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Allen Murray designed and made the leaded glass window. The wedding cake crystal chandelier is one of two he rescued from his grandmother’s house. The table is covered in a Clan Urquhart tartan throw, celebrating his Scottish ancestry.
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Diane and Allen Murray and their son, Henry. The bower under the ancient maple tree is a favorite spot to gather in warm weather. Edison bulb-filled bird cages with vintage style and strands of lights illuminate the front path at night.
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The family craft table is covered with an antique blue-and-white hand-woven jacquard coverlet. Allen designed and made the leaded glass pendant light.
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The Victorian chair, newly reupholstered in velvet, once belong to Diane’s grandmother. Allen designed and made the blue leaded glass lampshade.
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The Persian Tabriz rug from Amir Rug Exchange gave Diane the little hint of French flair she wanted. The vibrant color informed the color palette throughout the house. The Chinese export-style armorial vase is from West End Antiques Mall.
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The custom pillow fabric is Brunschwig & Fils Chinese Leopard Toile — a classic first introduced in 1959 that, strangely enough, Diane says, works as well with the Urquhardt tartan as it does with the Oriental carpets in every room. The reclining Buddha was a find from Luxor. The foo dog lamp and Ditchely Park prints are by Dana Gibson.
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Magnolia leaves from a tree out front and roses in miniature vintage vessels decorate the dessert buffet set with vintage cake stands and a gleaming brass samovar. The painting is by Richmond artist Geraldo Netto. The buffet lamp is from Shades of Light.
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The Murrays found the screen, now used as their headboard, at the Hillsville Flea Market in Southwest Virginia. The tapestry-like screen pulled together the soft green and blues in the decor and added needed height to the room.
Diane and Allen Murray had been living in Huntington, West Virginia, in the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, for a couple of years when Diane was offered a sales job with CSX Transportation in Richmond. It was 1990, and the young couple was ready to return home to Virginia.
“We love the mountains, but we wanted a home with more open spaces and flat lands. We saw this farmhouse in Montpelier, and it was love at first sight,” Diane recalls.
Set on 10 acres, the house was a modest two-up two-down white clapboard farmhouse built in 1900. With their attention focused on new jobs — Allen took a position with JoPa Pools — and the birth of their son, Henry, the first 10 years at the farm were spent cleaning up the property when time allowed.
By 2000, they were ready to tackle the house and built an addition. On the first floor, they added a family room. They carved out part of a previous bathroom expansion adjacent to the kitchen to create a laundry room. Upstairs, the couple added a primary bedroom and bathroom. Allen, adept at tile and concrete work from his time building pools for JoPa, installed white bathroom tile with blue-and-white Dutch tile accents upstairs and updated the kitchen with concrete countertops and a slate floor.
With the bones in place and fresh spaces to fill, Diane succumbed to the siren call of home decorating, even reconsidering the look of existing rooms.
Her French ancestry — “My maiden name is ‘Chenault,’” she explains — drove her to furniture and accessories that reflected her Francophile taste. Layers include Scottish tartans from Allen’s family and Asian pieces, including rugs and accessories. A reclining Buddha statue commands a prime spot in the couple’s living room; Diane says it “reminds us to enjoy the present moment.”
“I struggled to make everything cohesive,” she says. “I was drawn to too many colors and in too many directions.”
Fortunately, says Diane, her dear friend Susan Morgan (editor of R•Home), offered to help her coordinate the interior spaces. The two went on a number of decorating adventures, including visits to the Decorating & Design Building and de Gournay showroom in New York City, and shopped home stores in Richmond, Charlottesville and Old Town Alexandria. Then, Morgan invited her to go to decorator Carleton Varney’s Dorothy Draper School of Decorating weekend at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Draper, a revered interior decorator from the 1920s to the 1960s, famously created the Greenbrier’s bold interiors with her vibrant color schemes in 1948.
Over the course of the weekend, Diane recalls, Varney, a noted interior decorator in his own right, stressed the importance of finding one’s individual style and eschewed anything uncomfortable or drab. “He encouraged everyone to think back to what we really enjoyed about our homes and what we liked about places we had lived in to find our style,” she says.
The fresh perspective sparked a renewed love, not just for the pieces the couple had acquired over the course of their marriage, but also for family furnishings and art. “I realized that I knew what I wanted to be surrounded by, but I had too many choices and had sort of lost my way,” Diane says. “Susan helped me realize that it was just a matter of making small changes to upholstery and placement.”
I have a new appreciation for layering patterns and patina.
—Diane Murray
With Morgan’s assistance, Diane’s grandmother’s turn-of-the-century chairs and settee were transformed with a fresh, custom striped velvet upholstery that works both with the gray sectional sofa in the family room and the light gray sofa in the living room. The fabrics selected — solids and patterns — serve as touch points for color combinations throughout the house that Diane associates with her blended French and Asian styles. Morgan designed the pillows and upholstery, which were fabricated by another close friend, Cynthia Schmidt.
Consulting with Morgan, Diane attended auctions and scoured antique stores and flea markets for items to add to cherished antiques from both her family and Allen’s that had been a part of their home for decades. Persian and Pakistani rugs flow throughout the first floor to ground the seasonal changes Diane embraces with tartan throws during the holidays, replaced by lighter fabrics such as blue-and-white ticking displayed during warmer months.
At almost every turn, Diane is comforted by family furnishings: a mirror from Allen’s grandmother’s house in Botetourt County, a jacquard woven coverlet made by her grandmother draped over a sofa, a crocheted blanket made by Diane’s great aunt and a stained glass depiction of cranes Allen made for their dining room.
“We used what we have and love from our families together with things that we have found that we liked to make the house work,” Diane says. “The colors work now, and I have a new appreciation for layering patterns and for patina. Everything doesn’t have to be new. I love using all my family treasures. I got the spaces that I love, and it makes me happy every time I walk in the door.”
