Text: Alice Welsh Doyle
Photography: Jean Allsopp
Rebecca Hawkins, an interior decorator in Birmingham, Alabama, passed by a large, undeveloped natural area on her way to carpool near her youngest child’s elementary school every day. She became intrigued because it was a rare sighting in a coveted, but almost completely developed neighborhood. She and her husband did some digging and were rewarded with a phone number. After a year of cajoling the eccentric homeowner, the lot was theirs.
While the Hawkinses loved their home in a more wooded, remote part of the area, the architecture-afficionado duo couldn’t resist the location (walking distance to school and shopping) and the chance to build a home from the ground up. For a few years prior, the couple had worked with architect Cherri Pitts of Studio C to update and tweak their prior residence, so she was naturally engaged for this next chapter.
Rebecca Hawkins’s Birmingham Home Blends Arts & Crafts Style with Modern Warmth
Rebecca Hawkins’s Birmingham Home Blends Arts & Crafts Style with Modern Warmth
Rebecca Hawkins’s Birmingham Home Blends Arts & Crafts Style with Modern Warmth
Rebecca Hawkins’s Birmingham Home Blends Arts & Crafts Style with Modern Warmth
Rebecca Hawkins’s Birmingham Home Blends Arts & Crafts Style with Modern Warmth
“Because I had been working with the couple, I knew what they really liked about their existing house that they wanted to incorporate in the new design,” says Pitts. “We borrowed the best elements from the existing floor plan and then scaled it up, flipped some things, and added a spacious second floor.” The Hawkinses also wanted to import the banks of windows in their prior home that embrace the outdoors. The exterior, though, was a departure.
“After a few attempts, a light bulb went off, and I told Rebecca that I finally had it, and she agreed,” says Pitts. “It’s English Arts and Crafts in its simplest form, but rotated so the gables are placed on the sides instead of on the expected front location, which allows you to really appreciate the length of the rooms.” Another change was a particular door style and size that Hawkins had seen in a magazine. “We added a 13-foot white oak door, which presents as smaller from the road, and then you are a bit surprised by the scale when you approach the front of the house. It makes quite a dramatic statement,” says Pitts.
The lot itself provided some challenges and welcome surprises. Given the slope of the lot, it was essential for all the elevations to be in harmony, so Pitts brought in landscape architect John Wilson of Golightly Landscape Architecture to help seamlessly integrate the surrounding landscape with the parking court, porte cochere, garden, and pool deck. “It was a study in geometry to get the garage court sited and then massaging everything into the design so it would be both functional and good-looking,” says Wilson. “Until the property was cleared, we didn’t know what great views we had with lovely sunsets as well as a brook that runs throughout the neighborhood,” notes Hawkins.
For the interiors, an abundance of ideas came from the decorator’s hefty files of tear sheets and her experience in the field. “In our old house, all the floors in the main living spaces were brick pavers, and I liked the idea of a mix,” she says. Hawkins chose white oak wide planks in certain rooms and concrete treated with a gleaming white epoxy in others. “I added inlaid brass strips at the thresholds to transition from the concrete to the hardwoods,” she notes.
She also departed from her brighter colored past to embrace a moodier palette, inspired by the quartzite countertop she chose for the kitchen island. “I had always loved color and still do, but this time, I did more earth tones. In the family room, I used greens and browns with pops of yellow, but in the sitting room, I chose black, mauve, brown, and cream,” says Hawkins. “And, I went a bit funky in the primary bedroom with peach, green, and purple with neutrals. The rooms flow nicely and feel connected, but each room has its own story to tell.”
The decorator had also kept a running list of finishes and textures she knew she wanted to incorporate to give the new house a sense of age and character. These included weathered wood beams in certain rooms, and in the family room, a floor-to-ceiling limestone fireplace wall topped with a limestone ledge and a painted pecky cypress inset. In the sitting room, more pecky cypress, treated with a whitewash finish, graces the ceiling. All these elements provide welcome warmth and a bit of rusticity to help minimize the formality of the rooms.
The designer imparted notes of coziness with fabric choices such as velvet, mohair, and leather. She artfully wove in antique treasures, such as a pair of dark painted chests in the family room; a painted circular table in the kitchen; and an eye-catching gilded, carved narrow table in the foyer topped with a dramatic and curvaceous French mirror. “I like to think of it as my California bungalow in the South,” says Hawkins with a laugh. “It has contemporary underpinnings, but it’s also inviting and graceful. It truly combines the best of the old house with an updated attitude.”
