1 of 3
A pair of Hans Olsen Kinna lounge chairs sit opposite two midcentury sofas and a Grete Jack coffee table.
2 of 3
Over a dozen trees were removed to open up the views from the 1960s James Arvin house.
3 of 3
The rocking chair is by Ingmar Relling for Westnofa, the standing teak planter is by Kai Kristiansen for Salin Mobler, and the painting is by José Luis Cuevas.
Lauren Bell and Joey Parent had been searching for just the right midcentury modern home south of the James River in Richmond for three years when a house on Croatan Road came up for sale. “I knew this was the one the moment I saw it,” Bell says. “We were almost too late because this is farther west than we had included in our search.”
Designed and built in 1960 by local architect James Arvin for himself and his wife, the 1,960-square-foot house tucked in the woods a mile or so from the river had only one other owner before Bell and Parent snapped it up about a year and a half ago.
“The house was not awesome when we moved in,” Parent recalls. He and Bell were committed to doing the necessary restoration work themselves, first tackling the exterior by removing over a dozen trees to clear the view. Inside, the pair opened the entryway by moving a laundry space down the main hall. All the old sheet paneling came out and was replaced with Sheetrock. Old carpeting and tile flooring came up and were replaced with Pennsylvania green slate in the home’s entryway, kitchen and central hall.
Bell and Parent have preserved much of the home’s original details, including the trim and hardwood floors. “We wanted to stay true to the original design but also wanted to make it a little less sectioned off,” Bell explains.
In the living room, which looks out onto the front yard, a huge expanse of bay windows required some reconfiguring. “We removed smaller, rectangular windows and replaced them with larger windows to open up the view and match the window bay across the hall in the den at the back of the house,” Bell says.
We certainly are not professional contractors, but we have been willing to give it a shot and figure it out as we go.
—Joey Parent, homeowner
To lighten the space, Bell painted the brick fireplace a milky shade of white in homage to blond brick popular in the midcentury period. A cantilevered cast-concrete hearth stretches the width of the wall separating the room from the hall and serves as a bench with storage for firewood underneath. The wall next to the fireplace is paneled with hemlock.
The room’s vaulted fir ceiling and exposed beams draw the eye to the outside, reflective of designs by revered midcentury architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Arvin echoed Wright’s deep appreciation for incorporating the natural surroundings of homes into his designs and connecting the two wherever possible.
Bell, a designer with her own firm, Hint Spaces, specializes in finding vintage, handmade and one-of-a-kind furnishings for homeowners. She began collecting midcentury pieces, specifically “golden age” Scandinavian furniture, long before finding her current home, which she and Parent lovingly call “the treehouse.”
“All of this took a lot of work,” Parent says. “Lauren and I have taken on most of the projects in this house on our own. We certainly are not professional contractors, but we have been willing to give it a shot and figure it out as we go. We took what we knew and went from there. We made some mistakes along the way and learned a lot in the process.”
