Houzz Tour: Turning Tradition on Its Head in Vermont

Interior designer Steven Favreau’s favorite compliment on the Chelsea, Vermont, home he created for himself and husband Gary Decad sums it all up. “A woman visited, and after looking around a bit, she said, ‘This house pushes the limits, but it doesn’t go over them,’” he says. Favreau admits that limits have never been his thing. “There are a lot of designers who like to design in a very safe style, and that work can be beautiful,” he says. “For myself, I like design that is bold and courageous.”

Houzz at a Glance
Location: Chelsea, Vermont
Who lives here: Steven Favreau and Gary Decad
Size: 5,000 square feet; 5 bedrooms, 4½ bathrooms

Favreau and Decad split their time between San Francisco and Chelsea. But at first they were looking for a second home in Paris. When the logistics of such an arrangement became too much, they turned their eyes toward Vermont. Favreau found this 1832 house on the Internet. “It had everything we wanted,” he says. “It is historic, it had some land around it, and it hadn’t had the character remodeled out of it.”


Open the door and you will see that Favreau had unique character in mind. While he preserved and restored all of the original details — woodwork, floors and hardware — he took the idea of traditional design and made it into something else.

A book about the history of Chelsea shows this house with striped wallpaper. Favreau took that concept and gave it a twist, expanding the stripes and rotating them as horizontal lines.


“I’ve done a lot of research, and I’ve found that colonial homes actually had very, very bright colors,” he says. “The homes were lit by candlelight, and bold colors looked less gloomy.”

When asked if there’s historical precedent for a leopard-pattern stair runner, he laughed and said, “Although there’s plenty of wildlife around there, I just love animal prints, damn it!”


Favreau says the light blue color in the living room is not historically accurate either. “I painted it this color to lighten things up a bit,” he says. Here, as in the rest of the house, modern pieces live unabashedly with antiques, much to the dismay of the Victorian woman in the painting over the fireplace. “I think she looks so mad,” says Favreau. “She’s looking at the light fixture and the Lucite tables, and she looks angry.” Perhaps the grandfather clock (one of five in the house) and the silk top hat are more to her liking.


Again, playing with the idea of history with a twist, Favreau took classic lines and distorted them to his liking, as seen in the pattern of the rug and the nailhead trim on the sofa.


The man in the portrait over the gilded fireplace in the dining room is Aaron Davis, one of the first owners of the house and the postmaster of Chelsea.

Favreau says the abstract shapes on the wallpaper remind him of stacks of footed plates. The ceiling wallpaper is a classic print; he made it more interesting by mirroring it in the floor rug.

The lines of the chairs suggest Louis XVII, but the purple faux-crocodile upholstery paired with stripes and a vibrant teal color suggests a decidedly modern era.


Flocked wallpaper depicting silhouettes is the perfect nod to times past in the powder room.


The house had been a bed-and-breakfast for a time, and a previous remodel had left it feeling more industrial than historic.

Favreau warmed things up with reclaimed wood cabinets and a wallpaper showing the end cuts of logs. “There are woodpiles all over Chelsea, because everyone has a fireplace or a stove,” he says. “We have seven fireplaces in this home, so we have cords of wood delivered every year.”


A long farm-style table in the kitchen allows for more casual dining.


“We have a dog named Hubble, and Chelsea is the county seat, so it is a shire,” Favreau says, explaining the home’s name and the letters on the kitchen wall.


The master bedroom displays Favreau’s pattern passion. Look closely and you’ll see it starts on the walls. “The wallpaper is covered with all kinds of autographs,” says Favreau. “They range from Paul Revere to Bruce Springsteen. It reminds me of the ages of the house and all the people who have lived here.” Favreau was reminded in a concrete way of the people who lived here before him during the remodel, which uncovered an 1811 penny, a cotillion invitation from the late 1800s and a newspaper from the 1930s.

Hubble, the home’s namesake, warms himself by the fire.


The house sits in the middle of a community with 1,250 members, so the remodel was very much in the public eye.

When asked if people minded the updating of a local landmark, Favreau says, “As far as we know, no. It was in pretty bad shape when we got it, and there had been talk of turning it into a private school, which would have completely changed it. I think people were happy to see it be cared for.”

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URL: Houzz Tour: Turning Tradition on Its Head in Vermont http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-22737.html