No, it’s not a dance craze; “The Flip” is a valuable way
of rethinking the use of space in your home
by linda barth
photography by david christ
A year or so ago, Mary and Gerry Averitt took a good look at their nice suburban tract home outside Beltway 8 in West Houston and decided they were ready for were ready for something different.and magical.
With a large backyard and inviting pool, the Averitts’ two-story home had been a happy place to rear two sons to adulthood. They didn’t want to move. Even with their sons grown and out of the nest, though, the house somehow seemed too small.
Some rooms were never used. Others weren’t large enough for entertaining friends in the gracious way that Mary and Gerry like to entertain.
Mary’s favorite movie is Babette’s Feast, so when she and Gerry throw a dinner party, it’s a production. They plan the meal for days, sometimes weeks. They enjoy the process of shopping for foods and wines, pressing the linens, choosing the tableware and flowers, and cooking in abundance for ten to 12 dinner guests.
Until recently, they’d served their delicious “feasts” in their cramped dining room. They love to dance, too, but since their grand piano filled their tiny living room, there wasn’t much room for dancing after dinner.
Mary’s sister had hired Houston designer Kelly Amen in the early ’70s to do her house, and Mary had always wanted Kelly to do her house, too.
But she and Gerry were a little hesitant. “Will Kelly want to do this suburban sort of thing?” Gerry remembers asking Mary. (Amen, who lives inside the Loop, has designed a number of urban interiors, in addition to creating his own custom line of furniture.)
Amen visited the couple’s house and saw immediately how he could help them. “You don’t use the house,” he told them. They were not using the living room at all, their breakfast room was simply a place to pass through to get to the patio, and while their family room was spacious, no one lingered there. Amen’s classic prescription for clients who don’t use their space efficiently is “The Flip.”
“The American family room and the living room is so locked into its myth,” Amen declares. He likes to break the myth by moving furniture around to other rooms, changing the function of the rooms so clients can envision different ways of living in their space. “It’s the best way to analyze from all points your inventory,” he told the Averitts. “Why don’t we start with The Flip?” They agreed, with Mary more enthusiastic than Gerry at first.
“I wanted something that was Kelly’s-I didn’t want to put limits on him,” says Mary.
“I was concerned about The Flip because I’m conservative,” says Gerry.
“But once I got there, I was really there.” “Kelly showed up with three guys to move furniture,” Gerry recalls.
“Okay,” warned Amen as he started The Flip. “We’re gonna jump out of the box!”
“Kelly would give them orders,” Gerry says, “and they were shuffling the entire house.”
Three hours later, The Flip was complete, but Amen would not complete the rest of the redesign until the Averitts had lived with The Flip for a month or so.
WHAT MOVED WHERE
Amen could see that the original dining room was far too small for the Averitts who love to cook and entertain. The large parquet-floored family room at the front of the house is a much more gracious space for a group of people, so Amen moved the dining table in front of the fireplace in the family room.
The gorgeous Kohler & Campbell grand piano so unappreciated in the formal living room moved to the entrance of family room, leaving plenty of space on that good parquet floor for dancing.
The Flip requires a new vocabulary for rooms. So, the former family room became the dancing and dining room.
The breakfast nook’s unused table and chairs went away, replaced by a comfy upholstered chair and ottoman.
Behind the chair is a handsome console table with a pretty breakfast tray that’s carried upstairs every morning. Instead of the breakfast room, the space is now called the petite salon.
The old dining and living rooms became what’s known as the double parlor. Comfortable sofas and a classic Kelly Amen-designed “Poof” ottoman make the spaces a luxurious place to sit and converse. Amen added French doors to the back wall of the double parlor to join it to the house’s garden.
At both ends of the double parlor, he covered the walls surrounding the windows in mirrors so the windows appear to float in the room.
ADDING THE DETAILS
Once he was sure the Averitts liked The Flip, Amen proceeded with the decorating process. Theo Ostler faux finished the double-parlor walls in a rich mottled green. Amen had her mottle the ceilings in the dancing and dining room in peaches and pinks because “peaches and pinks make everyone beautiful and make dining beautiful,” Amen says.
Because music is important to the Averitts’ lives (and important to dancing), Amen had a surround-sound system placed throughout the house and patio. He had the downstairs rooms downstairs rewired for lighting as well.
All the furniture was reupholstered in fabrics-mostly Pindler and Pindler-that Amen suggested. For accent pieces such as pillows, he loves to use fabrics that have meaning to clients. “The legacy of objects is as interesting as the objects themselves,” Amen says. He discovered “30 years of Gerry’s ties,” and had them fashioned into pillows. Mary’s mother had belonged to a quilting guild, and Amen had some of her fabrics worked into pillows as well.
Amen found an old beveled glass door covered with dust in the Averitts’ garage. It belonged to Mary’s grandmother who’d found the door in Galveston at an old mansion that was being torn down. She brought it home, and it served as the front door of her house in the Heights until she died.
Without telling Mary, Amen had the door cleaned and mounted on the wall in the double parlor. Lit with spotlights, it casts enchanting shadows on the wall.
LIFE AFTER THE FLIP
“The Flip is about switching conventional space into space that works for clients at whatever stage they’re at in their lives,” says Amen.
“The Flip was critical to everything that was done here at the Averitts’.
“I see people who have this vast opulence,” Amen says, “and they don’t know what they have. Gerry and Mary use every element of the space in their home now. They respect it. One of the great parts of this house is their enthusiasm for it.” “We really loved the process,” Mary says, of The Flip and its aftermath.
“I used to say, ‘Gosh, I wish we had a bigger place,” Gerry says. “And all the time we had a bigger place.”
