The Philadelphia Inquirer

Decorator unleashes the potential of her own home (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Sat, 07/23/2011 - 23:00 by lindsay

At an age when most of her peers were riding bikes and playing dress-up, Laura Riedel was decorating. As a third grader, she kept a notebook full of design ideas, and she remembers the moment she walked into a friend's house whose living room was decorated "just right."

In her own house, she didn't have it as easy. When her mother told her she could choose the carpet for her bedroom, Laura requested a specific yellow hue, "but when I came home from school, the carpet was gold, and I really had a fit."

"I painted the walls apple green anyway, but it really mattered to me that the carpet wasn't the right color, and that my mother wouldn't replace it," she says. "I guess that should have been a clue that this was going to be a longtime hobby."

At 52, Laura's canvases are bigger. She designs with her husband, Ralph, 54, and their three adult children in mind, but her quest for good design is a constant.

Sometimes, it's an easy fix - she'll even rearrange the furniture in a hotel room or a rented condo if it doesn't feel right. Other times, it's more of a challenge.

When they first looked at a house for sale on a quiet lane in Radnor in early 2006, it was "really awful," Laura says. Built in the 1950s, it looked very institutional, with flat lines, a hip roof, and plain windows. An angled wrought-iron railing fractured the natural lines of the house, magnified by the flat garage roof and unadorned windows.

Born to love barns (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Thu, 06/23/2011 - 23:00 by lindsay

It likely happened when you left the front door wide open or your jacket in a heap on the floor. But most kids - even adults - have heard this refrain:

Where do you think you live? A barn?

Well, some people do.

Whether the appeal is the slanting, dusty sunshine that peeps through the cracks, the lingering smell of hay, or that old, nostalgic charm, a growing number of people are choosing to transform old barns from bovine dwelling to rustic entertaining space.

Yet the process is not for the laid back. Renovating barns requires an often endless web of decisions involving deconstruction, reconstruction, and preservation. Three local homeowners tell us the tales that led to their barn euphoria.

Peggy and Bruce Earle
Devon

Peggy Earle spent much of her childhood in an old Chester County bank barn - a two-story barn on a hillside with ground-level access to both floors - where she cared for her horses and spent time with her father. But in Devon, where she and her husband, Bruce, have lived for 25 years, available bank barns are few and far between. So after Googling "moving a barn," and discovering Mike Hart - a local guy and history buff who would happily move a structure to the location of your choosing - Earle was hooked.

"We've lived in Devon our whole lives and wanted to stay there, so we needed to bring a barn to us."

Their customized art space (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Wed, 05/18/2011 - 09:16 by lindsay

You have to navigate a winding dirt road and a steep set of moss-covered stairs if you want to enter the house perched on the top of a hill in rural Bucks County. And if you're not equipped with four-wheel-drive, a fast-flowing creek will mean you'll be parking your car at the neighbors' and taking a hike through the woods.

That commute draws no complaints from Paula Chamlee and Michael A. Smith, large-format professional photographers based in Tinicum Township. After exhibiting, teaching, and making photographs all over the world (Chamlee, 66, also paints and works in mixed-media and video), they always return to the treehouselike stucco dwelling situated at the top of the steep ravine, which houses studio, gallery, and living space in one.

Their shared vocation influences design here, from the gently curved entryway to the tree perfectly framed in the spare bedroom's window. Smith, 69, who bought 18 acres and began work on the house in 1977, envisioned "a cross between a loft and a cabin in the woods.

"I wanted it to be open and have the expansiveness of a loft, but also wanted it to have the intimacy and coziness of a cabin."

It was a 14-year construction process; the first four years, Smith lived in his truck.

"My kitchen drain was a garden hose with duct tape, and I had a two-burner hot plate and a toaster oven. Yet somehow I had a sit-down dinner for 14," he said.

Delicious Design (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Tue, 04/12/2011 - 07:20 by lindsay

For The Inquirer

Dining out can be a little bit like going to the prom.

Sure, your date and your dress are important - but it's the experience that reigns.

Enter the age of the restaurant designer.

Bolstering the fish and chips at Stephen Starr's Dandelion, the spinach gnocchi at Marc Vetri's Vetri, or the house lamb merguez at Michael Solomonov's Zahav is the power of atmosphere - and it can be the difference between feeling like you took a typical trip to the corner bistro or nabbed a plane ticket to a comfortably worn British pub.

So who are the aesthetic czars behind the scenes of these Philadelphia hot spots? And even more tantalizing: When you are a person who curates backdrops that thousands flock to, what do you come home to at night?

Michael Gruber, designer for Marc Vetrirestaurants Vetri, Osteria, Amis, and Birreria 600, scheduled to open in late 2011

The Havertown house Michael Gruber shares with his wife, Roberta, is elegant and comfortable in a midcentury style - and not at all what you'd expect from the mastermind behind the industrial-chic Vetri restaurants.

Artist Orna Willis a captive of color in her Northern Liberties loft (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Fri, 02/18/2011 - 07:29 by lindsay

For The Inquirer

When Orna Willis looks at the skeins of embroidery floss hanging from the wall in her home studio, it's not just a visual treat.

"Color has such a strong effect on me," Willis said, "that it gets mixed up in my senses until I don't know if I'm seeing it or hearing it or tasting it."

For Willis, an artist who creates intricate designs for her online fiber, fabric, and metal gallery and store, the pegboard is like grapes to a winemaker. "All I need to do is turn around and look at it, and it gets my creative juices flowing," she says.

So when Willis and her husband, Reid, both 53, moved with their 9-year-old daughter, Nina, from a McMansion in Ann Arbor, Mich., to a loft in Northern Liberties six years ago, color became her muse for the 2,950-square-foot blank canvas.

Today, the house is awash in artwork, much of it by Willis' 30-year-old daughter, Shiri Wolf, mixed with a few highlights by other artists including Andy Warhol and Piero Fornasetti. The main living room evokes warmth as well as space, with vignettes throughout: groupings of Scandinavian glassware, or large, prolifically growing terrariums. Willis' favorite design elements are those created of objects that she and her husband have accumulated in their travels to South Africa, Italy, Spain, Cambodia, and Israel, where Willis grew up. But nothing dictates the character of the rooms so much as the color.

For city folk itching to get away: Urban Escapes (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Mon, 10/04/2010 - 10:02 by lindsay

By Lindsay J. Warner
For The Inquirer

The scene was chaotic: Twenty urban dwellers in rafts on Class III and IV rapids with water fights so intense that several boats nearly capsized. And all punctuated with shrieks of laughter.

This sight on the Lehigh River was a familiar one to Beth Schaffer, Philadelphia director of Urban Escapes, a two-year-old, New York-based adventure-touring group that strives to get city dwellers "out of the bubble." Since January, Schaffer has been part of a team bringing fun to Philly folk, from rock climbing to kayaking to whitewater rafting to "trails and ales" trips - although nearly all Urban Escapes' getaways end with a vineyard tour or a cold brew.

"One thing I've learned is that Philly people like their beer," Urban Escapes founder Maia Josebachvili said of her first year here. "The activities paired with brewery tours are always the first to sell out."

Coincidentally, the concept for the company came when Josebachvili was sitting around a campfire in the middle of nowhere, drinking beer.

In 2004, she was a broke college student trying to finance her skydiving habit when she got the idea of bartering with instructors: free jumps if she brought in a group of paying customers. It worked, and she spent many weekends at Dartmouth College organizing skydiving and whitewater rafting trips for friends.

Artists in residence (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Wed, 07/28/2010 - 03:26 by lindsay

By Lindsay J. Warner
For The Inquirer

Krista Peel and Zak Starer live what they call "the perfect life."

Until eight months ago, that meant handing over their West Philadelphia apartment to complete strangers every two weeks while they stayed with friends.

These days, the young married couple still share their space with others - only now, they don't have to leave home to do so.

As founders and codirectors of the Philadelphia Art Hotel, Peel and Starer run a rent-free artist studio and residency out of their spacious East Kensington rowhouse. In return for two to six weeks of housing and studio space, the artists need only donate some of their work to the house, making an already vivid interior color scheme abundantly rich. (The bright yellow window frames of the Art Hotel already stand out on the city block.)

But during the six months of the year when they host their carefully chosen pool of 12 to 16 national and international artists, Peel and Starer also reap other, intangible benefits.

"When I think about my perfect day, it includes making art a part of my lifestyle," said Peel, 36. "Zak and I are both artists, so we wanted to be connected to other artists and talk about artwork on a regular basis. But we didn't want to run a gallery - we wanted a more private space."

Dawg Years (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Wed, 04/21/2010 - 08:39 by lindsay

By Lindsay J. Warner

For The Inquirer

The list of names posted on the wall at the Skate Zone was Jean Shea's first indication that her dodgeball team was not like the others.

One by one, she read the other teams' attempts at anatomical-parts puns (think anything involving the word balls). A peek into the gym confirmed it: Her team, the G-rated "Ball Dawgs," was poised to be annihilated - by a bunch of teenagers.

Of the 24 teams that signed up for the spring competitive dodgeball session in Voorhees, only Shea's group - now affectionately dubbed by others in the Glory Days Sports league as "Team AARP" - has players older than 40.

As expected, the Ball Dawgs were pummeled that first day. But three months into the season, the team of Haddonfield husbands and wives - the oldest player is 55 - has stuck with it, earning some grudging admiration from their younger opponents as well as a respectable eighth-place standing in the weekly league.

While the Ball Dawgs' competition might look forward to going head-to-head with a team their parents' age, not everyone thought dodgeball for geezers was such a good idea.

"My 18-year-old daughter was totally embarrassed that her parents were out there playing dodgeball against a bunch of kids her age," said Reg Blaber, 47. "We really had to work hard out there to earn her respect."

Geocachers get around (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Posted Wed, 01/20/2010 - 10:09 by lindsay

By Lindsay J. Warner

For The Inquirer

They travel in packs, noses just inches away from GPS screens. Suddenly, "I found it!", one boy announces, grinning and peeling away from the group of a half dozen. The others intensify their focus. "Me too!", shouts another a moment later, until all six kids are crowded around a tree on Girard Avenue, pulling out from a knot a plastic screw-top bottle painted to resemble tree bark. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but everyone gathers around, eager to see what's inside.

This is geocaching (JEE-oh-cash-ing), a high-tech game played using coordinates and global positioning systems to find hidden "treasure." It's open to anyone - hiders or seekers - with a GPS and access to www.geocaching.com, where more than half a million registered users download and upload the coordinates of nearly 1 million hidden caches and relate their experiences from this worldwide scavenger hunt.

Although some adventures can take hours or even days, the contents inside the actual cache are rarely valuable - many times just a logbook and a small, worthless trinket.

Women building home-repair skills

Posted Fri, 12/04/2009 - 07:53 by lindsay

By Lindsay J. Warner

For The Inquirer

Nothing elicits squeals of delight like a power tool, says do-it-yourselfer Shelly Halloran.

As program director for the Philadelphia branch of Habitat for Humanity, Halloran frequently witnesses the excitement that accompanies someone's first attempt at correctly pounding home a nail or using a screw gun - doubled in intensity when the builder is female.

Women Build, an international program offered through Habitat for Humanity, encourages women to get involved in construction work by providing basic hands-on training and organizing women-specific job sites.

In Philadelphia, an active female volunteer force prompted the initiation of a twice-yearly, hands-on construction course in 2007, designed to introduce women to power tools, drywall, flooring and roofing techniques, and basic home-repair skills. Lauren Mariani, a carpenter with Mariani Carpentry L.L.C. and a former AmeriCorps volunteer with Habitat, developed the course, which next will be offered Feb. 20 to March 13 at the Habitat warehouse near 19th and West Berks Streets.