Old Homes Made New (and Vice Versa)

 

Tamara Gavin keeps an open mind but not necessarily an open floor plan.
Photo by Matt Rose

Tamara Gavin’s website, The Made Home, is endlessly engaging: equal parts design candy store, juicy tutorial, and reverent repository of architectural history. The ASID-certified interior designer gained experience at respected local design firms, started her blog in 2014, and hung out her shingle a year ago. She self-describes as “equally left and right-brained.” She loves solving puzzles, “especially visualizing solutions to space-limitation problems that clients might not have considered.” 

Her breadth of services, done both locally and remotely, is impressive, ranging from project management, interior photography, and choosing finishes to one-day space transformations. The latter involves “using what clients already own in new ways — or just meeting to tackle paint colors,” says Gavin.

“My passion is old homes, and creating that same charm in new ones,” she says. Gavin’s home-staging profiles — mostly in Western North Carolina — have appeared on the popular website Apartment Therapy. “It’s exciting to see how homeowners transform their homes beautifully,” she says. Here, she talks about her process, her many irons in the fire, and her big dreams. 

Were you smitten with design early?

I always loved architecture and knew interior design was for me. I moved from a beautiful old New Jersey four-square filled with character to a 1970s split level in Minnesota. Our old house’s wonderful nooks and crannies stayed with me. I sensed an absence of charm in the newer house, which led me to draw floor plans galore, and play around with my bedroom design constantly. I loved color and patterns from day one, too. My dad always worked on home-improvement projects and was my This Old House viewing companion. His castoffs became my toys, like my cube-shaped playhouse made from discarded storm windows.

Client relationships must have changed since Houzz, HGTV, and other DIY outlets came into play … 

I love helping DIY-ers who don’t quite know where to start … [with all clients], I tease out concerns they may have trouble articulating, and help them figure out what they love. 

Any interesting recent projects?

I worked with clients who had a wonderful Midcentury modern house, but no [Midcentury] furniture. I knew they appreciated iconic 20th-century designers, like Herman Miller and Knoll — it was fun to hunt those pieces.

Design “rules” don’t sound too important to you.

I encourage my clients not to feel boxed in. There isn’t one way to arrange seating around a fireplace. Why not make what’s “supposed” to be the living room the dining room, because it features a fabulous fireplace? 

So the ubiquitous open plan isn’t your go-to? 

No, and that’s informed by my own life. We may knock down a wall to make our kitchen and dining area bigger, but I’ve no desire to connect our living area to it. We have young kids — I don’t want my kitchen chaos flowing into my living-room chaos!

Is your own home a design laboratory?

We’ve got a 1953 one-level rambler that was Candler’s Asbury United Methodist Church parsonage; the floor plan’s interesting. I dream up projects and my trim-specialist husband makes them real. We’ve added a bathroom and dining-room banquette, with more to come. 

Tell me about your house plans.

They reflect my love of older homes’ craftsmanship and grace. I offer nine classic designs, including Gothic-inspired, saltbox, shingled cottage, and a modern farmhouse. My plans, and an online product line, will officially launch next year. It’s in my blood, too — my grandparents purchased mail-order house plans, which were offered from the late 19th century to about 1940 by several companies, most notably Sears, Roebuck and Aladdin. Consumers chose designs, lighting, and plumbing fixtures via catalog, and everything, from nails to chandeliers, was delivered by train. My aunt sent me a Dropbox folder with pictures documenting the entire building process.  

Have you done any design-related good deeds?

It’d have to be an Athens, Georgia, house tour I did of a sweet Spanish Colonial Revival house. The wife of the couple fell in love with it while attending college, and years later, they bought it. It happened to have been designed by Georgia’s first registered female architect, Leila Ross Wilburn. I hit the old floor-plan pattern books, luckily found the plan, and sent it to the owners. Leila inspires me to this day. She and others like her created built environments that still tell extraordinary stories. 

Tamara Gavin, Asheville, themadehome.com. For more information, e-mail tamara@themadehome.com

0 replies on “Old Homes Made New (and Vice Versa)”