Features

Radical Reform

Ashleigh Morris
When Owen and Marty Nelson first saw the place they now call home, the indoor swimming pool looked more like a black lagoon. In the thirty something-year-old house, beams were sagging, joists were cracking, and the kitchen looked straight out of The Brady Bunch (think Formica, a huge round center island, and low plastered ceilings). The Northside property had been sitting vacant for more than a year following a bank foreclosure, but for this husband-and-wife design duo, nothing could have been better. “We come upon something like that and think, ‘This is exactly what we need,’” says Owen, who, with his wife, Marty, is one of Inside Out Design’s two principals.

2006 Home of the Year Winner

Builder-remodel: Owen Nelson

Interior design: Marty Nelson

Radical Reform

     A year later, the 5,600-square-foot residence has been totally transformed: walls knocked down, ceilings raised, bathrooms relocated, fireplaces added, the pool covered over to become a family room. “This was a rehabilitation project rather than a remodel,” says Marty, a former restaurant and hotel manager who has focused on realty and interior design for the past 18 years. “[This was] much, much more than new paint and some TLC.”

     The result is a cozy yet roomy residence—complete with a guest wing and children’s quarters for the couple’s two kids—tied together through the use of dramatic textures, rich colors, and theatrically inspired lighting. Stacked quartzite stone now lines the wall of one bathroom; in another, the warm tones of a woven wall covering complement tiled walls, an enormous enameled pot-turned-sink, and aged shutters that enclose a mirrored medicine cabinet. The not-for-the-faint-of-heart formal dining room pairs zebra prints with tapestries and crackled wainscoting with a refurbished fireplace and custom-carved mantel, all of it wrapped within pomegranate-colored walls: “I love a red dining room,” says Marty, unabashedly.

     In the completely overhauled kitchen, a rare find of Breccia Vendôme marble became the center island’s countertop, surrounded by tiled columns that support the newly raised roof, Italian tile set harlequin-style on the stove backsplash, and an added wall with two shuttered windows to separate the once-open floor plan of the kitchen and living-room areas. Nearby, just off an informal sitting room, a hallway/butler’s pantry outfitted with ample space for wine storage allows more natural flow to the dining room. (Before, guests had to walk through the front foyer.) To add visual interest, the side panels of a wrought-iron arbor were transformed into the dining-room door, the rounded top of which found a home as the railing for the master-bedroom balcony, now the centerpiece of an Italian street scene—the result of reinterpreting an awkward outdoor space that was once the entrance to the indoor pool. (The elevated nook is also the perfect spot for belting out show tunes karaoke-style at parties, Marty confides.)

     Also in the master bedroom, the bathroom and closet—once set against the outside wall, where they blocked the main source of natural light—were moved to the interior and outfitted with custom carved cabinets, a half-wall to allow for an unenclosed shower space, and a tiny shutter that looks out into the hall above the bath. “It’s very different from a typical Santa Fe home but it still fits, style-wise,” says Marty. “We’re designers, so we pay attention to new surfaces, new things that are out there, and make them work.”

     In addition to replacing all of the doors and windows, the couple also paid particular attention to lighting. Sconces, chandeliers, and tracks are combined in most rooms, all set on separate circuits with dimmers so that “we can play them up and down against each other to get dramatic effects,” says Owen. “We pay attention to details,” he stresses: “fanatic, obsessive attention to details. It’s never ‘That’s good enough’—and it’s not always a financial decision.”

     That diligence, coupled with a flair for visual creativity, earned the pair a 2003 Chrysalis Award for “Best Whole House Remodel $220K–$500K,” while another kitchen remodel snagged the President’s Award in an ASID/Su Casa interior-design competition that same year. “We find houses that we know are good—that the bones are good,” says Owen. They then work together to upgrade and restyle the existing structure. “I like to say that I listen to the house, that I try to figure out how it reads rather than turning it into something it’s not,” adds Marty. In terms of their own residence, “We do what is fun, interesting, and appealing to our passion,” says Owen, “and see if people respond.”—A.M.

NOTE: The Nelson residence was entered in our Home of the Year contest by the homeowners.