Home & Design

Anne and Colin Phipps’ renovated home is bursting with green features and creative surprises

Story by Joni Branch Photos by Mika Fowler

Floral design provided by Missy Gunnels Flowers, 228-0354, www.missygunnelsflowers.com.

Staging assistance by Julian Mathis of Julian Mathis Interior Design Inc., 222-5257, www.julianmathisinteriordesign.com.

The green house of Red Hills

AT LEFT: The new kitchen is an addition to the original home. The room smoothly blends old and new to create a bright, welcoming space.

ook past the new construction at Anne and Colin Phipps’ renovated home off Meridian Road, and you’ll find something old, some-thing “green,” something repur-posed, something reused.

Take, for instance, the chan-deliers and pendants that punctuate each room. “Every one of these,” Anne says with an upward glance, “is used.” An exquisite bisque piece in the dining room was bought to benefit Goodwood Museum and Gardens. Another chandelier sat in a laundry room for decades. Some fixtures came from the renovation of an apartment in Boston.

“We’ve used most of everything we had around,” says Colin, a retired entrepreneur. “It’s been fun, between one or two little wars.”

Now that the dust of construction has settled, the remade house stands comfortably among the paddocks and woods of the Phipps property, with stables close at hand and a windmill at the foot of the drive. Of its appearance, Colin notes with a hint of dry humor: “I had wanted more of a Cracker house exterior but I am pleased that my wishes were overruled.”

The new old home is sided with Hardie board painted a quiet green. A red metal roof tops its two stories. The interior is revamped and enlarged, with a beautiful new kitchen, a butler’s pantry/ca-tering kitchen and eminently practical utility areas. Including an open front porch, the space under roof measures about 5,000 square feet, with 815 square feet of the total coming from added areas.

The Phippses also have homes in Montana, Massachusetts and California, but the 3-bedroom,

3½-bath house at “The Farm” will be their primary residence. As Colin puts it, they will spend “more time here than any-where else.”

Architect Jaime Ledo says the renovated place could be described as an urban farmhouse in the Southern vernacular style. Colin and Anne, a retired dancer who still teaches flamenco, call it “Casa Bendita,” after a Palm Beach home that belonged to his grandparents. While Colin says the South Florida place was much grander, acquaintances have remarked on this Casa’s rustic elegance and “warm friend feeling.”

It is a house full of what the architect terms “surprises,” where an interior entry is topped by a thatched roof to recall a Dutch or Irish cottage, where a porthole window in the second-floor master bedroom pops open to allow conversation with people in the kitchen below. It is, as Jaime notes, unique to the Phippses.

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ABOVE: A side entry opens onto the mudroom, which connects to the butler’s pantry/catering kitchen at top right. Frog tiles are set into the brick floor of the mudroom.

AT LEFT: Work on the addition had already begun when this photo of the original house was taken.

An antique stove stands proudly in the Phippses’ new kitchen. Interior designer Julian Mathis thought up the tile pattern behind the old beauty. Colin and Anne’s many turtle figurines are reminders of his work with a conservation group.

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The remade house sports green paint and a red metal roof. The Phipps property is the site of some Red Hills Horse Trials competitions. The Trials are named for the area, sometimes called the Red Hills.

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he original house was plain, a study in brownish-gray wood built for a horse trainer in 1969. Colin and Anne moved in during the 1990s.

“This was a very mod-est house,” she recalls, with an exterior that was “kind of ugly.” The place lacked a formal dining space, and what is now the dining room was a kitchen done up in brown laminate and Linoleum. “It was pretty dismal,” she says. “We decided we needed a dining room.”

Jaime and the Phippses began kick-ing around ideas for the renovation back in 1999, the architect says. The project percolated until a couple of years ago, when family friend Brent Watson inspired the couple to get going. Jaime was back on board, and contractor Rami Deeb of Yel-lowhammer, LLC, was brought in.

The renovation was green from the get-go. “Colin pushed the technical aspect, and I pushed the reuse,” Anne says.

Thus all those reused pendants and chandeliers hang in a house outfitted with a full suite of new environmental features, including solar panels, Icynene insulation, an Energy Star Qualified metal roof, a gut-ter and cistern system that collects water for outdoor use, energy-efficient windows and doors, and a geothermal closed-loop HVAC system. This kind of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system pumps heat to and from the ground, using the Earth as a heat source in winter and a heat sink in summer.

Whenever possible, the couple used existing materials such as reclaimed wood, brick, cabinetry and granite. Interior wood paneling was restored, with the dark walls of the high-ceilinged great room undergo-ing bleaching, sanding and refinishing.

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Anne Phipps found fabric for the dining room window treatment, then designer Julian Mathis took over. Artist and restorer Maureen McKloski painted the mural. The chandelier is bisque.

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And then there’s the elegant cage elevator that glides up through the great room to the overlooking, U-shaped second floor. The Argentine antique sat in a Phipps barn for about a decade. Jaime used his engineering skills to figure out how to make the contraption work and meet modern building codes.

“What makes this job so interesting,” the architect says, “is that each light fixture, each floor plank, each door, each cabinet, each plumbing fixture, each elevator component had its own unique history, and they were all given a second chance.” For example, leftover pieces of the reengineered elevator were used for the railing of an interior balcony and for a dog-yard gate.

In the kitchen sits another engineering challenge, a massive antique stove that can use wood, coal and, through a side-burner attachment, gas. The old beauty must be properly vented to meet code, and Jaime was recently at work on plans for a range hood. A second, modern stove does duty for everyday cooking.

Anne says using old things is “a preser-vation of ideas. It’s a glimpse back in time, a connection with the past.” And, on a pragmatic level: “I like to use what’s at hand. I don’t like to go out and shop.”

Her existing refrigerator slipped right into the spacious new kitchen. The room – gleaming with golden reclaimed wood flooring, pale cabinets and dark granite countertops – is lit by a skylight and an-other repurposed item, an old wagon

ABOVE: A vintage piano claims one wall in the downstairs office.

AT RIGHT: An antique cage elevator, partially visible here, was installed in the great room as part of the renovation.

FACING PAGE: The walls in the two-story great room were bleached, sanded and refinished. An interior balcony offers a view from an upstairs sunroom.

INSET: Hog door-knockers add a touch of whimsy.

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wheel hung as a unique pot rack and light fixture. Interior designer Julian Mathis, who helped redecorate the renovated house and ready it for last year’s Tallahassee Symphony Tour of Homes, came up with that solution and with the design for the decorative tile behind the antique stove, plus window treatments and more.

“My role as interior designer on this project evolved from day to day,” Julian says. “It proved to be one of the most unusual and fun jobs I’ve been involved in.”

The whole renovation was a collab-orative process, ever-changing and open to suggestions. Anne says she believes we each have “one song, one story, one dance inside ourselves. … I’m so delighted when someone has something else to offer.”

The ideas for many of the surprises in the house came from Colin. Ever the gentleman, he downplays his contribu-

tions. “All the pretty stuff, Anne does,” he says. “What did I do? Nonsense. ... There’s just a bunch of little nonsenses.”

He smiles ever so slightly and adds, “The outhouse is all mine.” An extra bathroom attached to the house’s exterior is done

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ABOVE AND FACING PAGE: An upstairs bathroom was remodeled as part of an earlier project.

INSET: This pretty fixture hangs in the master bedroom.>>>

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up to look like an authentic Old South outhouse, complete with a “broken” window.

Clever touches abound. In the mudroom, a drawer becomes a step-stool. In the great room, a drawer is built into stairs. In two rooms, shelves hang near the ceil-ing, with attached, sliding wood bookends to keep volumes upright. In the master bedroom, a trap door in the wood floor al-lows access to the laundry room below. A dumb waiter is planned.

Working with the couple taught contrac-tor Rami that “anything is possible. If one can dream it, it can be made a reality.”

“That house is a delight, and we’re not even through yet,” says Jaime. “We’re still working on it.”

ABOVE AND INSET: A downstairs bedroom offers comfy quarters for guests.

FACING PAGE: The master bedroom is upstairs, with access to a balcony.

SOURCES & SERVICESMany talented people and companies participated in the Phipps project, including:

n Architect: Jaime P. Ledon Contractor: Rami C. Deeb, Yellowhammer, L.L.C.n Interior Design: Julian Mathis Interior

Design, Inc. (For more on Julian Mathis, see the story on Page 20.)

Major subcontractors included:n Victor Rosas Constructionn Cureton Plumbingn Lawson & Lawson Electrical Servicen A.Wright Weldingn Lee Fletcher, Custom Trimn Elias Contractor’s Painting & Servicesn Grigorian Tile LLCn Wiregrass Furniture & Lumbern Conrad Landscape and Designn Streamline Roofing and Construction, Inc.n Closed Loop Systems, Inc.n Simpler Solar Systemsn Capital City Gas Service

Other subcontractors included:n Residential Electrical Servicen Allweather Insulationn Advanced Lift Systems, LLCn Concrete Service Unlimitedn Donald A. Guy Heating & Coolingn Southeastern Enterprises of the Big Bendn Tim Allen Masonryn Darnell & Associates, Inc.n Gary’s Plastering, Stucco & Drywalln Design Stucco & Plasteringn Capital Site Development

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