The first thing that strikes you about Kerry Griffin is her smile. Megawatt. Sparkling with charm. She greets you at the door accompanied by her sidekick Lulu, the grand dame yellow Lab. On this particular afternoon, Lulu sports a collar festooned with glittered, pink silk flowers. “It’s her birthday,” Kerry explains with a grin.
Stepping into the entry-sunroom, you realize that the cheerfulness of Kerry’s demeanor also informs the mode and decor of the home she shares with her husband Steve. Playful, engaging and bold—without being brash—the residence has a casual flair that belies the careful coordination required to achieve such a sense of ease.
“I describe it as whimsical,” says Kerry. “It’s like going down the rabbit hole. I think people get that when they come here. It’s totally my personality. This is me. It’s very bright—I’m wide open, I’m a little bit daring.”
That insouciance is evident from the moment you settle into one of the overstuffed chairs in the great room. Colors and patterns abound: chartreuse, hot pink and black; stripes, polka dots, animal prints and checkerboard squares. In less experienced hands, it would seem incongruous. But Kerry pulls it all together with moxie and flair.
Her background in interior design certainly helps. “In my 30s, I started working with a designer in Atlanta and began taking classes at the Art Institute,” she explains. “I trained with a decorator in Pennsylvania as well. Eventually, friends started asking me to do their houses and it built from there.”
Kerry has parlayed her trained eye into a retail venture, Lily Pad Interiors in Charlotte, where she and Steve own a pied-á-terre. She still takes on occasional design projects, but these days, much of her creative energy is channeled into the “work-in-progress” of her home here in Flat Rock.
“It’s purely personal,” she says, and it differs from her professional design style. “Most people in the South, I find, are very traditional. I think they would be afraid to do some of the colors—like a hot pink bathroom or hot pink furniture. So I do mostly traditional, but I do try to throw in something different, like a piece of artwork that’s bright and colorful.”
The house has appealed to Kerry’s sense of adventure from the very start. Living in Atlanta, and ready for “one more big move,” she and Steve had decided that Western North Carolina was a desirable area for their next home and began to scout locations. That’s when fate stepped in.
“You know, I’d see in the magazines where someone would say ‘I was driving in the country and I found this gem of a house amid the weeds’ and I’d say ‘that’s malarkey…that never happens,’” she recalls. That was until her realtor took her to see an expanded 1920s farmhouse set on ten acres in a defunct apple orchard.
“We came up a gravel road to these iron fences locked together. There was a huge apple tree growing over the driveway and all these weeds. We drove through the gate, I looked over and saw the view and said, ‘OK, we’ll take it.’ Never even saw the house,” she says with a laugh. “Luckily, the house was doable.”
Doable, but dubious. “When I first saw it, it was such a sad little house,” Kerry says. “The people who owned the house before us lived in Florida and didn’t come here very often. It was basically abandoned—very neglected. We came in and totally redid most of it. It took us a year to do the renovation. I would travel up and work on it—I stayed at the Holiday Inn more nights than I would want to count.”
The renovations were both structural and aesthetic—including covering hundreds of square feet of turquoise paint that the former owner had applied liberally throughout the residence. “She certainly loved turquoise!” Kerry observes.
“The original part of the house is now the kitchen, my husband’s office and the upstairs guest room,” she explains. “Over the years, people have kept building on and we were no exception. The master bedroom suite used to be two bedrooms, a storage area and a bathroom. Somewhere along the way there were some mistaken measurements on the new two-person tub and we ended up having to push the room all the way out—ten feet—in order to accommodate everything. But in the end, it all worked out.”
Extensive reworking was also required to transform the dark galley kitchen into a bright welcoming workspace and dining area. Kerry chose to mix cream-colored, distressed wall cabinets with a substantial mahogany island, which she topped with St. Cecilia granite. To conserve space and provide both seating and much needed storage, a banquette was installed along one wall. A custom-designed breakfront on the opposing wall balances the space.
Mike Brown of Kitchen Interiors oversaw all the cabinetry and built-ins throughout the residence. “He has men who work for him that are geniuses,” Kerry says appreciatively. “I would go to him and say ‘this is what I have in mind’ and he would just grab onto it.”
With the infrastructure in place, Kerry set about creating an ambiance that would reflect the couple’s relaxed, joyful lifestyle—which includes their cherished pooch. “I had to have man spaces, I had to have dog spaces and I had to have my own spaces. The great room and kitchen are my spaces. My husband’s office is man space. And Lulu…well…we had to do the bedroom to match Lulu. We needed for her to be able to lay on everything.”
Kerry’s wit and humor is evident throughout the home: in the deft layering of textures, patterns and hues and in the delightful details that abound. Broad gestures in small spaces are part of her signature style: a massive four-poster bed squeezed into the diminutive, low-ceiling guest bedroom (she trimmed several inches off the feet of the bed to make it fit); a frame of silk flowers (and resident ersatz honeybees) hot-glued around the edge of a bathroom mirror and a tiny guest bath with an exuberant sink, pulsing pink walls and a checkerboard ceiling.
“My favorite room is that little bath with its chandelier,” she says, smiling. “I love the ceiling.”
With all its charming vignettes, the home provides seemingly endless visual pleasures. You could walk through the house for days and never take it all in—especially since Kerry is always reinventing the space. “We’re not really finished. I still like to change things around every so often,” she says. “Rotate the art, bring new artwork in, just to keep it a little different.”
And different it is—as well as clever, creative and comfortable. “When friends come to visit, they really feel like they’re getting away from it all,” she says flashing that killer grin. “And they should. It’s a fun house.”