victorian home decorating ideas contemporary

where i livejohn and carol knorpp hi i'm john knorpp and i'm carol knorpp and this is ourhouse in larkspur california the house has a lot of great history, it's one of thefive oldest original houses in larkspur, built in eighteen ninety five by a family from southern california, it's had twoowners throughout its history, we're fortunate enough to be the third. we were not looking for a house,we'd been in a great house down three blocks away for about eighteen years and my wife came home one day and said there's thisgreat old house up on the hill. it was really old, it needed a lot of work and we had been at our other house for

almost twenty years and we were sort of readyfor another project. it needed a new foundation, it needed new windows, it needed lighting and we really wanted to do something a littlebit more modern. we're not really victorian people andwe didn't want to go back to the period, we all agreed that it was a place that could start kind of anew

and have a fresh beginning. the look that we were going for was sort of a modern meets traditional so we wanted something sort of transitional, the way to achieve that we decided was to open up the floor plan, we felt that would give it more of a casual look, and we like to entertain, we like to have lotsof kids over,

because i thought it had great charm greathistory and at the same time it was just a fantastic place to have our kids grow through their teenage yearsand first they grow old and not be able to walk up the steps. so we walked in and there was tiny little kitchen and this enormous dining room that was very very formal, so we decided to take down the wall,

and create a much larger kitchen. it's big but it's cozy it's open but it's at the same time intimate. i think the master bedroom is probably one of the best parts of the houseit's like a little nest up there, there wasn't a staircase to it when we first purchased the house, we put sort of a winding staircase with a rodiron railing. what we tried to do is create

a really timeless place and we think potterybarn helped us do that in a lot of ways. pottery barn is a great fit for our family,it's really approachable, and casual. our kids' rooms downstairs we did completely in pottery barn teen, theyhave fun items, they have great colors and i think it works really great in our house, it's a great fit. pottery barn

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