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From left: Dr. Patrick Woodward, Kate, Mary Kathryn, Lillibet, and Holden sit in what was the garage. The Woodwards raised the floor and broke through an exterior wall. Photo by Barry Fitzgerald
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From left: Dr. Patrick Woodward, Kate, Mary Kathryn, Lillibet, and Holden sit in what was the garage. The Woodwards raised the floor and broke through an exterior wall. Photo by Barry Fitzgerald
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The house’s former dark brick exterior received a rich, creamy white face-lift. Photo by Barry Fitzgerald
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Complete with a 1950 baby grand piano, the formal living room reflects Mary Kath-ryn’s gardening roots through a soft color palette of blues, greens and white accented with gold. Photo by Barry Fitzgerald
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The house’s large backyard was an open canvas for Mary Kath-ryn to re-create a garden. “I enjoy so many things — painting, decorating, gardening,” she says. “My natural abilities are the ones that energize me.”
Sitting on a crisp white sofa ornamented with pops of aqua and spring-green pillows, Mary Kathryn Holden Woodward beams with joy about the house she and her husband have reinvented. It may not be the largest of the five homes she's owned, but she says it's her favorite.
It's also completely different from when she and her husband, Dr. Patrick Woodward, bought it five years ago. An exterior that used to be dark, gloomy brick with brown trim is now creamy white, with a cascade of ivy enveloping its bold green door. The four-bedroom house sits in its original footprint at 308 Rosyln Road, but that's about the only original feature from the 1930 Cotswolds Tudor-style home.
Historic Garden Week Richmond Neighborhood Tours • Historic Byrd Park and Maymont: Wednesday, April 30 • Glenbrooke Hills: Thurs., May 1 • Hampton Gardens: Friday, May 2 All tours run from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 in advance through April 28; $40 on day of tour. A three-day Richmond tour ticket is $90 per person. For more information, visit vagardenweek.org . A gardener, painter and owner of The Green Door, an interior-decorating business, Mary Kathryn had renovated four homes before buying this one. She and Patrick looked at the house a few years before they purchased it in 2009, but they weren't interested. "No one wanted it," Mary Kathryn says. The original owner had lived there for 72 years, followed briefly by another family, and neither had made any major changes. Even the original toilets, stamped 1930, were still there. But Mary Kathryn loved the Hampton Gardens neighborhood, where her parents live three houses down. When the house came back on the market at a lower price in 2009, Patrick convinced her to look again. "We were able to get it for a great deal," she says, "and I love it now. I wasn't sure I would ever love it. … I'm completely happy here. We've been able to transform it beyond anything I could have foreseen." Gone are the dark maid's quarters — with a chipping claw-foot bathtub, a toilet and a small bed. The family's large oak kitchen table now occupies the space below two white hanging light fixtures from Ikea. The house's natural light carries through to the family room, which the Woodwards converted from a garage with tiny windows and rotten siding. Mary Kathryn's love for gardening seeps into her decorating. Big windows without drapes allow the greenery outside to become a part of the family room, which showcases Mary Kathryn's palette of blues and greens anchored by white. What was a screened porch is now Patrick's study, after they bricked it in and added windows. Patrick and Mary Kathryn's father built a fence around the yard, and she got to work creating her garden in the barren space. "I'm not sure if it is the color or the textures or the garden forms and structure," she says about gardening, "but it's just continually amazing to me year after year to see such beauty and color rise up from the dirt." The Woodwards' house will be featured as part of this year's Historic Garden Week, organized by the Garden Club of Virginia. It will be open to the public May 2 as part of the Richmond tour of the Hampton Gardens neighborhood, and Mary Kathryn, a Garden Club member, said she and Patrick are excited to share the house and garden. "Patrick and Mary Kathryn's house is a really fun before-and-after," says Vickie Blanchard, one of the three co-chairs for Richmond's Garden Week. "They really brightened it up. We're excited for them because they've put a lot of sweat equity in it themselves." The kitchen remains its original size, but space is maximized with crown-molded white cabinetry and with a pantry that is tucked inside the stairway leading to the basement. Portuguese-marble countertops, white subway tile, white porcelain dishes, silver pieces and colorful trays add polish and shine. "It's not the largest home, but it has everything our family needs," she says. "Maximizing every square foot of the house, that's what this has been about." Upstairs, the three children's rooms reflect their personalities, and the master bedroom glows with light from the alcove windows. Making a space work with existing furniture is all part of the puzzle for Mary Kathryn. As she does with her colorful paintings that hang on nearly every wall, she moves furniture around to give it new life. "For me, I like a collected look in a house. I want it to reflect my family." The formal dining room has had the most recent makeover, with modern Jacobean-style wallpaper and a lime-green lacquered mirror that Mary Kathryn updated herself. She has a "mad crush" on anything mirrored and shiny, evident in the mirrored chest in the foyer and mercury-glass accents in the family room. Although they used contractors for the major renovations, the Woodwards did a lot of the work themselves. As soon as they moved in, they got to work painting the upstairs and renovating a bathroom. Then they all lived out of the second floor while the downstairs was gutted, eating most nights with her parents up the street. That closeness with her family — whether it's having her parents nearby or the coziness of the home — is part of why this is her favorite house. Their oldest daughter, Lillibet, 11, and twins Holden and Kate, 9, do their homework each day at the kitchen table, Mary Kathryn's favorite spot. "Sometimes you think the best part of the day is when the house is clean and nobody's here," she says. "But that's not the best part. It's the family being together."
