this portland home of charley wheelock, wife jessica and kids madeleine (7) and leo (5) must be one fun place. after-all, charley is the creator of this amazing soapbox derby motorcycle, which makes him a pretty cool dad in our book! charley, an industrial designer, moved with the family to portland from nyc nearly five years ago. they put their roots down in this southeastern portland home, which they’ve been making their own piece by piece! {thanks charley, jessica, madeleine and leo!} -amy a.
[The house is old and we have made some great changes to it. With our stuff and our collective touch we are striving to achieve the perfect balance between lean and cozy and dammit if we aren't getting close! We love our house.
We completely renovated our kitchen last year with hardly any budget. We opened it up by getting rid of the hanging cabinets and replacing them with open shelves made from fir 2 x 4s my neighbor hauled out of an old house. We love the beat up wood and nail holes next to the clean white subway tile from The Restore and the bright white trim. We joined a couple of oak butcher blocks from IKEA to make the countertop. We love to cook and eat so it is nice to have everything where we can see it, for inspiration.]
We got rid of the cabinets over the range and replaced them with more reclaimed Doug Fir shelves. These shelves were designed around the dimensions of the IKEA range hood. (We try to disguise our IKEA stuff) The cool spherical tea pot was a wedding present from Jessie’s good friend. We purchased the painting off of the wall of a restaurant in Moscow where President Clinton and I both ordered the sturgeon (separate times). I am wondering where our cool, stone mortar and pestle is. It usually lives next to the white Eva Zeisel bowl? Hmmm… LEO!!!
This is our entrance/mud room/micro office. We get dramatic natural light in here that changes throughout the day. The Sirch scooter and the Kaiser desk lamp are both from our favorite furniture store in NY, Regeneration (regenerationfurniture.com). The bench is one of a line called Skuk (http://www.kapowdesign.com/skuk1.htm) that I made from a pile of exotic wood pallet stickers that I bought from a wierdo through Craigslist. Jessie and I found the mirror on the street in Williamsburg and fixed it up with some shellac, wax and love. We were horrified to find that the old mercury mirror antiquing effect was caused by the secretion generated by the cockroach nest we found behind the glass!. We evicted the roaches but still enjoy their mirror antiquing technique.
Our living room is painted a warm, soft grey. We have this color all over the place. The hues change drastically with the light so we go for less complicated furniture and splashes of color that can hold their own, anytime of the day. I made the coffee table, part of my Gravity line, and Jessie made the cougar pillow for Leo using Marimekko fabric. It sits on a Pottery Barn couch. And, yes, the inevitable IKEA side table. The Artek poster came from Finland via ebay!
CLICK HERE for the rest of Charley’s peek!
The bookshelves are a system called Booxes that I first made for Birdseye Building Company in VT (http://www.birdseyebuilding.com/). The painting of the freaky gal is by my pal Gretel. We studied industrial design together at Pratt. And that would be a real Eames chair. We love the Eameses. Not just their stuff but them.
We just remodeled our bathroom and it was the nightmare everyone told me it would be. We completely gutted it and opened it up. Although we only really gained a few cubic inches of space, we made it feel much bigger and brighter and cleaner than it did. The tub and pedestal sink were Craigslist poachings. The mirrors and curtain material are, you guessed it…IKEA. We went with a hardwood floor and are going to hang some big wooden shelves in there to warm it up aesthetically and make it feel closer to Finland, geographically.
We have all three bedrooms upstairs. Our room is very calm. The bedside tables are a flea market score from Cobble Hill and we have been meaning to restore them for about ten years. The rice paper Japanese prints were passed down from Jessie’s Grandmother. We hang long, white curtains and let them billow like they are at the Delano Hotel in South Beach. The bench was made by my dad back when he was in high school and the barrister cabinets were his also.
Leo gets the socialist summer camp poster we obtained at the flea market in Moscow. Lucky boy!
Madeleine is very organized, like her mother. She was pleased when we gave her that vintage dresser we got on Craigslist. This is not staged, she really keeps her room like that. The balloons come and go.
