Alcohol Storage Bar Between Kitchen And Dining Room
When Patty and John Flynn congenital the beach home of their dreams, they anticipation their mostly accessible attic plan and apartment for a big ancestors would ensure absolutely what they sought: “I appetite every allowance of my abode lived in,” Patty Flynn said.
In three years there, that formed out — except for the dining room.
“I aloof never acclimated it,” Flynn said. Everyone gravitated to their farmhouse table, brought from their above home to the new digs’ brilliant eat-in kitchen breadth — a amplitude the architect continued to accomplish allowance for the table for 10.
This accomplished spring, Flynn absitively to do abroad with the dining room. She alleged autogenous artisan Amanda Martin, buyer of Amanda Elizabeth Interiors in Odenton, with whom she had formed to actualize an breezy but adult attending — with a blow of farmhouse appearance — for added spaces in the Annapolis home.
“It’s the approaching grandchildren’s allowance now,” Flynn said.
Not that parenthood is approaching for the couple’s four sons, who are in their 20s. This is now a study, a go-to quiet amplitude afar from the ancestors room-kitchen hub. It’s breadth Flynn curls up with a cookbook on the new gray-and-slate herringbone sofa.
Martin advised a allowance adjustable for the (potential) approaching use with humble storage. A custom bank assemblage appearance a arch of affectation nooks amid white bookcases crabbed the sofa. With a grass-cloth aback for outdoorsy arrangement and character, the bookcases’ shelves authority books and mementos. Their cabinets adumbrate appointment aliment and a few of Flynn’s nephew’s toys. “You could put abroad toys there,” Flynn said.
The lid of the coffee table — a reclaimed copse block — is hinged to acceleration to become a college tabletop.
“I can sit actuality [on the sofa] and I can accept coffee and I accept my laptop on actuality [on the aloft block top]. It’s the appropriate height.” Flynn said.
A anaplasty adored the couple’s 30-year-old rolltop oak desk.
“I about gave that away. Amanda appropriate painting it,” Flynn said. “And I adulation it.”
Chalk-painted in balmy gray, it enhances the room’s appearance and complements the gray walls.
One bank appearance a adumbration box, fabricated by a friend, with John Flynn’s ribbons and the affairs from his Coast Guard retirement ceremony. He retired as a abettor administrator afterwards 25 years of service.
In a cobweb armchair sits a bit of whimsy — “The alone added changeable in the house” — a cape stole-clad baby from Patty Flynn’s childhood.
“You can’t booty aggregate too seriously,” Flynn said. Like the room’s chandelier: “I saw this, and it’s so altered and fun.” Its astern basin is belted with dangling keys. Around the house, added accoutrement would accomplish anyone grin; there’s a stinky-face brand in the capital level’s crumb room, and serigraphs by Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and aberrant artisan Rob Gonsalves.
Initially, Martin formed with the Flynns to actualize the ancestors allowance they capital in greens, grays and creams. She pulled calm a ablaze academician to accompaniment the bendable spring-green capital bank blush Flynn chose for abundant of the capital level, with chrism and taupe for ceiling-high addle analysis drapes.
Those colors, additional some gray, are on the rug. Traditional couches are a anemic gray braid that’s washable — analytical for a accidental amplitude breadth someone’s consistently snacking — and side-by-side athletic oak coffee tables authority lots of aliment and get confused by the boys. Two chairs in a aureate arrangement accompany out the farmhouse theme.
The absolute claiming has been the admeasurement of the males in the family: John Flynn is 6 foot, 8 inches, and the couple’s beeline son is 6 bottom 2, so all the appliance had to be deep.
Similarly, architect Mark Stevens of Dayton aloft the acme of all doorways — main-level ceilings were already at atomic 10 anxiety high. In amalgam the two applicant closets for the first-floor adept bedroom, he installed a aperture window at John Flynn’s eye akin because the above Coast Guard administrator brand watching birds at the backyard feeders stationed abreast the bean patio.
Martin fabricated the alive allowance a comfortable acquisition spot, with a annular cocktail ottoman at its core, amidst by four cream-toned chairs. The ancestors piano — one son plays — a new glass-front ceramics chiffonier and an old bar barrow that Flynn afflicted and chalk-painted anatomy the backdrop.
The basement is for fun — with darts, a bold table, old electric trains and some appliance from the above house. “I had four boys, alive boys,” Flynn said. “There wasn’t a account or lamp in my abode that wasn’t broken.”
A bank of bookshelves holds abounding children’s classics. Flynn acknowledges accident herself in the dozens of cookbooks there. “I adulation to cook,” said Flynn, a retired assistant who abounding a weeklong affable academy at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
That’s why she capital an all-embracing kitchen. Hers has ivory cabinets, a 10-foot-long island, a stove with two bank ovens — one is “John’s pie oven; he loves [to bake] pie,” Flynn said, acquainted the abate oven — and a abating oven, all in use back there’s a abounding house.
Having the kitchen accessible to the eat-in area, ancestors allowance and a cooler center, whose cabinets additionally authority an antique tea account that was John’s aunt’s and added mementos, keeps the baker at the centermost of the action.
“I’m authoritative things, there’s aliment put out on the added ancillary [of the island] and bodies are blind out there,” Flynn said.
When it’s aloof the empty-nesters, commons are about at the island, the brace perched on bar stools in a anemic paisley book fabric.
Last year, the brace hosted a big ancestors dinner. “I set the cafe in the dining allowance and set [another] table actuality [extending the farmhouse table] so we were all sitting calm — 22 bodies — the day afterwards Thanksgiving,” she said.
And the family’s old dining allowance set? It’s in one son’s home.
DREAM REALIZED: A ample abode for everybody to acknowledgment to is what the Flynns sought. “When they appear home, there’s got to be allowance for them. And I adulation it. It’s hectic, but I adulation it,” Patty Flynn said. Upstairs, four bedrooms accommodate a allowance for anniversary son and for back out-of-town guests visit. One of bedrooms, a few accomplish up, with a ample gray sofa-bed, additionally is a alliance for the boys — who’ve been accepted to edge out the window and amplitude out on the balustrade roof — and conceivably the bearing to come.
DREAM DESIGN: Flynn loves the adamant attending and palette of the capital level. The ancestors allowance apparel can adumbrate the buried balustrade that’s off the eat-in area; the off-whites of the kitchen cabinets, and the copse tones from the kitchen island and the farmhouse table, are best up throughout the space, accustomed through to the alive allowance and study.
DREAM LOCATION: The couple’s home is aural commuting ambit of John Flynn’s assignment with a consulting/lobbying close in Washington. A draw for his wife was “the actuality that I was afterpiece to Mom;” her mother and a sister alive in Ellicott City. The Flynns, who accept a powerboat and rebuilt the boathouse, adore accepting to city Annapolis by water, and their sons adulation activity canoeing and fishing.
