First Time's a Charm

For Jim and Susan M-Geough it was a starter home. Newly married and in love with Marblehead, the couple purchased a 1830s Georgian Greek Revival cottage on a narrow street not far from the water. Never mind that the house had a dirt-floor basement, or that it needed plenty of work, or that Jim would spend that first summer painting the old building’s old boards himself. They would make it their own and move on.

Jim and Susan are coming up on their thirty-first wedding anniversary—and they’ll be celebrating in the same house where they started their married life. In a way, though, they’re starting over. After an extensive renovation, the home looks as sophisticated as the Boston Design Center showroom the M-Geoughs own and run together.

Working with interior designer Eliza Tan and architect and longtime friend David Mullen, the M-Geoughs thought at first they would merely freshen up their 2,500-square foot home. They considered redoing the kitchen, adding an island and ripping out the knotty pine cabinetry and Formica countertops, and updating the upstairs master bath. When they invited Tan over for a walk-through, she had an idea for a much grander plan. “Jim is showing me the master bathroom and telling me maybe we can save the tile,” recalls Tan. “I can remember him looking at me and saying, ‘What do you think?’ and I just had this whole design fall into my head.

“I told him, ‘Jim, this bathroom is definitely a gut rehab,’ and then I said, ‘Jim, the whole house is a gut rehab.’ I think he was speechless.”

Over the next six months every wall but two were taken down to the studs. The house that had served the M-Geoughs perfectly well in their first thirty years needed drastic work if it was going to see them to their golden wedding anniversary. The floor in the master bath was so weakened the builders were afraid to walk on it. There was a dormer that had never been properly attached. It was amazing the house hadn’t blown over in a storm.

While the layout changed very little, Tan and Mullen reworked some of the interior spaces to create balance and openness. A window to the left of the fireplace that looked out on the driveway was removed along with a closet to the right. Simple built-in bookshelves lined with the M-Geoughs’ favorite pieces now flank the fireplace and form the focal wall in the living room.

Doorways were reconfigured to open the space between the living room and kitchen and to provide better access to the stairway. Cream-colored painted cabinetry and tiny mosaic tile that goes from granite countertop to the soffit in the kitchen turned the room into one of the best-designed in the house. The windows there were enlarged to provide more light and simple, woven shades provide privacy.

When it came to finishing the interiors, the M-Geoughs’ one condition was that Tan use only products from the M-Geough showroom. “That was one stipulation—all the furniture and lighting and window treatments had to come from our showroom,” says Susan. “We love the companies we work with and we love the things we sell. This shows how things can be utilized in a home. There isn’t just one look keyed off one thing. It’s a cohesive look.”

Tan was elated. “I was like, ‘Wow, I have wonderful resources to pull from and a fantastic, educated, sophisticated client,’ ” she says.

Given that the home is small, but on three levels, Tan had to incorporate something that would unify it as a whole. Her solution was completely unexpected to both her and the M-Geoughs. “It was a huge surprise to me that I was going to use wallpaper,” says Tan.

Jim and Susan first thought they wanted their home to be simplified, not covered in busy wallcoverings. “ ‘Where do you intend to put this paper?’ they asked me,” says Tan. “ ‘Everywhere!’ I told them. They thought I was crazy.”

Tan put the paper, a monochromatic botanical print that depicts curving peony blossoms and leaves, over the walls of the entryway, living room, dining room and kitchen on the first floor. She then carried it up the stairwell to the bedrooms as well as down the stairs to the family room and office the M-Geoughs had put in when they finished the basement. “Tan built it all around that wallpaper,” says Susan, who immediately loved the curvilinear design and soft palette of the paper. “It’s much more sophisticated, pulled together.”

Based on the paper, Tan used warm-toned furnishings in the living room and cooler tones such as the blue artwork in the dining room. Along with new furnishings, Tan incorporated older pieces that the M-Geoughs love. Jim’s favorite piece, a 1790s padouk wood table from the Hebrides lives beside the contemporary lines of an A. Rudin sofa and granite-topped coffee table. A pine cabinet that had been Jim’s great-grandmother’s stands in the master bedroom with antique vases and new ceramic lamps. “Good design strength is making a home look like it’s evolved so it doesn’t look like a stage set or a sales center,” says Tan. “Mixing contemporary with traditional, antique with new—that’s what gives it life.”

Like the M-Geoughs’ showroom, their own home now mixes modern and traditional, formal and informal. “It’s a house that’s wonderful to live in and not overdesigned or overdecorated,” says Jim. “Every room feels comfortable.”

“It’s the whole ambience of the house,” says Susan. “It’s not a single room I love, it’s the overall color palette and amount of light that enters the house now.”

Hardly looking like a basement any longer, one of the family’s coziest spots is the downstairs family room where the M-Geoughs retreat in the evening to watch television and lounge with their two sporting dogs. The tile floors continue the soft palette from the wallpaper. A host of woven fabrics and brightly colored pillows embody a soft, contemporary look. The new office area takes on a 1920s French Deco feel with a Keith Fritz desk that has eight curved legs.

“The house went beyond my expectations,” says Tan. “I just think this is something extra special. It’s a little jewel. Large homes are beautiful, but I think we can get carried away. It was a very refreshing to do a smaller home. It has wonderful scale and you can get into the details of the design.”

The M-Geoughs are just as happy here as when they started thirty years ago. “We love the neighborhood,” says Susan. “We love the feeling of the house. I moved a lot as a child and I really wanted to stay in one place. This is still our starter house!”

Architect: David Mullen
Interior Design: Eliza Tan