When Jed and Carol Silver asked designer Louise Mann to help them revive a dull, white-walled, heavy-timbered house they had built during the 1980s in Los Altos, she didn’t balk.
\n“I loved it. It is the only nice house around there,” Mann says.<\/p>\n
Originally done by Modesto’s Blue Design, it was finished with counters and sinks by Silver. The house has thick stucco walls inset with niches, 14-foot ceilings, steel clerestory windows and wood doors.
\n
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\n“The architecture was perfect — large, the way I like it — but the furniture was way too small. The colors were too black and white, and I didn’t find it moving.
\n“They also have a fabulous old magnolia tree in the back garden and in good weather they could easily live outside under it,” says Mann.
\nBut they didn’t, in part because the furniture wasn’t right for outdoors.
\nFor less than $100,000, Mann changed it all (top right). She used Benjamin Moore copper metallic paint over archways that form niches for TVs, and placed stacked box shelves for drama. Walls were painted with a shade of warm ocher from Ralph Lauren.
\nInexpensive door handles — and other fittings one touches — were replaced with heavy, well-made Baldwin pieces. The lighting had been poor, too. “I took out the worst of it and added indoor Vibia lighting and Hensley lights outdoors,” she says.
\nMann suggested overscaled yet flexible recycled redwood outdoor furniture designed by her and her husband, Ron Mann, as just the touch to bring visible change indoors. Her bold-striped hemp fabrics mixed with celadon and golden hues were in keeping with the scale of the high ceilings.
\nMann learned one essential interior design rule from her husband’s mentor, the late Michael Taylor: “It’s always about color and scale.”
\n Resources
\nArchitecture
\nHarvey and Conrad Sanchez
\nBlue Design, Modesto
\n(209) 522-4882
\nInterior design and furniture
\nLouise Mann
\nHouse of Mann, San Francisco
\n(415) 994-9798
\nZahid Sardar is The Chronicle design editor. To suggest a renovation project for Take Two, contact him at zsardar@sfchronicle.com.<\/p>\n
This article appeared on page CM – 10 of the San\u00c2\u00a0Francisco\u00c2\u00a0Chronicle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Jed and Carol Silver asked designer Louise Mann to help them revive a dull, white-walled, heavy-timbered house they had built during the 1980s in Los Altos, she didn’t balk. “I loved it. It is the only nice house around there,” Mann says. Originally done by Modesto’s Blue Design, it was finished with counters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}