Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Home

Aspiration meets inspiration

A couple dreamed of a unique upgrade for a 24-year-old condo. A designer got to work. The result is a retreat a guy can love.

By JUDY STARK
Published May 20, 2006

	[Times photos: Bob Croslin]
	Because the living room can be viewed from the loft, it “had to look good from all angles,” designer Paul Lewis said. The mounted tarpon and marlin and the cedar lap siding create the Cuban fishing camp atmosphere the owners wanted.
	The big upstairs patio, with lots of places to socialize and a breathtaking view of the water, was one of the major reasons the Scotts bought the condo. They want to add a canopy to provide shelter from the sun.

ENGLEWOOD

All the men love this place.

"All the guys who see this place say, 'I could live here,' " said interior designer Paul Lewis.

His client, Pam Scott, agreed. "Even all the subs and the contractors loved it," she said.

Maybe it's the dark colors - browns, tans, dusty greens. Maybe it's the oversized leather furniture with nailhead trim that Pam's husband, Bryant, likes to sink into. Maybe it's the 12-foot marlin and the 6-foot tarpon hanging on the walls in the two-story living room. Or the stained cedar lap siding on one wall of the living room that makes it feel like the porch of a Cuban fishing camp, exactly the look that the Scotts wanted.

Ernest Hemingway would have been right at home here.

An outdated look

Papa Hemingway would not have been right at home here before an extensive remodel and redesign. Built in 1982, it's a 1,410-square-foot condo on Manasota Key, just south of the Sarasota-Charlotte county line, with two bedrooms, a loft and 2½ baths.

In its former life there was a LumaDome ceiling in the kitchen, white carpet, white walls, pastel accents, gray tile, a sleeper sofa with a mirrored accent strip, a set of clunky carpeted stairs, and a kitchen closed off with a pass-through.

"It was pretty dated," Bryant said the other day by cell phone from his boat in the Gulf of Mexico, where the tarpon were just starting to run. "It was 20 years old and not a lot had been done to it. It was a classic Florida deal, pastel colors, and we're not the pastel kind of people."

Bryant's first inclination was just to leave the place the way it was, since the family uses the place only part-time, "maybe just slap a coat of paint on it," Lewis recalled.

"Bryant envisions fish blood all over the place and doesn't want to have to worry about anything," Pam said of her sportsman husband, a former Home Depot executive. But he also wants wireless everything and a plasma-screen TV in the armoire in the living room.

Lewis, a Tampa-based designer who has worked on three other homes for the Scotts, persuaded Bryant that "if you spruce it up more, you'll enjoy living here more."

The Scotts are former residents of Pinellas County who now live in Alpharetta, Ga., but spend as much time as possible in Florida. A few years ago Lewis remodeled a beach cottage for them a little farther north on Manasota Key. They sold that cottage and bought the condo a year ago for $655,000, county records show.

Now, Bryant loves the sleek wood staircase; the loft, where Lewis ripped out an unused shower to create a powder bath and a wet bar; and the upstairs patio with a great view out over Lemon Bay that's what essentially sold the Scotts on the place; and that cedar-lined wall.

"When he first proposed the lap siding, I thought, 'Man, I can't visualize that,' " Bryant said. "But we'd worked with him before, and it turned out to be one of the better elements in the condo. It's got a real warm feel to it."

A chance to experiment

The Scotts' house in Pasadena Yacht & Country Club had a pumpkin-and-teal color scheme, as does their current home in Alpharetta. Their former beach cottage had "a Ralph Lauren look," Pam said, in saturated tones of brick red, maize and cobalt blue. This home is different from any of them, "way out of their comfort zone," Lewis said.

"I have lots of different tastes and you can't do them all in one place," Pam said. "It's fun to have different places and experiment with different things. I liked the other house" on Manasota Key, "but this one I really like."

Lewis offered his clients a choice of three color palettes: black, green and gold; brick, black and camel; and the scheme they chose: biscuit, dusty green and brown. The walls are painted in Benjamin Moore colors: a butterscotch shade called Boardwalk, and a green called At Home with Nature. Trim is Atrium White.

"Everything has texture, which makes it less formal," Lewis pointed out. The big chairs in the living room, by Raymond Waites, are upholstered in a synthetic skin with palm trees outlined in nailheads around the skirts. The rug is a Tommy Bahama design he picked up at Macy's. A surfboard, a guitar and those big fish (they're plastic forms) take the dressy edge off the place. Lewis calls it "rusticated formality."

"We wanted it to be warm and inviting and comfortable," Pam said. Their college-age daughter and son spent spring break there with their friends "and we wanted it to be a place where we wouldn't worry too much about having a bunch of college kids there." ("The neighbors told us they were very energetic," Bryant said.)

Money well spent

Beyond the pleasure of having a comfortable, luxurious pied-a-terre in Florida, the condo made good investment sense, Bryant said.

The remodeling, by Bayfront Builders of Englewood, cost about $144,000. That included replacing the countertops in the kitchen with granite and in the bathrooms with Corian ($35,000); remodeling the stairs with new treads and rail ($7,000); structured wiring and two plasma TVs ($9,000); and repairing drywall and repainting ($8,000).

Lewis' fee was just more than $77,000. That included furniture, art, custom bedding and pillows, lighting, rugs, accessories, silk arrangements; and his fee for the design work (space planning, the kitchen and bath design, specifications, supervising the trades, shopping and travel time, and installation).

Bryant figures he's coming out ahead. New condos in that area go for $1-million, he said, and don't offer what he has: a spacious unit with a great view, large common areas, a pool, a boat dock right outside his back door and a private beach across the street. "There are no other units on the beach that have all that," he said - plus his stylishly designed, new interior.

Other units in the complex "absolutely do not" look like this, Pam said. A couple of her neighbors came through recently, looked around in amazement and asked for Lewis' card.

The construction workers at their other houses "have said, 'Oh, this turned out really nice,' and it's not that our other houses were feminine," Pam said. "But they loved this one. This one is more lodgy-feeling, more manly, and everyone seems to see that."

Judy Stark can be reached at (727) 893-8446 or stark@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 19, 2006, 09:07:11]