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Stiles tore down the walls that boxed In the old kitchen and Installed a custom-made Carrara marble Island and custom cabinets.
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The 12-foot-tall front doors once served as the school's main entrance.
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The 12-foot-tall front doors once served as the school's main entrance.
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Stiles' first priority was to maximize every inch of the condo's 910 square feet.
The first photos Doug Stiles saw of the Church Hill loft he now owns were bad: Poor lighting, clutter and thick walls obscured what should have been a light and airy space. Stiles, an interior designer, homed in on the windows. Closed shutters made it hard to tell how tall they were, but judging by a desk that sat beneath them in one image, Stiles estimated that they reached 13 feet from the floor. (He was right — they stop about 12 inches from the condo's 14-foot ceilings.)
He saw the potential for an open loft, something he had wanted but couldn't afford in New York City, his home of 22 years after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University. A friend who was a real estate agent agreed to a showing. "It's the only place I saw," says Stiles of his decision to leave Manhattan's West Village for the dream of a sunny, hillside loft five blocks from the James River.
"My objective was to create a kind of personal temple." —Doug Stiles
The Italianate building that houses Stiles' loft began life as a public school in the 1870s. Back then it stood three stories tall; the top floors were condemned in 1908 and gone by 1954, though no one's sure when, exactly, the demolition happened. In 1979, it came back to life as Bellevue Square, Richmond's first conversion of a historic structure into condominiums.
With a schematic layout of the loft he envisioned in hand, Stiles embarked on a nearly two-year renovation to turn a chopped-up, boxy condo into a light-filled sanctuary. "My objective was to create a kind of personal temple," he says.
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Stiles bumped up the ceiling In the back of the unit to make space for an upstairs office and meditation nook.
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A vintage Pierre Paulin Orange Slice chair by the fireplace Is one of Stiles' favorite places to sit and relax.
His first priority was to economize every inch of the unit's 910 square feet, a task he was well equipped for after decades of designing for New York City clients."I learned to maximize the feeling of space within a small footprint where there was an absence of it before," he says.
Fourteen-foot ceilings weren't high enough to create two proper floors, so Stiles bumped up the ceiling in the back of the unit to make space for an upstairs office. A meditation nook off the office, the only room besides the bathroom without a direct view of the windows, occupies what was previously dead space obstructed by ductwork.
The home's signature feature, its southwest-facing 10-foot·tall windows, presented the challenge of both highlighting and counterbalancing so much brightness. Stiles painted the window frames black, a tactic designers use when they want to draw the eye beyond something, and did not cover them with blinds or treatments. To draw the eye to the outdoors, Stiles tore down the walls that boxed in the old kitchen and installed a Carrara marble island that houses the sink and offers plenty of workspace. A floor-to-ceiling opening in the wall between the living room and the bedroom ensures that, even from bed, he can see the western bank of windows.
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In the bathroom, in lieu of tile,Stiles applied thin coats of a cementitious bonding product to achieve a solid marble-like finish on the walls that's soft and sensual to the touch, and waterproof.
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In the bathroom, in lieu of tile,Stiles applied thin coats of a cementitious bonding product to achieve a solid marble-like finish on the walls that's soft and sensual to the touch, and waterproof.
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A dark gray accent wall in the meditation nook creates a cozy, cocoon-like space.
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A vintage Pontiac weather vane, circa 1932, juxtaposed with a Marco Mahler mobile, adds interest to the bedroom area.
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A 1960s photograph of Manhattan island by Philip Gendreau sits on the bedroom floor, reminding Stiles of his time there.
Much of Stiles' renovation work involved what he describes as an "investigative" process of "peeling back layers" to uncover the building's original details. Cutting into layers of sheetrock and wood casing unearthed a pine support beam he blasted with dry ice to show off the grain. The home's central Doric columns are iron but had been painted with a faux marble technique; Stiles coated them in a dark charcoal gray to evoke their original state. Opening up an 18-inch-thick basalt-rock wall in the entryway restored gravitas to a pair of 12-foot-tall front doors that once served as the school's main entrance.
"It's a place that supports regeneration, healing and peace." —Doug Stiles
A color palette of various shades of gray provides a neutral backdrop that allows Stiles to emphasize certain features of his home while down playing others. "You can direct the focus if the color scheme stays neutral and balanced," he says. "You're not a slave to the influence of a specific trend or style or a color of the year based on someone else's interpretation." Dark gray accent walls in the bedroom and upstairs loft break the planes of the rooms, Stiles explains, creating the illusion of a recess or void, and resulting in a cozy, cocoon-like effect.
By balancing light and dark and highlighting the home's connection to nature just beyond its soaring windows, Stiles has achieved his sanctuary. "It's a place that nurtures the sympathetic relationship between the physical and the nonphysical, a place that supports regeneration, healing and peace," he says.
