Craftsman 2.0: Design Ideas Abound in This Year’s Birmingham Home & Garden Inspiration Home

By Madoline Markham Koonce 

It’s not often that each room in a house is curated by a different interior designer, but that’s just what you’ll find at this year’s Birmingham Home & Garden Inspiration Home.

“It’s kind of like we built a museum and (the different interior designers) get to fill it in,” said Jason Hale, owner of Willow Homes, which built the house. 

The Craftsman home in Edgewood, at 106 East Edgewood Drive, is open for tours Oct. 31-Nov. 24. 

The most defining aspect of the home is its modern take on Craftsman style, which fits in with the landscape of Homewood. The house has an expansive footprint for its lot size, as envisioned by architect Jared Bussey of Architectural Cooperative.

“The Craftsman/Arts & Crafts style can be roomy and modern on the inside while still maintaining an appropriate scale and proportion along the street,” Bussey said.

The house packs in a lot of offerings on a narrow Edgewood lot: five bedrooms and 4½ baths, 4,165 square feet and covered parking in the back for two cars.

“What’s so fun about these (inspiration homes) is we get to flex our creative muscles,” said Hale, who also worked on the project with his wife, Roxanne, the agent for the house. “Each designer gets to put their signature on each room, so you want to create those different moments for them.”

Thoughtful design can be seen throughout the house, from architectural elements such as expansive windows that fill each room with light during the day to decorative details such as the fabric covering the fronts of storage cabinets in the entryway.

Kitchen Plus

One of the biggest showstoppers in the home is its kitchen designed by MaryAnn Hasabnis of Mash Design House. It has a colossal stained oak island and a butler’s pantry with a second dishwasher, microwave, sink and tons of storage space. 

Black and white reign in both spaces. Marble countertops and a white square-tile backsplash are paired with white painted cabinets in the main kitchen space, and a dark soapstone is used in the butler’s pantry, also with white cabinetry. In addition, the kitchen features a 48-inch Wolf range and Subzero appliances, with cabinetry fronts on the dishwasher and refrigerator/freezer.

Neutral colors and blacks carry over from the kitchen into the adjacent open living room designed by Nicole Roby of Nicole Roby Designs. White cabinetry with brass knobs is echoed in a wet bar between the dining room and living room, only with multiple hues of green square tiles for the backsplash.

Splashes of Green

Speaking of green, you’ll find its splash of color throughout the home. Green paint shines on the walls of the cozy dining area designed by Allison Hallman of Willow Interiors on the main floor as well as in the rec room and office upstairs, designed by SWAG Home Staging & Design and by Virginia Volman and Jonathan Lambert of Revival Antiques, respectively. Green paint hues also accent doors in one upstairs bedroom and cabinets in the laundry room.

Also of note in the laundry room, Mary Catherine Folmar of Cotton & Quill selected a wallpaper called Magnolia Toile that she reproduced from a wallpaper design in her great-grandmother’s dairy farm in Athens, Alabama. To create the design, she updated the colors and improvised the design based on the original with magnolia blooms and small-town architecture.

Another space that offers the promised inspiration is the grasscloth wallpaper-clad primary bathroom on the main floor, designed by Ashley Ayer of Ashley Ayer Interiors. It offers a retreat with its garden-style freestanding tub and two layers of shelves in the shower. And there’s a coffee station and mini refrigerator – perfect for certain skin care products or, as Hale suggested he would use it, drinks – adjacent to a large closet with a dreamy amount of storage as designed by Space Cadets. 

The primary suite also has its own washer and dryer in the bathroom for easy laundry access, while the house’s larger laundry room is upstairs closer to the other four bedrooms.

One of Hale’s favorite spaces in the home is its enclosed back porch living room, complete with its own bar and walls filled with artwork. Allyson Kirkpatrick of AllysonK Designs used a blue color scheme for the space.

“When I go out there, I feel almost like I am inside the house, but you are outside with a great stone fireplace,” Hale said. “The way it’s enclosed makes it very cozy.”

With two living areas, four bedrooms, two bathrooms and an office, the upstairs of the house is spacious. Designs in three of the bedrooms are by Lisa Shaddix of Lisa Shaddix Designs, Andrea Meade of Ellie Cate Home, and Kristen McGee of Kristen McGee Interiors, and the den was designed by Ashley White of Ashley White Interiors.

Each of the four bedrooms has its own shining personality, with a different designer putting their mark on each with wallpapers, tiles and accessories.

“Every bedroom is a treat,” Roxanne Hale said.

The closer you look in the home, the more local artwork you’ll see. Perhaps most notably, in a bedroom designed by Ragan Wesson of Ragan Brock Interiors, local artist Liz Allison has painted a whole wall with a peaceful mural of a pastoral scene with a stream. Downstairs, a gallery wall of abstract art and landscapes lines the entryway, as designed by Joe Lauber of Hiltz-Lauber.

“It’s a great place to feature local artists,” Jason Hale said. “There’s a lot of local art and local creativity in here, which is always fun.”

Supporting Trinity Outreach

Proceeds from ticket sales benefit a nonprofit each year, and this year the Willow Homes team selected the Trinity United Methodist Church Outreach Hub, in West Homewood, an operation that has particular significance to Roxanne Hale, since she volunteers there on Tuesdays. 

The hub offers assistance to people struggling with financial insecurity and displacement, especially refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, through offering food, clothing, household items and utility assistance.

“We deliver a week’s worth of food for 500 families every week, so local families can come through and pick up food,” Roxanne Hale said. “All the proceeds from the house go to them, and we (at Willow Homes) will try to match that donation. It gives you a good feeling to be able to do something like that.”

All in all, the creative process behind the home has been energizing for the Hales.

“It’s fun for us to see what (the designers) do with the space that we have created and make it their own,” Jason said.

Tickets for the tour are $10 each, and hours are Thursdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays, 1-5 p.m., through Nov. 24.

To learn more about the inspiration home, visit birminghamhomeandgarden.com.