A Southwest Roanoke home blends Parisian elegance, bold geometric design, and luxurious details, reflecting the owners’ personal style and joy in every room.
Photos By Taylor Reschka
Pam and Frank Martin’s home feels like the heart of Paris without traveling any farther than Southwest Roanoke. They purchased the traditional Colonial in 2006, and Pam has redone the interior—room by room—since then. She has sparingly placed intentional pops of color over a neutral color palette with clean geometric lines throughout. The result is a design scheme Pam likens to a Parisian apartment with modern touches.
The Kitchen
The kitchen was the first home project the Martins completed in 2016, taking it down to the studs.
Pam loves a “chunky” countertop and the feeling that it is “actually going over the edge.” She found the perfect piece of marble for the waterfall countertop that satisfied her desire for chunkiness.
People warned Pam away from marble, citing the higher maintenance as opposed to quartz. but Pam disagrees with the perception that marble is delicate. The material has never held her back. She notes that the marble has grown pitted with use, and it’s also developed a patina over time To the naysayers, Pam counters, “I love the fact that it doesn’t look the same as it did when we installed it. I love that it has aged.”
Pam and Frank drink red wine and roll out dough on the countertops without worry. The only maintenance they pursue is getting the countertops sealed every few years and scraping some grout out to replace it.
Pam chose marble with veins of darker gray that provide “motion” to contrast the generally static geometry of most of the home.
In keeping with Pam’s desire for the countertops to be the focal point, she selected a monoslab stove backsplash and plain white subway tiles with gray grout for the countertop backsplash.
The Wine Room
Pam and Frank owned a wine shop when they got married and have always loved wine and wine labels. While they later gave up the shop, they’ve preserved that love through this wine room.
The wine room was originally the dining room, but Pam and Frank converted it because of its small size. They now use it as their entertaining room, employing a “no dogs allowed” rule and enjoying evenings with friends.
To get it ready for entertaining, Pam hired a carpenter to add “lots of molding and lots of texture.” The molding features squares and rectangles with more squares visible in the light fixtures because Pam loves “squares on top of squares on top of squares.” She kept the original cabinets, as they’re spacious, but painted the oak a darker color and swapped out the original formica countertop for marble.
Pam and Frank also knocked out the window that looked out onto the back patio and installed a door. This allows easy access to their outdoor cooking appliances, where they enjoy grilling a steak to pair with a wine from their collection.
The Jewel Box Powder Room
Pam dreamed of having a “little jewel box, totally glam, outrageous” powder room to surprise first-time visitors to their home.
To that end, she initially planned to update the wallpaper. She found a hand-painted wallpaper that was beautiful, but so pricey that it gave her pause. She recalls thinking, “For as much as that wallpaper cost, I calculated that I could clad the walls in marble. So we clad the walls, floor to ceiling, in marble instead.”
The floor tile is granite, the doors mirror the squares throughout the house and the toilet is black. Pam “absolutely loves” the black toilet, noting that people don’t have neutral feelings about a black toilet and “either love it or hate it.”
The ceiling looks like real metal but is actually hammered gold paint. A sputnik light fixture lights the space so all the glam can shimmer and shine.
A jewel box, totally glam, outrageous powder room? Check. “We did it!” Pam rejoices.
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