Marsha Andrews is clear about her design philosophy. “My style is a mixture of yesterday and today, with an eye for beauty in all its forms,” she says, pointing to the many items she and her late husband, Ed, found while traveling. “Even when we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, we’d find a way to bring something special back from our trips.”
Beauty is evident in her English Country Tudor Revival residence, one of the properties open to the public during Historic Garden Week in Virginia. Designed by architect Otis K. Asbury and built in 1925, the home was one of the first constructed in the Carillon neighborhood adjacent to William Byrd Park. Its stucco exterior is accented by thoughtfully placed timbers, brick accents, shuttered leaded-glass windows and an asymmetrical roof line.
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"The light fixture is elegant and playful, and that really appeals to me," Andrews says of the recently installed chandelier. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
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The brass fireplace fender originally belonged to Andrews’ great-great-grandparents. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
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The built-in cabinets, leaded-glass bay window and window seat — all original features of the house — are elements of the charm that attracted Andrews to the house. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
Andrews and her husband offered to purchase the house in 2000 — without having seen the second floor — because they had once visited as guests of the previous owner and her daughter. “It was such a beautiful house in such a beautiful setting,” Andrews says. “I told Ed it didn’t matter that we hadn’t been upstairs.” An added appeal for the couple was knowing they were moving into a neighborhood that had been welcoming to Black homeowners in the 1960s, an era when many white families were leaving the city. “That history is important,” she says.
When they first moved in, the couple’s traditional furniture and decor paired well with the house’s cozy, cottage design, Andrews says, so she and her husband simply painted walls and refinished the hardwood floors. But in recent years, she has made more changes.
“We’ve brought it up to the 2020s,” she says. “We’ve been putting a twist on it to make it more contemporary. It’s been a process; it’s not like I did it overnight.”
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Andrews' late husband, Ed, and their two daughters found the sofa for $32 at a garage sale about 45 years ago. It’s been recovered three times, and it's still one of her favorite things. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
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Andrews says she found her vanity mirror on sale at Suter’s about 30 years. She fell in love with it and brought it home. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
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Andrews discovered the glass urn at a shop in North Carolina and the glass flowers at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Diane Williams of Art to Di For silvered the niche. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
While deciding to respect the distinct spaces the original architecture creates, Andrews, working with Melanie Beverly of Ruth Joffre Interiors, modernized the home’s interior with Sherwin-Williams Front Porch paint, a cool gray with blue undertones. They also focused on highlighting the special pieces Andrews had gathered over time. “I’ve been working on [my] collections for years,” she says.
Her favorites are evident throughout the house. In the living room, a flush-mounted Murano chandelier accents the ceiling, while a Daum crystal vase adorns a side table. Moser stemware from the Czech Republic floats on shallow shelves in the breakfast room. The dining room features a chandelier from Carytown’s GlassBoat. Italian masks, found in a private sale thanks to a friend’s connection, are both mounted on walls and scattered across several rooms. “I love anything Venetian,” Andrews says. “When I heard about [the masks], I went to Melanie and said, ‘What can we do with these?’ ”
“My style is a mixture of yesterday and today, with an eye for beauty in all its forms.” —Marsha Andrews
Beverly says the fun in working with Andrews comes from the expected — “When in doubt, I know to pick the bejeweled item” — as well as the unexpected, such as the silver-leaf birds, painted by local artist Diane Williams of Art to Di For, that take flight on the walls of the main floor’s study.
“The house has a lot of beautiful architecture but no crown molding,” Beverly notes. “We’ve tried to make the most of little cubby areas and concentrate on making the great things look great, and edit down the other pieces. You can’t have a Daum piece next to something from [a box store].”
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Over time, Andrews enlarged the kitchen, but she did not want to sacrifice its original charm. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
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The petite French ormolu desk came from a local auction years ago. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
Blue accents are found throughout the house, but the breakfast room — tucked between the dining room and the kitchen — gets its own full-color treatment, with the walls and ceiling painted in Sherwin Williams Scanda, a cornflower blue. “We did go crazy [there],” Beverly says, laughing.
Andrews credits Beverly for helping her embrace something different for that space. “She brought that pop of color,” Andrews says. “I had to think about it, because I could have done traditional again. I really needed her [encouragement] to go that extra step.”
Color is also supplied in abundance by pieces of artwork throughout the house, many of which were created by Andrews herself and aren’t for show or sale. “I have fun with them,” she says. “I have enough pressure in other parts of my life [that] in my painting, I just want to enjoy.”
As she’s updated the home’s interior, Andrews has contemplated what changes, if any, to make to the Charles Gillette garden at the rear of the property. “I thought about putting in a pool,” she laughs. “But sometimes you can make changes, and it enhances things — sometimes you leave it alone.”
