Seattle Culture

Home of the Week: Charming Craftsman in Beacon Hill

Interior designer Sara Knowles prettied up the rental home she shares with her fiancé

By Lauren Mang November 21, 2014

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Each week, we’re featuring one Seattle-area home that we think is interesting, inspiring or just a downright feast for the eyes. Some of them are actually on the market, while other homes will offer enviable style tips–courtesy of their ingenious owners or designers–that you can steal for your own abode.

Even if you’re a renter, you still have the urge to put your stamp on a place. And that’s just what Sara Knowles did when she moved into this 1924 Craftsman home in Beacon Hill with her fiancé Logan Cox, chef at Capitol Hill restaurant Sitka and Spruce.

“It’s the first home we’ve shared together, so I wanted to make sure that it reflected both our tastes, which luckily, are quite complementary,” she says. Knowles, an interior designer at the recently launched-in-Seattle interior design firm Homepolish, which already offers its commission- and markup-free space-beautifying services in several cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago, received “carte blanche” from a very trusting Cox regarding the home’s design.

“It was important that our space was full of character but with some modern touches,” she says. “I wanted a home that felt interesting but not at all stuffy…that [would] ignite guests’ curiosity (oooh, what’s this, what’s that?) but also [feel] totally relatable, comfortable and definitely happy.”

The living room wall color, Benjamin Moore’s Heather Gray, was happily inherited and provides the perfect backdrop to Knowles’ slew of white decor and neutral furnishings. “I fell in love with this Moroccan pouf at a boutique in Anchorage when I was home visitng my parents,” she says. “I had been on the hunt for a coffee table but this seemed like a better alternative.”

In a rental, you often must work with what’s there. Case in point: The kitchen cabinets were already slicked in a shade of blue, so Knowles pumped up the personality via non-permanent accessories, like rows of simple mason jars to hold pantry items.

“There are so many projects I wish I could undertake but will have to wait until I have a home of my own. We were lucky to find such a charming and well cared for rental; a wonderful blank slate to house all of my treasures I’ve been toting around for the past few years,” she says. See more of this stunning project below. Want to learn more about Homepolish’s interior design services? Go here.


The kitchen cabinets were already this shade of blue when Knowles and Cox moved in. Thankfully, they were both happy with the color choice


Clockwise from left: A mudroom gone chic; kitchen flourishes and flowers on the dining table


Splashes of color in the bedroom come from furniture and accessories

The red outdoor chairs are from a vintage store in Bellingham called the Pennly Lane Antique Mall. “They were an off-white when we got them and I decided to spray paint them cherry red for a pop of color outside,” Knowles says.

Have a home or a room in your home that you’d like considered for Seattle mag’s Home of the Week? Email a few pictures and a little information about it to lauren.mang@tigeroak.com.

 

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