Fayette Historic Preservation Commission presented the couple with a Residential New Construction award. The award honored the home's recent addition, which included opening, expanding and remodeling the kitchen, as well as adding a new garage and a two-level back deck.
"It's not a large addition at all, but it feels completely different," said Morris, co-owner of Southland Drive's Morris Book Shop. "It changed the shape and yet included so much of the original house."
For Pohl, an outspoken proponent of historic preservation (though his designs tend to be clean and contemporary), importing modern sensibilities to an older building is no new feat. The Forest Avenue home is different from most Pohl Rosa Pohl's projects, however, in its plain visibility from the street - pedestrian passersby will notice the deck (that is, until the Sumac bushes planted between it and the street grow taller). If they're astute, those passersby may even notice the subtle commentary between the modern, relatively simple posts Pohl designed to support the overhanging roof above the new back deck, and the immoderately ornate lattice work framing the original front porch. For now, Sword and Morris enjoy the exposure of their yard and deck - while it nixes the appropriateness of say, nude sunbathing, it allows openness and dialogue with their friends and neighbors.
Additional renovations include a new master bath upstairs, constructed in what was once likely a sleeping porch. The bathroom is striking in subtle ways with a simple sink built into a rich walnut vanity; putty grey tiles lining the walls and a limestone-tiled floor; and a stark white contemporary bathtub, free standing at a diagonal angle from the large corner windows. The shower, with a simple oversized "rain shower" head, is essentially only separated from the rest of the room by a single monolithic dark-tiled wall, also posited at an angle.
"The idea was to make a space that feels like one large space, and yet has multiple functions. The diagonal orientation is a trick that I play all the time," Pohl said. "It increases your sense of space, because the diagonal line is the larger line. It suggests that the space is continuous."
Another step in creating new space in the home came with transforming the third floor, once an unfinished attic that Sword describes as "kind of scary, dark with exposed beams," into a bright and airy lounge and playroom. The new space, equipped with modern carpet tiles (gray with bright colors randomly dispersed), new windows, slanted ceilings, interesting cubbies and plenty of room to stash Max and Owen's books, toys and music instruments, allows the rest of the home to "not look like other people's homes who have children." The family's primary television also has a home on the third floor - a pleasantly surprising result, according to Morris, is that the family finds themselves not watching TV nearly as much as they used to.
To accentuate the home with color and flair, Sword turned to friend, artist and designer Blake Eames. "I had every shade of grey, and I was going crazy," Sword recalled. Eames' contributions include a Picasso-inspired painted chest and a silk-screened canvas recreation of a Charley Harper painting, both in Max's room. Sword also found other outlets for color, including the eclectic red chandelier in the dining room and the bold orange togo couch in the upstairs TV room. Intriguing antique pieces, including the chunky, rough-wood dining room table that once belonged to Morris' mother, are incorporated throughout the house to round out the couple's funky-yet-classic design sensibility.
Sword admits that there are parts of the house where she still can't help but envision the way her husband's family had things arranged - "but then, it feels so much like ours now, because it's so different," she said. Today, she finds those memories comforting rather than melancholy.
"It's like a new house, but it's still got parts that are like them," she said. "The whole point of working with Graham was to try to mix up [the old and the new]. We've always had old houses, we've always wanted old houses, but I really wanted to blend the modern design in somehow."
"It came out utterly not like what we had envisioned," Morris added, "but a hundred times better."