Red, green, amaretto and walnut tones grace a sophisticated nursery for a Designers' Challenge home in Sunset Park.
By JUDY STARK
Published August 9, 2003
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
The custom-made rug is “an exclamation point for the room,” says designer Susan Lanson of Lincoln Design in Tampa. Mirrored panels replace louvers on the closet doors.
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
Audio supervisor Jeff Scolaro, left, watches as Christopher Buck of Buckshot Productions lines up a shot of the kitchen television for the Designers’ Challenge show. A camera monitor in baby Margaret’s room allows parents Margaret and Pat Courtney to view her on any TV in the house.
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
Margaret Grace Courtney, 34 days old today, sleeps through a taping of the Designers’ Challenge show.
TAMPA - When we met Margaret and Pat Courtney back in April, they were awaiting the birth of a baby girl, remodeling their Sunset Park home, and videotaping a segment for Designers' Challenge.
That's the HGTV show in which three designers offer their ideas to homeowners, who choose one of the proposals for a room makeover and see the project through.
The Courtneys wanted to create a nursery for their daughter, but they told the designers: No pink. No Winnie-the-Pooh. We like dark colors and modern design, and "we don't want to have to repaint the nursery in a couple of years," Margaret said this week.
Last Sunday, Designers' Challenge came back to town to tape the finished project.
"It's done and it's beautiful," Margaret said as her daughter, Margaret Grace - born July 7, 8 pounds, 8 ounces, and known as "Little Margaret" - cooed in her arms.
"There's nothing "baby' about this room. It's very elegant," said designer Susan Lanson, of Lincoln Design in Tampa, who worked on the project with Rhonda Lyons. "We wanted a 6-year-old to be as comfortable as an infant."
There's a dark walnut changing table and a matching crib with lipstick-red bedding and a green bumper with multicolored dots. The walls are palm-tree green with a mural of a lipstick palm. For the new mother and baby to rock in, a lipstick-red swivel rocker with a matching ottoman is covered in a fabric called Novasuede, a faux suede made of nylon microfibers "that's supposed to be easy to clean," Margaret said. "We'll find out."
The designers added some high-tech touches. A Lutron system allows the parents to program five different lighting moods, ranging from full-on alert in case of an emergency, to a bright playtime setting, to a bedtime setting that gradually dims and turns itself off. From a keypad at their bedside the parents can push a button and light a path to the baby's room.
The system incorporates a camera so Margaret and Pat can turn on any TV in the house (Little Margaret's channel is 77) and see and hear what's going on in her room. Eventually they may be able to log on to the Internet and watch Little Margaret on her own Web site. There's also a remote control they can clip on a car visor so when they pull into their driveway after dark, they can press a button and lights will go on inside.
The lighting system is housed in an "architectural element" above the baby's crib that looks like an upside-down birthday cake. There's also cove lighting around the room's perimeter.
On the floor, the old terrazzo was replaced with travertine marble topped by a round rug custom-made by Carpet Crafters Rug Co. of Tampa. The rug is in amaretto with a spiral design in black braid. Pat calls it the "follow the yellow brick road" rug.
"There's a little tiny circle in the very middle that catches your eye and directs you to the crib and the architectural element above the crib. It's an exclamation point for the room," Lanson said. "It's a bit of whimsy and fun, very lively."
The show was shot slightly out of sequence. Back in April the Courtneys were videotaped meeting with the three designers as they made their pitches. The scene where the Courtneys reviewed the proposals and announced their choice was shot last weekend. Margaret, of course, was no longer pregnant, but she padded herself "with dry cleaner plastic wrap" so she'd look the way she did back in April. For a shopping sequence last weekend at Custom Carpet, she padded herself out with wool carpet backing to re-create the pregnant look so it would seem that the segment was shot weeks ago - even though the rug was already completed and lying on the floor at her home.
The project was done on time and under the budget of $7,500, said Margaret, 36, a lawyer with Hillsborough County. Pat, 34, is a lawyer in private practice.
Now they're just waiting for the rest of their whole-house remodeling to be completed. They're adding a second-floor master suite and turning their 1957 ranch into a "contemporary tropical" home with a metal roof.
The remodeling project was going "fine until the baby was born," Margaret said. She'd leave for work at 8 a.m., before the crews got there, and when she got home at 6, they'd be gone. "But then we had her, and now there are all these people in my house" all day, along with mother and baby. It's been tough, she said, having two adults, a baby, a German shepherd and a Samoyed living in just the master bedroom and the kitchen.
But the work should be finished soon, and the new mother reports that Little Margaret has demonstrated an amazing ability to sleep through the sound of jackhammers, a skill she apparently learned in the womb, her mother said.
* * *
Designers' Challenge also completed videotaping of a project in Safety Harbor last weekend for a family who preferred to remain anonymous. There, St. Petersburg designer Gloria N. Ellinwood created bedrooms and a playroom in tropical colors for sisters, ages 6 and 4.
She created a floor-to-ceiling unit in the play area for computers, TV and sound system. The girls' computer desk areas are lined with corkboard, dry-erase board and magnetic board. Ellinwood put trundle beds in both girls' rooms for sleepovers with friends, and added a futon and floor pillows in the playroom for slumber parties.
For the murals on the bedroom walls she included the lighthouse in the Bahamas that one girl requested and the butterflies and a boat dock that the other asked for.
To watch the shows
HGTV hasn't set a date yet when the local Designers' Challenge episodes will be broadcast. We'll let you know when they're scheduled.
