If a man is known by the books he keeps, then interior designer Jason Arnold is revealed by the coffee table tomes in his Germantown home. Arnold inherits that mantle, as evidenced by his 1,square-foot Victorian shotgun cottage, where beauty is balanced by subtlety and richness. Built in , the cottage would have once been the domain of blue-collar workers. Arnold initially found it covered in vinyl siding and 'reeking of cats and dogs. On the porch remains a swath of original gingerbread trim and a plaque proclaiming the home's historical designation.
Inside, the foyer is colored with an off-black, high-gloss oil paint for a look that is just short of lacquer. Amplifying the foyer's glamour is a vintage Lucite table that Arnold found at the Antiques and Garden Show of Nashville. The living room is a scene of design eras mingling harmoniously. A contemporary rug in black-and-white stripes lies across the original pine floors.
And there's more Lucite via a floor lamp and candlesticks. Hanging above this tableau is a breathtaking chandelier made of oxidized brass, which Arnold discovered at GasLamp Too. The room's most sumptuous piece is a French buffet , crafted out of burled wood, from the mids. Arnold loves its book-matched inset panels and distinctive material. One quickly learns why honeyed tones charm Arnold: A bonanza of gold hues, through fixtures and furniture, provide a sexy complement to the many black tones that reoccur throughout the house.
As with the foyer, one of the two bedrooms is painted in high-gloss black, and black is also found in the kitchen cabinets, a claw-foot tub and hexagonal bathroom tiles. All of the baseboards were milled to match what little was left from , work done by James Dunn of Vintage Millworks. The floor plan was reworked to accommodate two-and-a-half baths; originally there was one. Yet, only one foot was added to the home. Today, Germantown is the site of teardowns galore, but this Victorian cottage preserves the past without being fettered by it, because, here, the patina of age lives side-by-side with modernity.
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