Friendly Home Tour: A Curator's Collection

What's a friendly home tour? It's a photo tour of a real-life home. A home of a friend whose design aesthetic I admire. There's no staging, no stylists - only the design talent of the home owner. 

This week's home tour is of Kate and Peter Vasseur's home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their home amazes me, makes me want to lacquer all my tables, paint all my random objects white, and apparently, to take over 1000 photos.  Kate is an artist and owner of Studio K Gallery. You can visit her blog and website, and if you live in Charlotte, stop by her gallery in Elizabeth to see her art work, and the current group exhibit. Peter owns Vasseur Home Designs and has won numerous home renovation awards for his work. They make a great design team! 

Kate has a talent for displaying her unique collections of art, flea market finds and repurposed cast-offs around their 1930's home. You are going to freak when you see the sensational modern addition and loft they designed and built for entertaining family and friends, and to house Kate's art studio. Kate was kind enough to let me interview her about her design sensibility, her home renovation, and her knack for being so beautifully organized.  ENJOY! 

{me} How would you describe your style?

{Kate}  I think it would be stylized function.  I like things that look rich but have a great element of play and uniqueness.  I find the function of what our everyday needs are and execute a designed environment around that. I love layers of things that don’t necessarily go together in a formal way.  I think every room should have something vintage. Something that no one else can have. a new investment piece to carry you into the future. A place for a vignette that can evolve and change. beautiful art and beautiful function.

Inspired design styles and elements I go to for inspiration -  my paints, art and architecture from the 20’s, The Novogratz’s, wedding books, my daughters montessori classroom, any thrift store, memories of my flea market days at the Thunderbird with my parents, Danish modern design, any museum or art gallery, and a winter hike with my loved ones.

{me}  How has your style changed over the past 10 years?

{Kate}  When we first bought our home there was so much to be done to the base that our investment couldn’t be placed into decor pieces.  Our house has had many many phases but we styled the heck out of every one of them.  It was fun to know nothing was permanent and we could just experiment in the beginning. For example, we had old southern yellow pine plywood cabinets in the kitchen.  To make the best of a very bad situation, we painted the cabinets a super high gloss red and then had an ever changing mural on the back wall.  We learned fast that with new lighting and paint, the mood of a room could be quickly changed.  As the base of our house was completed, we turned our attention to the pieces to finish the rooms. I normally invest in the anchor piece of the room, and then add the layers to the room based around our much-loved anchor piece. 

{me}  Where do you get your pieces?

{Kate}  We try to shop at local independent design stores to order furniture but we have ordered a few pieces online because we just couldn’t find something comparable. I like Ikea storage items. There is nothing better than a good vintage find from the thrift store.  We have a collection of vintage tchotchkes and some unique functional pieces to add to the mix. I love festivals, galleries and markets - they always have such amazing handmade items that can really add a great energy and style to our rooms. I like to buy accessories that just have a good rare vibe when we are out and about.

{me}  Do you use your own art work in your decor?

{Kate}  My art is always rotating in and out.  We have a few of my pieces that are part of our permanent collection but the majority of art work we have of mine is something I am rotating from the gallery or something I want to live with for bit.

{me}  Tell me about how you went about designing your daughter's room - and the changes over time.

{Kate}  Her room is such a hodge-podge right now. But for her fifth birthday, she wants to redecorate her room.  This is going to be fun because it will be the first time I'll have her input in the final design.  I know exactly what I want to do - but this is her space. So it's important for me to really find her voice and needs while teaching her how we can do it “our” way.  It's so hard to design a kid's room with all the dumbed down design elements of characters and mass produced unoriginal finds.  I think we can find her idea of "a kid's room" and "kid likes" but add in style and some "kid class."  I'm so upset with her “Unkie” who took her to dinner the other night and bought her a KISS poster  {yes, the 70's rock band} that she now wants me to design the room around.  It is like a Design Star challenge - seriously.  We shall see what we come up with because her birthday is next week.

Her room started out as a modern montessori nursery and then slowly evolved into a big kid's room with stations of activity and everyday needs.  Her nursery was so calming and probably one of my top two favorite finished rooms.  It had such a good energy.  As she grew, so did the pieces in her room, and it seems like we've added so much on top, that it's lost its definition.  It will be nice to start with a clean palette to bring together what she needs in a stylish way.

{me}  What is your favorite "vignette" in your home right now and why?

{Kate}  I think my favorite vignette right now is the back corner of the family room - in the new addition.  It has a piece we bought in Montreal where we spent out tenth wedding anniversary {we are celebrating the 11th today.} The vignette has a turquoise Buddhist monk sculpture, our daughter's bike that is about to be converted to two wheels, and an OWL painting from L.E.A.F festival. 

{me}  Tell me about your very modern addition and studio loft. What was your vision for the space?

{Kate}  I love the fact we use every space in our house everyday.  No room goes unwalked in. It's great motivation to make sure everything has a place and no purchase can be made without the thought of its final destination in the house.

The idea to add on happened one night we were having a WII American Idol party in a converted room we used as our den.  We realized we needed one room to house a bunch of people and where we could just spend time as a family.  We loved the challenge and idea of adding our design sensibility to the existing architecture.  We knew we wanted to do something modern but we were really concerned about how to make all the pieces look natural even though they were totally different in design.  On a road trip we talked out a rendition and then had our architect make sure all the elements would blend naturally into each other.  It was apparent we had the chance to add in a studio space in the loft so I could house my supplies and create. It's great because I am up in the trees and have a spot to keep all my projects, supplies, and ideas organized.  It's such a wonderful place to create.  

Another important part of the architecture was to take advantage of the beautiful landscape we have in the backyard.  We don’t have a super wide lot but it is very long.  We wanted to take advantage of the privacy and the forrest of trees along our property line.  We are constantly surprised by the things we find in our back yard.  We live three miles from the heart of Uptown Charlotte, but have deer, owls, hawks, bunnies, and raccoons that meander in and out.

{me}  You are so organized - and it's stylish! Any tips for non-organized people like me?

{Kate}  Use the unexpected for organizing.  There's more than the one isle in the store to find something to organize your life.  I had no idea how I was going to store the costume collection my daughter acquired.  I racked my brain for days and then I remembered we had an old ladder in the attic that  I found on the side of the road.  We hung it at her level and her costumes hung perfectly.  Once at a flea market, we found several old army ammunition bins.  They are perfect for organizing toys and bits and pieces.  

We don’t have a ton of storage in our bathroom so I came up with solutions to make our toiletries beautiful enough to leave out.  Instead of leaving our mouthwash container out, I cleaned old whiskey bottles and added crystal stoppers for the mouthwash. I also found vintage and new first aid boxes to store medicines (out of reach) and band aids (way in reach) that add an art element on the wall. The best advice I can give is to ignore labels -  just because a piece has a "purpose," it doesn't mean it has to be used as prescribed.  Switch it up and make it work for your needs.

Thank you, Kate and Peter for opening up your home to us, and for sharing your beautiful design perspective.  There's A LOT more to see...head over to Flickr to see the 170 photos of Kate and Peter's home.