Houzz Tour: A Family Home Comes Together, One Piece at a Time

Jeff and Lesley Glotzl weren’t thinking about curb appeal or resale value when they bought their 1960s split-level home in Richmond, Virginia, five years ago. “From the outside there was nothing that was great,” Lesley says of the home’s exterior. But with a 2-month-old son, the couple liked the home’s large front yard, friendly neighborhood near a river and good school district. They were sold on the house before they walked through the front door.

The house was roughly three times the size of their home at the time, and though Jeff and Lesley were excited about this next step for their growing family, they quickly realized it would be an expensive one. Lesley, an interior decorator and the former owner of a popular antiques shop, set to work filling the house for as little money as possible, scouring Craigslist, eBay, yard sales and trash heaps to find pieces that would help turn the house into the home she envisioned for her growing family.

Photos by Todd Wright

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Lesley and Jeff Glotzl and their 2 sons, Ford (age 5) and Louie (4)
Location: Sleepy Hollow neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia
Size: 3,200 square feet; 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, 2 half baths

An old secretary desk Lesley bought at an auction welcomes visitors at the door. On it is a needlepoint piece that reads: “Great spirit help me to never judge another until I have walked in his moccasins two weeks,” with a little totem pole stitched next to the wording.

The red chandelier and floor runner introduce a color that Lesley has carried throughout the home. The vintage chandelier was brass when Lesley and Jeff bought it eight years ago on Craigslist for their wedding. At the reception they hung 22 vintage chandeliers Jeff had rewired; this is one of the few that remain.


To the right of the entry is the living room. Lesley works most of the time in this corner, splitting her hours as an interior decorator between home and the Designers Market in Richmond. A vintage tobacco basket hangs above her desk, and charcoal drawings of her two sons, Ford and Louie, hang on the adjacent wall. Brett Edenton, a Chicago artist and a friend of Lesley’s from art school, drew them for her.

The living room originally didn’t include this workspace. “I hated [the room] for two years,” Lesley says. She was not quite able to put her finger on what was missing. After playing with the layout and adding this corner workspace, everything fell into place for her. Now clients can visit her at home, and what she needs for work is accessible but out of the way.


She put together much of this room, and other rooms in the house, with thrift store and salvaged finds. Two exceptions are the pillows and light fixtures. Lesley says she’s much more critical of quality when it comes to these two items. “Pillows are the things that people really notice in the room,” she says. ”It’s the thing people touch all the time.” She also insists on well-made lighting, saying, “It’s one of those things you can tell is cheap.” Splurging on these pieces, she says, will make your other decor look better.

The red area rug came with the house, and she repeated that red in the throw pillows, mantel objects and adjoining rooms. She kept the rest of the room neutral.

The steamer trunk used as a coffee table is from a neighborhood yard sale. “Richmond” and someone’s initials are written on the side. Jeff figured out how to unlock the trunk, and Lesley stores clients’ fabric swatches and material samples inside.

Wall paint: Adams Gold, Benjamin Moore; mantel paint: Mole’s Breath, Farrow & Ball


The upright piano in another corner of the living room is from Lesley’s mother. Local artist Laura Loe painted artwork with tangerines and flowers hanging above it.


Lesley painted the dining room a rich olive green to emphasize it as a destination room. Throughout the house she painted thoroughfare rooms in neutral colors and used darker, riches shades for the rooms they lead to, which are almost like punctuation marks.

The dining table and chairs are vintage, which Lesley prefers for wood furniture. “New furniture tends to look bad when it’s worn, where old furniture looks better,” she says. When the dining table turns into a craft table, as it does from time to time, Lesley can just rub it down afterward and it’s ready for the next project or meal.

Wall paint: Olive, Farrow & Ball


In the kitchen, where son Ford, 5, is pictured, Lesley and Jeff replaced the linoleum floors with tile and installed a beadboard backsplash they painted a deep turquoise. The previous owners, who were the original owners, had painted the cabinets and installed granite counters, which Lesley and Jeff liked. ”Their choices were good enough that we did keep what they put in,” Lesley says.

Backsplash paint: Bermuda Turquoise, Benjamin Moore


Lesley hung as much original art as possible; on the kitchen walls she attached clipboards so she could easily display her sons’ latest creations.

She bought the kitchen table and chairs on Craigslist and gave the chairs a facelift, painting them a bright, high-gloss orange.

Dining chair paint: Mandarin Red (Pantone), Fine Paints of Europe


The family room off the kitchen is where the family members spend the most time when they are home. Here, Louie, 4, walks from the family room into the kitchen while Ford watches TV.

This room is also where Jeff intervened with the decorating. Lesley assumed they would paint the original paneling — she just didn’t know what color — but Jeff insisted they keep the wood as it was. “In here he totally put his foot down,” Lesley says. So it stayed.

Lesley hung large, colorful pieces on the wall to distract from the paneling. But she says she has gotten used to it and likes how cozy the room feels when they build fires in winter. Visitors are impressed too. “People always say, ‘Wow! You make the paneling look cool,’” she says.


Lesley purchased this mounted sailfish on the website of local antiques store Class and Trash. “I knew I was done,” she says. Then she built the rest of the room around it.

She pulled colors from the fish for the turquoise walls and used an orange duvet she already had. “It looks like it’s kind of careless, but it’s not,” Lesley says. In this room, as with others in the house, Lesley let one piece lead her to the next, using each product as a guide on the path to the room’s completion. “I feel like a room is done when there is a really good color and space and shape balance,” she says.

She laid out everything she had and looked for gaps, filling those with pieces that would tie the room together, such as this plaid blanket that marries the two bold colors.

Wall paint: Blue Fir, Martha Stewart Living


Jeff and Lesley’s bedroom features an Ikea canopy bed that she painted a high-gloss black. They discovered the blueprints in the garage of their previous home and had them framed.

Wall paint: Camouflage, Benjamin Moore; bed paint: Railings, Farrow & Ball


The boys share a bedroom, and here we see Ford’s side, marked by the Ford truck hubcap hanging above his headboard. A geometric flag, also from Class and Trash, hangs above the bed. Lesley bought the wall art from Michigan folk artist Tom D.

Wall paint: Pavilion Gray, Farrow & Ball; nightstand paint: Mandarin Red (Pantone), Fine Paints of Europe


Granite countertops installed by the previous owners match the original pink tile in the boys’ bathroom. Lesley painted the walls a medium gray in hopes that the color might neutralize the “fleshy pink” a little.

The decor gave Lesley another opportunity to play. “I ignored the fact that it was a bathroom,” she says. Over the toilet she hung a collection of oyster plates and over the vanity an over-the-top gold mirror.

Wall paint: Metro Gray, Benjamin Moore


Jeff, who does CGI and photo retouching, works out of the downstairs den, where he has plenty of room to spread out. The big room is great for Jeff, who is pictured here with Louie. But it was a challenge for Lesley when she was deciding how to cover the walls. Mirrors are typically her go-to solutions, but in this case an 8-foot by 4-foot American flag suited the space well.

Wall paint: Adams Gold, Benjamin Moore

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